What the hell does Securify mean?

Is securify a real word? Of course not. It is a term I first heard during a press conference when global services firm EDS was announcing its Agility Alliance in Sydney last March.

Robb Rasmussen, vice president of EDS Global Alliances was explaining how Linux is insecure and unscalable.

His comments about Linux were not surprising seeing as he was sitting on a table with partners including Microsoft and Sun and trying to convince a room of journalists that enterprises need look no further than Sun's Solaris if they wanted an 'open source' operating system.

"From a corporate perspective, we are not confident where Linux is right now today. A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment... We are quite cautious about Linux and its deployment," said Rasmussen.

Rasmussen obviously doesn't read his own company Web site because six month previously, EDS had published some case studies that boasted how stable and cost effective Linux was in an enterprise environment.

On 21 September 2004, describing the installation of an enterprise-wide instant messaging solution, EDS said it implemented a Linux server environment "to ensure stability and security while keeping costs low".

Interestingly, just over a week after Rasmussen's gaffe, EDS' global chief technology officer admitted that Linux is strategically important.

This is just one of many examples where an over enthusiastic sales executive from a large company has redefined corporate policy -- and the English language -- for their own purpose.

The purpose of this blog is to give you my opinion on who is spouting nonsensical marketing rubbish -- like our friend from EDS -- and giving them a harsh reality check.

To them, we say 'Securify This!'

However, I will also make time to comment on those people and companies that really do have something interesting to say.