Tech companies[1] like to believe they're inherently fascinating.
Everything they do carries with it a large portent of the future.
They perform research to back up their case, often coupled with a dramatic headline.
This is a sample that just crossed my eyes. I mean, literally crossed my eyes: "IoT, Authentication and Cloud Services Drive Staggering Increase in PKI adoption and in Certificate Volume."
Naturally, I was staggered. So much so that I looked further. There were many numbers and many words, densely packed together.
I needed to concentrate. For this was the annual Global PKI and IoT Trends Study[2], performed by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of security company nCipher[3], which is now owned by Entrust[4]. Which will surely soon be bought by a company called Enlighten, Enhance or, I don't know, Enematronics.
Last year, I perused this study and offered the thought [5]that IT and security professionals believe regular employees are just the worst.
Well, here we are again and things don't seem to have got much better. More than 6,000 IT and security professionals were interviewed for this study and I detected that the understandably dry presentation concealed their rabid need to ululate in public and retrain as fire-eaters.
I also detected a touch of hypocrisy in at least one element of their beings.
I therefore asked John Grimm, Entrust's vice president strategy for digital solutions, whether my suspicions had validity.
This study seems to reveal that IT people are being driven demented by the fact that they have no idea what sort of Internet of Things devices are being connected to their corporate networks.
What sort of