SecurityFocus is turning seven. What's next? - OFFTOPIC - Please excuse the X-Post
Warning - This is a message directed to the SecurityFocus community and not
directly related to a running thread on this list - please delete it if you
are not interested in this community administrivia.
Nearly seven years ago on a long ride home on Interstate 280 in the San
Francisco Bay Area, I decided it was time to leave my job. Not because I
disliked my current job but because it lacked some of the things I've always
loved about the industry. It lacked a broad sense of community and a
coordinated, steady stream of new and important information. This
realization wasn't an indictment of my then employer, I simply came to
recognize that there was an empty space that a company focused strictly on
product solutions was unlikely to fill.
In my mind there was a need to create a new type of security community, one
where information was shared between everyone, not just individuals on
scattered lists and bulletin boards. I knew that the creation of this type
of community would take a fair amount of work and rather than attempting to
do it myself, I enlisted a number of friends who shared the same vision. Our
shared goal was to build to build a community in which everyone could take
part. After a few months of hard work and long hours, SecurityFocus was
born.
Our first order of business was to meet the needs of the community and
towards that we built SecurityFocus.com, with the Bugtraq mailing list as
its centerpiece. When the site went live it originally had a small community
of 30,000 email subscribers and a modest web presence that generated 1500
unique visitors per day. It was from this base that we set out to build a
vital community driven by new security content, dialogue and interaction
between all members of the security community.
Fast-forward seven years and I think I can comfortably say we've done pretty
well. We now exceed 500,000 subscribers to our lists and our web presence
has grown to several million unique visitors a month. SecurityFocus has
grown into the site we had originally envisioned and more. Today, careers
are found, products and ideas are developed from our forum and list
discussions and more importantly, SecurityFocus continues to be the central
location for our community to thrive and grow.
How do we plan to celebrate our seventh anniversary? The same as the
previous six - quietly and with an eye towards the future. After seven
years, the question that comes to my mind is "where do we go from here?" I
think that one of the reasons why the SecurityFocus community has done as
well as it has is because we've solicited feedback on where you felt it
needed to go. On our seventh anniversary, I think it's only fitting that we
continue to come back to you - the community, and ask what we need to do to
continue to make SecurityFocus the place for discussion, innovation and
growth in security.
What are the security needs, services and information that we should be
providing to the community? Your suggestions and opinions have always been
the driving force behind SecurityFocus and on our seventh birthday, I'd like
to invite you to contact me directly with your suggestions. Send me some
email and let's discuss where you think SecurityFocus should be headed.
So, what's next? That's up to you.
Sincerely,
Al Huger
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http://www.linkedin.com/in/alhuger