Comments on: Do you read vendor blogs?

By: Anton Chuvakin

Anton Chuvakin — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 00:25:14 +0000

How about this though – could you always say who is blogging on a vendor blog: CTO or CMO…?

By: Anton Chuvakin

Anton Chuvakin — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:41:09 +0000

Same question as #9 above

By: just testing

just testing — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 23:20:14 +0000

I agree with Andy. Worth a look but should be taken with a grain of salt!

By: alan shimel

alan shimel — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 23:52:53 +0000

OK Michael sounds good to me. I personally don’t get hung up on such stuff. I look in my RSS reader, is something looks good I read it. If it doesn’t I don’t. What can I say, I am a simple man

By: Michael Farnum

Michael Farnum — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:53:07 +0000

Alan,

Are you being defensive? I don’t remember mentioning your blog!

Honestly, I think your blog and Mitchell’s blog both have vendor leanings, but I have no problem with that. I talk about Accuvant on my blog. It is natural, and totally legit. That being said, I think yours has a lot of personal elements, as does Mitchell’s. You both say what you think and have great general security discussions.

The Cobia blog is obviously a vendor blog, but I have no problem with that either. You are presenting it as such. If you presented it as a regular security blog and then just talked about Cobia all day, then I would have a problem.

Michael

By: Mark Tordoff

Mark Tordoff — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:42:35 +0000

I must disclose that I am a contributor to our vendor blog. We have tried diligently to refrain from product-centric posts in general. Instead, we try to focus on providing opinions and content that revolve around the portions of the industry where our product can be of value.

That being said, I’d be curious to hear when it might be appropriate for a vendor to reference their product offerings?

By: Ryan Russell

Ryan Russell — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 07:37:24 +0000

Sure, the good ones. The Matasano blog is technically a vendor blog, for example. And, oh yeah, my own too.

By: alan shimel

alan shimel — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 03:56:38 +0000

michael- i think vendor blogs are the greatest thing since sliced bread Seriously, do you think of my blog as a vendor blog? I try to keep it my own blog, though I obviously work for StillSecure. But compared to some of these other blogs mentioned, I think mine is much more personal. What do you think?

By: Yuri Guy

Yuri Guy — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:11:40 +0000

I agree with a lot of the stuff already posted thus far. Three blogs that have great technical information and not a lot of marketing are :

1. F-Secure’s weblog (www.f-secure.com/weblog)
2. WatchGuard’s weblog (http://www.watchguard.com/rss/list.aspx) – Not updated enough in my opinion
3. McAffe’s Avert Labs – (http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/)

By: David J. Bianco

David J. Bianco — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 17:01:26 +0000

I do sometimes read them. It all depends on the amount of vendor marketing I think I’m likely to encounter. I read the Tenable blog because I like to see examples of things that they do with Nessus and their other products. I read the Google security blog, since they’re a pretty important part of the online landscape. I also read the WebSense, F-Secure and Kaspersky blogs, since they usually have good technical content.

But of course, when I say that I “read” them, I just mean that the articles appear in my RSS aggregator page. Whether or not I actually look at the article is really on a case-by-case basis.