Wednesday, May 28, 2008

SaaS Snake Oil Top Ten, with video

As I was happily sniffing about for more annoying vendor fodder a few nights ago, I found a true gem. I was actually investigating ControlScan's practices and came across some poor hapless site owner that had been manipulated into buying both the ControlScan service and McAfee Secure / Hacker Safe by not one, but two snake oil salesmen.
This site was bound to be secure, right? Wrong!
Here's a new video to detail the inadequacies of both these services, at the same time.
But, as my disdain for these con artists grew yet stronger, it occurred to me (with the suggestion of an unnamed accomplice) that we needed a Letterman-like Top Ten list.
In this case SaaS will denote scanning as a service, rather than software or security, as security is the last thing these daft gits offer. These are all real statements, claims or quotes from these so called services.

Top Ten 10 signs the SaaS sales guy in front of you if offering up snake oil.

10. We first scan for open ports.
9. If you're interested in increasing your conversions, I'd suggest you sign up for WebSafe Shield.
8. Al Gore is on our board.
7. We held a hacker contest to break our security, and no one did.
6. We want to be the trusted partner who’s at your side, day by day, year to year,to help your business grow.
5. Increase your conversion rate or double your money back!
4. Our Web-based PCI Compliance 1-2-3 solution includes everything you need.
3. The "Verified Secure" mark appears only when a web site's security meets the highest security scanning standards of the U.S. government.
2. Unfortunately, the automated scanning technology we use doesn’t have this XSS scanning.
1. We go in like a super hacker.

There will be no rest for their souls in the afterlife; the web app security gods have a special in hell for salesmen and companies like this. ;-)

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1 comment:

Rafal Los said...

See, Russ... what I think we're fundamentally missing is that these site owners *don't actually care* that they're buying snake oil, and aren't doing any security. In fact, I would venture a guess that this is the exact reason they're purchasing such a service - it's idiot-centric. They do nothing, purchase a seal that does nothing and now they can claim "security" and if something happens - push off liability! Holy Crap! I think I'm in the wrong line of work...

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