I often wonder what type of competitive advantage network security would provide for an organization. I can see the case for negative press, but I’m not sure whether many companies can successfully capitalize on positive press. Regardless of what a study might say, when I set up an account recently with an online trading company, where you think security and identity theft protection would be key points…I really didn’t find anything.

eTrade, Schwab, TD Ameritrade - they focused on cost to trade, amount of research, the speeds of the trade, ease of trading, but no talk of data protection. It would seem like this would be one market segment where if talk of secure trading paid off, it would be reflected on the above companies’ websites. Just my take, I think companies factor in the costs of data theft as a part of doing business, and then largely forget about it until major security breach involving data theft hits the news. Then they might issue a press release or hold some type of event to lessen the concerns of their customers.

Stephen
www.networkinstruments.wordpress.com