What is your favorite thing to do at security conferences? What questions do you like to ask vendors?
I have attended the ISC West show multiple times in the past 15 years. Each year I like to review the new and emerging tech and find solutions and vendors for problems we are trying to solve. This year is no different.
One of the other main reasons benchmarking and networking with other industry peers. Many of the connections made here become life long friends and valuable opinions and voices adding to our diverse thinking through shared experiences.
Personaly, my favorite part about the ISC West show is wandering around the Expo floor and walking up to vendors I see and asking them a bunch of questions about their products. Below are some of the main questions I ask, and what I'm looking for:
- What does your product do? I'm interested in knowing what problem they're solving with their product. The key connection to make here is how the technology fixes a problem, automates an existing process, or identifies a risk I'm not currently addressing with existing process or technology. If I'm not interested after their answer, I don't move on to #2.
- How is your product better than your competitors? This usually gives more details about their product and maturity.
- A series of logical security compliance questions... Their answers inform me of their baseline logical security. If they don't answer these well, I usually don't move on to question 4. These include things like 802.1x secure certificate capabilities, Encryption end to end, patch management, secure access / single sign on etc.
- Questions around architecture... Their answers help inform me of the environment the technology will thrive in, and what potential issues I'll have around connectivity and functionality.
- APIs? I'm looking to see what secure APIs the vendor has and how interoperable it is with some of our existing tech.
- Who are some of your existing customers? This helps me identify potential benchmarking partners with whom I may already have an existing relationship or aim to forge a new one.
- Vendor contact information? I'm looking here for who I need to follow up with on their sales team for additional information and setting up calls to discuss further.
What are some of the key or important questions you ask vendors to determine if you move forward with them?
