September 09, 2005
SC "Awards" - When the "Best" Isn't
Hey, did you know it's time for the SC Magazine 2006 Product Awards (Yay!) It's like the Oscars: the paparazzi snap photos while Susan Thunder, like Joan Rivers, comments on hacker style and fashion. Well, alright - none of that really happens, but Susan does kinda look like Joan Rivers.
There's something else different too: Oscar nominees get a gift bag filled with electronics and jewelry... SC nominees get an invoice. 175 bucks per nominee.
Chump change or Trump Change? Well, there are 2 top level categories. There are 8 categories that are Asia/Pacific only. There are the main 46 product categories, divided into two groups: the EU and the US. That's a total of 102 categories. Assuming an average of ten nominees per category - which jives with their data from last year (they're press release for this years contest cites "over one thousand product and service nominations" from 2005.) Wait, is that a cash register I hear? (chaching)... Fat Albert says, "Hey Hey Hey - that's 200K."
Let me be clear - SC has a right to make a profit. I'm all for them making money off the contest. But here's my beef - the way the contest is marketed, one would think that the "best IDS" award would go to the IDS that's "the best"... The methodology precludes any assurances about this. For example, if I enter my super-elite NIDS product:
# snoop | grep -e patterns.txt
and my higly-effective antivirus product:
# grep -r -e patterns.txt /
and nobody else gets off their lazy duff and enters, does that mean that I beat out Snort, Symantec, McAfee, and all the rest of them? I don't think that's right, do you? Not to mention that it creates "false nominees" - even if my super-slick product (grep) doesn't win, I can still put out the marketing message "Ed IDS nominated for best IDS product by SC Magazine."
Wait, you don't think that's realistic? Take a look at PKWare. Does the statement, "SecureZIP for Windows has been nominated by SC Magazine as best product of the year in two categories – best email security product and best file encryption product" get put in a different light now that you know the only judgement criteria was three and a half Franklins?
Maybe I should enter one of the family dogs in the "best intrusion prevention" category and see how far they let it go.
