We just got back from a week in London to attend InfoSec Europe, the biggest computer security show in EMEA. Much like RSA is in the States InfoSec Europe is the show of the year for security people.
The attendance at InfoSec Europe was strong, our 20x30 booth was full for 3 days straight and the show runs long hours, in short it was busy. RSA has similar traffic but we all agreed that the crowd in the UK was much more buyer focused than the RSA crowd which was more people walking around the show floor vs. seeking products to use. Thus I would rate InfoSec Europe as the stronger show at least from a vendor perspective.
Its not clear what this exactly means other than the people at InfoSec were there to find solutions vs. maybe people at RSA attend to go to security training sessions and are not as much there to find products to use.
I am also finding that industry, not just the security industry, is starting to bring security into the fold much more than in the past. Its becoming part of the IT culture now, which leads to a maturing of products to meet the needs of the corporation vs. all of us ISVs trying to create the new cool thing to attract the attention of the security experts. It is also becoming very clear that industry wants stand-alone security products instead of having security added to existing management products, security is not just milk & sugar with your tea and people are now realizing that having been burnt by making the assumption that it is. Just as there is Web 2.0 we are now in Security 2.0 - security as a key and independent part of IT.
One other item that came out very clearly in both shows, and we talked to 1000s of people over them, is WSUS is just not cutting it. Customers need patching beyond the basics, and the patches missed by WSUS are critical and plentiful.
These two shows are back to back now with just a week in between, and they are about 8 time zones apart, making it hard for companies like ours to attend both in full force but we did it and our crew did a great job. I got the sense other vendors send separate teams as I did not see the sample people at both shows, other than us. Next year they are moving the shows even closer which seems a bit unfair, but at the end of the day it gives us in the industry at release month to shoot for, to assure we have our latest ready to show, much like we used to do at Comdex a while back.
Cheers
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