Software Vendors, Take Note: Security Features are as Important as Performance Ones in Purchasing Decisions

by JohnLinkous

In recent weeks, Google has once again stepped up to theplate of information security by demonstrating that they are a responsiblesoftware vendor. First, the company dramatically increased their bounty onvulnerability discovery, incentivizing white-hat hackers to discover black-boxissues within their entire suite of products. Next, Google took a strong standtoward information security awareness, reminding customers to maintain arelatively complex personal password policy for all online services.

Microsoft was not far behind, initiating a bug bountyprogram with substantial payouts – up to $100,000 per discovery – fordiscovering vulnerabilities across all layers of their product stack includingcore security services, OS and browser, and individual applications. Unlikeprevious “BlueHat” programs, this appears to be a perpetual offering, and willinclude both production and beta-release software to help ensure that softwaregoes gold with minimal security vulnerabilities.

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Eight Secrets Most Backup Vendors Don't Want you to Know

by Dr. Mark Campbell

Every industry has its secrets, and the backup market is no different.While widely known within the industry itself, many backup providers do a greatjob of keeping these secrets from current and prospective customers.

But today’s increasingly agile, complex and heterogeneous data centershave made data protection a challenge for many companies, and the last thingthey need is to be kept in the dark on the industry’s intricacies. With this inmind, I want to shed some light on eight secrets most backup vendors don’t wantyou to know.

The cost of backup software is afraction of what you’re going to spend.
The cost of your backup software is only the tip of the iceberg in termsof your capital and operating costs. You’re also going to need to purchase aserver, an operating system, a storage controller, a lot of storage and somepretty advanced networking – and then spend time and money figuring out how tointegrate these components to optimize functionality and performance.

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