Blog Archives
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Is IBM next?
By Geoff Kohl - Monday August 28, 2006Earlier this week we published an interview with Steve Collen of Cisco, and judging by the number of your fellow readers who have loaded this article, we really struck a chord. Interestingly enough, just a day after we published that, we got wind that IBM had acquired Internet Security Systems. Now while the ISS acquisition may seem a bit unrelated to those of you selling and working with physical security systems, a side note to the whole IBM acquisition story was that about a month ago, IBM slipped under the radar of the news media and acquired a company called MRO Software. Now, don't be puzzled if you haven't heard much about MRO Software; neither had many in the industry. A little research into MRO explains that they are a company... -
Lessons from IT Security
By Geoff Kohl - Wednesday August 23, 2006Here in the metro Atlanta area where the SecurityInfoWatch.com offices are, we've got a few big security players, like Videolarm and Vistacape, but on the IT security side, none are bigger than Internet Security Systems, better known as ISS. This morning, as I walked in the door, I took a call from IBM's public relations department asking me to join them on a call discussing how they plan to acquire ISS. Three hours later, I was on the call with Tom Newnan of ISS and IBM's Val Rahmani, plus a pack of other news hounds. Now, our industry, being largely focused on physical security systems (but with obvious overtures to IT security), may not pay great attention to the buys and sells of the IT world, but it should, and her's why... -
Defragging the industry
By Geoff Kohl - Wednesday August 16, 2006I spoke this morning with Steve Collen, the director of product marketing for Cisco. One of the things Steve and I spoke about was about "defragging the industry." Defragging is a term that computers use may know... it refers to the process of defragmenting a hard drive such that data storage is used optimally. The end result is that your hard drive spins to the data point in less time and space can be freed up. Â Cisco's Collen and I were talking about how Cisco has between 60 and 80 percent of the networking solutions market, and how the physical security industry could use some of this defragging. One thing's for sure, Cisco is not a sleeping giant in our industry. I anticipate some big news out of Cisco around ASIS...they were... -
Sharing between private and public sectors
By Geoff Kohl - Tuesday August 15, 2006I just came across a great resource for those of you who are high-level end users needing to share information and receive information with your counterparts at the FBI -- https://seern.usp3.org/ One of the cool things here is that with your membership you can receive a daily update of world situations...very useful if you're overseeing security for a global or semi-global corporation. Today, for example, I see the note that in the Philippines, an organized gang has dressed as airport staff and been involved in on-airport-property robberies of travelers...Isn't that something you'd want your employees to be aware of? -
The relationship between security and convenience
By Geoff Kohl - Tuesday August 15, 2006from last Friday...my column that appears as The Security Week That Was... Â Â I was on the phone yesterday with Henri Nolin, CPP, who is one of the assistant chairpersons to ASIS International's Transportation Security Council. Nolin, who works primarily with K-9 protection deployments for cruise ship screenings, is well connected in all areas of transportation security, and was telling me about an ASIS education conference he has planned for Chicago on Dec. 11-13 addressing "Trends in Transportation Security." Nolin mentioned that one of the aspects that the conference addresses is suicide bombers. "It's not a question of whether suicide bombers will hit us in our own nation," said Nolin, "because we already know they're... -
Enter the blogosphere
By Geoff Kohl - Monday August 14, 2006As a journalist, I've always been a bit perplexed by the idea of a blog. In the world of media, we called such things "columns" and we wrote them to fill the blank spots on the editorial pages of newspapers...but today, with the Internet's changes, even a regular column doesn't quite suffice to fill the need for informal writing where you can swing an axe at a variety of topics, have your thoughts up in 2 seconds, share comments with other readers, and accept the dose of criticism you've earned when your opinions aren't shared by everyone. So at long last, I've realized that it's time to start blogging on the topic that I cover as editor of SecurityInfoWatch.com. That said, I welcome you to "The Security Check" -- and this will be my...
