Event Summary
Announcing an upgrade to its online security portal, Ernst & Young is clearly out in front of the big five when it comes to security consulting services. Its newly expanded online portal, eSecurityOnline.Com, offers a multitude of resources including newsgroups, mailing lists, vulnerability and virus information, a listing of security service offerings, security training, a library, and much more.
Market Impact
Though the big five were slow in climbing on the security bandwagon, Ernst & Young has far more to offer than Andersen, KPMG, Deloitte, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. In fact, Ernst & Young's eSecurityOnline division is really competing with the pure play security consultancies at this point. The other big four have not organized their security offerings well enough to make them visible and easily accessible. Recently there was a mass exodus of security professionals from Deloitte to the new security startup @Stake. If security management and resources reaches $1.6 billion by 2002 as IDC predicts, there's a lot of marketshare out there waiting to be had.
User Recommendations
An important part of security management is keeping up with the latest news, advisories, tools, products, and vendor services. In particular, it's important to keep up with the latest advisories and exploits faster than cybervandals. Ernst & Young apparently understands the value in this and has done a lot to catalog this information on their website. As far as having an online Security Vulnerability Assessment goes, their service is pricey. But then again if you're hiring one of the big five, cost is usually not a concern.