Pete: PILT had many BIG customers. They also had some of the best engineers around. However, many projects, upgrades and customer facing problems were not addressed by the upper managment and day to day operations at the engineering level were negatively impacted. The engineers had to fight to get things done. Many people ask how can they have such big customers and not turn a profit. It doesn't make sense. Well, if the way they shut down operations and have just left their previous employees by the curb is any indication, very bad decisions were made. Customers are now in crisis mode attempting to migrate to new ISPs and some mid-level managers are assisting. The question to ask is why was there no shut down plan? I think many companies have grown at rates which could not be sustained. There was a lot of capital around. Now these copmpanies aare folding. Others are treading water. Many will attempt to address security concerns like they have in the past, out of sight, out of mind. However, there is an ever increasing risk of security issues and incidents. Therefore, I think many companies were attempting to be proactive towards security during the high funding days and will now be more reactive. Also, during times of an economic down turn, crime rates tend to increase. This should apply to Network Security also. Furthermore, their is the learning curve. The Internet is new, protocols are new, security is new. As certain more technical people learn these new things they will pass this information down the chain through papers, research, etc. This will also lead to an increasing amount of people who begin to understand security and could use this understanding for good or bad. So, do I think security is going to fall off just like many dot coms? No, however, those dot coms will not need service. Also, companies which pull through have found they need in house security teams and services. Yes, companies have cut back funding. One last point. It used to take some planning, calls and work to sell stocks. Today, many people are not troubled by any of these issues -- for better or worse. Therefore, anyone who claims to know what type of behavior is normal in the stock market now or for the next five years is also out of their mind. Things have changed. On Tue, 1 May 2001, Pete Patamis wrote: > Last week there was bad news about pilot.net going under and I've recently > heard news/rumor about troubles (and maybe big cuts) at Salinas and some of > the big accounting firms' info sec practices. Curious to hear some opinions > - is this a symptom of a general economic downturn in the tech sector or do > you think the info sec industry is starting to undergo some consolidation? > Do you think some of the newer publically-traded or investor-backed info sec > firms are under more pressure? And do you think the cuts/troubles are a > symptom that big business is freezing spending on security until the stock > market improves? > > I think these topics are important to us who are considering job/career > changes... > > Pete >
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed May 02 2001 - 09:25:41 PDT