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Too much security leads to insecurity?

A funny thing happened talking to some chaps from Trend Micro today. For the first time I can recall, a security vendor actually admitted it had customers who'd been infected by viruses.
Written by Steven Deare, Contributor

A funny thing happened talking to some chaps from Trend Micro today. For the first time I can recall, a security vendor actually admitted it had customers who'd been infected by viruses.

Conventional wisdom in vendor-land says this is a no-no. Infected customers equal a poor product, or so the theory goes.

But to give Trend Micro's Adam Biviano credit, he was actually being refreshingly honest about a much larger problem.

The customers who were hit by viruses or malware, according to Biviano, were often ones trying to apply a multi-vendor approach to security.

The problem for Trend Micro and other security vendors, of course, lies in integrating their product with those of competitors.

A company might have one security product deployed across the desktop, another for certain file servers, and perhaps a third for its mail servers.

I wonder how many of you believe in such a strategy? Even if the various vendors' products do have distinct strengths against different threats, is it possible to make them work in harmony?

This takes me back to a user movement we covered last year. The Jericho Forum is a user-led organisation aimed at getting security vendors to collaborate on open standards.

As you may recall from the story, the meet in Sydney saw some pretty strong user sentiment.

Clearly there is a problem overlaying different security products.

I just wonder how many of you have experienced a security issue because your various security products didn't cooperate properly?

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