Larry Walsh Posts

I’ve been a writer/journalist for the better part of 25 years. While I consider myself has having a gift for stringing words together, I am under no illusions that I can do it alone. No matter where I work, I consistently say that my best friend is a copy editor, since he/she not only will pick up my mistakes but help improve the quality of my work. One of my favorite sayings (which I believed I coined) is, “Even Jesus had an editor” (you know, the New Testament was written after Jesus’ death).I ...

What is the most expensive security breach ever? Before you answer, read the rest of this blog (trust me, you’re probably wrong).According to a recent report by the Ponemon Institute, the mean corporate loss to IT security breaches last year was $3.8 million. During the four-week study period, participating companies reported being the subjected to at least 50 known attacks. And these companies reported taking as long as 14 days at a cost of nearly $18,000 per day to remediate a security breach. ...

The center of the Channel-Lands universe was San Antonio this week as the CompTIA faithful converged on the Texan city for the annual Breakaway conference. Four days of packed education and analyses presentations, community meetings and peer networking seemed to pass too quickly. You can read all about Breakaway on the CompTIA blog – believe me, there’s plenty to read and they’ll be stories coming out of the event for weeks to come. But the world didn’t stop turning while we were all down on the ...

Gary Fish founded his company, FishNet Security, 1996 as an integrator of hardware and software security products. In 14 years, he grew the company from $0 to more than $300 million in annual revenue, 400 employees, and more than 25,000 active and inactive customers.  Today, he’s one of the most sought after and influential security solution providers in the industry.In many conversations I have with Fish about his company’s success, he’ll say that growth is not an option – it’s an imperative. W ...

As I sat in the Industry Panel discussion – the first big general session at Breakaway 2010 – I heard two discussions: the evolving implementation of technology solutions as hybrid clouds and the need for solution providers to devise and implement better structured businesses.The analyst panelists were in near universal agreement that technology is progressively moving toward cloud services, but debated the extent to which and when the cloud will consume all of traditional IT products. Ryan Morr ...

Welcome to the first installment of the “Channel-Lands,” a weekly review of the top news stories, trends and events in the channel. Each week, I’ll comb through the leading channel and technology publication websites for the big and significant stories you may have missed while servicing your customers and building profitable businesses. I welcome your suggestions for stories and issues that should be included in “Channel-Lands.”Google Can’t Catch the WaveSeveral channel pubs noted the demise of ...

If you haven’t checked out the jammed-packed agenda for next week’s annual Breakaway conference, you’ll find a wealth of sessions, presentations, workshops and community meetings on the docket. Breakaway is one of the events I look forward to each year since there’s always something new starting or coming out of the confab. This year is no exception, and there’s one particular initiative that has my attention: The CompTIA Ambassador program.In the words of Annette Taber, the association’s vice p ...