IANS Now Serves as Infomediary Providing IT Security Vendors with Exclusive New Suite of Service Offerings

BOSTON, MA (February 26, 2009) — IANS (originally the Institute for Applied Network Security), a unique research and membership organization serving the risk management and IT security industries, today announced the expansion of its service offerings aimed squarely at helping security vendors navigate the crowded IT security market. The expansion includes the launch of research, a new vendor website, and addition of Peter Kuper to the IANS research staff.

With annual memberships and a la carte offerings, IANS delivers high-value decision support to practitioners, vendors, and investors. Offerings include specialized face-to-face events, moderated phone-based and online discussions, and an extensive online research database. Building upon its seven years of extensive consulting work with IT practitioners, which has led to deep knowledge of the nuances and concerns facing practitioners, IANS now offers robust services fine-tuned to IT security vendors to allow them to accelerate their business through an exclusive network of security practitioners.

“IANS has successfully built a respected brand within IT security and risk management that is associated with proprietary content, and a high-quality community,” said Jack Phillips, co-founder and CEO, IANS. “This brand allows IANS to successfully deliver paid and sponsored products to practitioners and vendors. Now by serving as the security industry’s pre-eminent infomediary, we continue to connect buyers and sellers with high-value introductions and unique research insights. ”

Foundation Services Lend Unique Value-Add
IANS offers information security and risk management practitioners unique, peer-sourced technical and business insights to solve pressing technical and business challenges, and security vendor companies with high-value introductions, product positioning advice, and sales tools and training.

The company’s traditional services (more information available at www.iansresearch.com) exclusively geared toward practitioners include membership services and conferences.

• Enterprise membership is the premier annual research membership program for IT security teams. The program delivers real-life, tactical decision support for information security executives and professionals. Free of vendor influence, the program provides clients with cutting-edge managerial and technical insights that all them to make faster, better and more informed information security decisions.
• Professional membership provides support professional and career support to individuals by drawing from the same information database used to service enterprise members but is priced for individual consumption.

These foundation services also include IANS Information Security Forums, which are limited in size and built around a peer-based discussion model where security practitioners and vendor companies engage in roundtable discussions and private, small-group meetings.

According to Phillips, “Since our inception, IT security vendors have used IANS to shorten their sales cycles, tighten their messaging, and accelerate their business. We have unique insights into the minds of IT security practitioners. We can guide product development efforts that align with the current needs of IT executives.” Vendor-specific services include:

• Introductions/Lead Generation through Information Security Forums, private events, interactive phone conversations and its continuous lead-generation service called the Market Accelerator Service.
• Tools & Training through Working Knowledge case studies, competitive sales positioning, product testing and certification, advisory board services, and a suite of services aimed at supporting vendors’ efforts at leading tradeshows called the Conference Insights service,.
• Research gleaned from IANS’s speaking engagements, positioning and branding consulting, sponsored research, end-user surveys, and analyst/faculty inquiry service called the Ask and Expert service.

Supporting these services is the launch of a new vendor-specific web site, www.iansresearch.net, where vendors can access exclusive content covering what is on the minds of security buyers, and sales and marketing techniques that are working within the software security industry.

Peter Kuper Plays Leading Role – Lead Analyst Dedicated to Service Vendors
IANS created a proprietary ‘peer-based’ research method and applied it within IT security using an innovative business model. By collaborating with Harvard Business Publishing, IANS provides best-in-class leadership materials to practitioners. They also have an impressive Faculty that includes 24 agnostic industry thought leaders and experts, who were chosen based on their expertise and experience in IT security.

A long-standing member of the IANS faculty is Peter Kuper, who is currently managing partner at HypAdvisor Consulting where he works directly with public and private technology companies. Kuper recently joined the IANS research team to head up vendor research. He has followed the software industry for over a decade, and has offered strategic and financial advice to some of the most successful public and private companies. As a Wall Street analyst, including head software analyst for Morgan Stanley, he led or advised many financial transactions in the software industry – 14 initial public offerings, multiple secondary public offerings, convertible debt, and private placement efforts. Kuper has published a number of key industry research pieces advising clients in the direction of the software industry and opportunities for investment, including IT is All About the Data (September, 2001) and Data: The Last Perimeter of Defense (January, 2005).

Kuper is often solicited by the media, and has appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg, and New England Business Channel and is frequently quoted in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Barron's, BusinessWeek and Forbes. A frequent public speaker, Kuper provided the keynotes at the Cisco Global Sales Conference and Source Boston. He is also an advisory member for the Information and Infrastructure Integrity Initiative (I4) at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) whose objective is to define, develop and validate a new proactive-predictive-adaptive strategy (along with critical technologies) that enable information infrastructure operators to anticipate and adaptively respond to attacks in real time to prevent loss of information integrity.

“Take IANS research methodology, couple it with its world-class faculty, and add an intimate understanding of IT security practitioners, and it’s clear IANS stands above other technology research firms,” said Kuper. “Having worked with IANS for nearly a decade, I know the value of their insight. The ability to step down out of the ivory tower to the street level and give constituents real, actionable information and strategic plans versus simple ideas or prognostications means IANS will continue to serve a pivotal role between practitioner and vendor like no other industry research firm can do.”

IANS as Infomediary
IANS serves the role of go-between to resolve the inherent conflict between vendor and customers – the ability to offer goods based on vendors’ need for customer information and customers’ desire for privacy. Paramount to the success is staving off poorly designed marketing efforts based on inaccurate information and consumers’ lack of trust in vendors that ultimately leads to consumers seeking advice from peers.

Phillips notes, “This is precisely why IANS was created – to listen to practitioners and connect them with IT security vendors.” The company’s peer-based, bottom-up approach to research means IANS can deliver high-quality ideas and rigorous thinking, producing proprietary insights for practitioners and vendors alike. Practitioners benefit from a wider range of experience and knowledge when making information security decisions, and vendors get high-quality information that enables them to better target their customers and sell their products.

“We are the objective third party that aggregates consumer information and uses it to negotiate with vendors on behalf of their customers. We are bridging the gap between IT practitioners and vendors selling the solutions, while ensuring privacy and enabling vendors to profile accurately their market,” concludes Phillips.