Digging deeper

I wrote yesterday about the reactions I am getting to encryption. 5 or 6 years ago when I talked to people about the same products which I am representing now, people who were interested were enthusiastic, but few and far between. Now they are less enthused, but there are far more of them. It's as though there's a finite amount of enthusiasm about encryption in the world, and it's slowly spreading around. Encryption enthusiasm entropy if you will.

The reality of the matter is that exactly the same number of people need encryption (i.e. everyone with any confidential information), but now compliance is forcing some of them who weren't interested in taking it any further into doing so. So I remain ambivalent towards compliance. On the one hand it is necessary to drive security forwards, on the other, it pushes people in the wrong directions. On the one hand it drives sales, on the other it makes people resent good intentions.

I've talked about compliance and the state of the market for too long now however, I don't think there is much more that can be said. If you want to know anything about compliance, read PCI Compliance Demystified where I haven't posted for too long, risk, read Riskanalys.is, and for the state of the market you can't get much better than Mark Curphey. If I start talking about data security, Rich will only do it better, and in more detail, then Hoff will jump in and make things complicated, but with great pictures.

So whilst I'm still after finding my niche, and whereas I deal with all of these issues still, I'm going to try a few more technical posts for a week or so, primarily to prove to myself that I still can, but also to get back to familiarity with the subjects I'm dealing with now. I hope you enjoy the 'back to basics' approach I am taking, and appreciate that it is purely for my own benefit. In the meantime, keep reading the guys I mentioned above, and I'm sure I'll go back to normal again soon.