Bruce Schneier on IBM Grabbing Him Up with Resilient Systems
Bruce Schneier chats with SearchSecurity during lunch at RSAC about IBM's plans to acquire Resilient Systems to complete their security offering.
RSA Conference is a place to meet and greet anyone involved in security these days, proved by a chance encounter with Bruce Schneier during lunch on Tuesday in the press room. And few individuals had news as big as Schneier, with the announcement yesterday that IBM would acquire Resilient Systems, the company where he serves as CTO.
“For the company, it’s fantastic; they have this whole big security strategy and you can see a big hole where we belong, and they see that,” Schneier told SearchSecurity while we waited for lunch to be rolled out.
“Last year, Resilient [Systems] integrated with IBM’s SIEM—that’s security event and incident management—system, QRadar,” Schneier wrote in his blog this week.
The problem was, Schneier said, “They don’t have a response system on top of that” for responding to threats, “so the alarm rings and then they’re done. And [the Resilient Systems acquisition] gives them the next step after the alarm rings.
“Me, personally, we’ll see. They say I will bring a lot of value, they understand that I write what I write and I don’t get edited and they see value,” Schneier told SearchSecurity. “I think it’s going to be a great partnership.”
Asked whether he was personally ready to go to work for IBM, Schneier said, “Technically, everyone’s going to work for IBM; my goal is to transition from Resilient Systems to all of IBM Security. If I’m going to be a strategist and a pundit,” he continued, “that’s what happened when BT bought Counterpane.”
He went on, “I’m not going to not do Crypto-Gram, and they’ve got be OK with that.
“It’s great for the company, the employees, the product. I want the product to be used by a lot of people, and this means it will happen faster.” And, Schneier said, it was good for him personally. “I want to be able to speak to a bigger audience and this will help.”
At that point, lunch arrived. We smelled it before we saw it. “What it lacks in quality it more than makes up for in proximity.” Schneier said, as the steam tables were unloaded.