Security fear

The tactics of fear

Longform
Image: Stockfresh

23 June 2014

Hayden believes that the high media profile given to isolated security threats can distract people from making sure they have the basics in place. “The new sexy thing is all over the place, it’s everywhere and it’s the one thing everyone’s talking about instead of the vulnerabilities that have been around for years.”

Nevertheless, he accepts that publicity around the latest security scare can “get a reseller a meeting with a client that it wouldn’t otherwise have got. Suddenly, the IT director has it on the agenda and want to have a chat”. But Hayden believes that most scare stories don’t work to stimulate sales. “People have become almost immune to hearing this stuff, it washes over them,” he claims.

The issue is the often the basics that people haven’t yet grasped. You could get customers asking about Heartbleed who, at the same time, are securing their wireless using WEP or some other broken standard – Dermot Hayden, Sophos

Security vendors and resellers are more inclined to get engagement from customers when security issues are brought close to home and they have had an issue or a subsidiary or company close to them has been affected. “It’s like seeing your neighbours being interviewed on TV when a mass murderer has been found next door and everyone says ‘he seemed so normal’,” Hayden says.

Market dynamic
Martin Cullen, director of SMP&S at Microsoft Ireland, is adamant that “fear is not an approach we use”. He says Microsoft’s proposition is based around two points for the customer, “we can save you money or we can help you make more money”. But one way in which FUD can emerge is in the way that all markets, not just IT, consist of innovators and laggards. Innovators help to break new ground and create opportunity. They are likely to market their innovation in terms that suggest people who don’t come with them in range of being left behind or losing competitiveness.

“I don’t think it’s a question of selling by fear,” Cullen observes, “it’s just a natural market dynamic for anything that happens. It’s part of the system of life.”

He argues that the evolution of cloud computing and cloud services is beginning to make FUD an out of date model conceptually. “With a cloud service, effectively it’s evergreen, it’s rolling with the motions of the latest and greatest technology. If you go with Office 365 now, you’re on a very structured evergreen motion to stay with the latest and greatest technology. You’re buying a service not a product.”

Halpin agrees, He says Dell has witnessed “an explosion in cloud client computing” because customers have asked how changing their endpoint device strategy could improve their ability to roll out patches and update their systems. “With the amount of work, effort and cost involved in moving from XP to Windows 7 or Windows 8, a lot of organisations are saying ‘now we get why thin client makes sense’,” he claims.

Something similar is happening in the security industry. Hayden argues many organisations have a plethora of different solutions to perform different tasks and are beginning to appreciate the benefits of more integrated, easy to deploy and manage solutions. “You can save a huge amount of cost and improve your security at the same time, that does grab people’s attention,” he says.

According to Hayden, sometimes vendors like Sophos don’t even need to have a conversation about the latest security threat because the concept of a more streamlined, integrated and simple to use security solution resonates more with customers.

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