A security disconnect

No doubt, security has become more of a business and enterprise concern. That's a good thing as it means that CEOs are engaged resulting in higher security budgets and greater protection.

That said, it's important for security technology vendors to remember two things: 1) Security professionals are exceedingly paranoid about new technologies, and 2) Security implementations tend to start with small pilot projects not enterprise-wide deployments.

I think some companies are missing these simple facts. Take the Security Event Management (SEM) guys. This software is kind of the security equivalent of network management platforms from CA, HP, IBM, and SMARTS. Just like in the networking world, SEM software aggregates security events then uses software smarts to try and figure out what's going on. Security command-and-control if you will.

Yes, this knowledge can be very valuable, but implementing many of today??s SEM tools would require an investment somewhere north of $200k and could easily exceed 7 figures when you figure in systems integration services. Who the heck wants to spend this much dough for a relatively new management category from a bunch of startups? Few CIOs and CISOs I know.

Here's my prediction. SEM tools will grow and establish a good sized market but they'll follow a typical technology industry pattern. Companies will implement distributed low-priced tools then integrate and consolidate them in 24 to 36 months time. They will also move security management into the Network Operations Center (NOC) for overall operational efficiency. In other words, it's the old IT pattern of ??start small and grow?? and low-end technologies evolve and eat the high-end over time.

This trend will place the high-priced SEM guys in no-man's land. VCs have too many greenbacks in to sell today but will likely be willing to fire sale them later. In the meantime, the small SEM vendors who start at the grass roots of security and IT will likely emerge the ultimate winners.