[ISN] Change in Focus

[InfoSec News]

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11582

By SecurityFocus Staff
SecurityFocus 
2010-03-10

Since its inception in 1999, SecurityFocus has been a mainstay in the 
security community. From original news content to detailed technical 
papers and guest columnists, we've strived to be the community's source 
for all things security related. SecurityFocus was formed with the idea 
that the community needed a place to come together and share its 
collected wisdom and knowledge.

At the time, the security community was fairly fragmented with 
mainstream security information in its infancy. If you worked in 
security, it was difficult and frustrating to find the information you 
were looking for because it was scattered across a small number of 
mailing lists, sites and publications. There was no single place where a 
community of security professionals could go to get the information they 
needed and there was a unique opportunity to build a community portal 
that would provide its users with a destination and voice.

At SecurityFocus, the community has always been our primary focus. We 
knew then as we know now that providing the community with a place to 
share information, discuss new ideas and share technologies was critical 
to staying in touch with the constantly evolving threat landscape. With 
its purchase of SecurityFocus in 2002, Symantec became one of the first 
vendors to recognize the importance of maintaining a close relationship 
with the security community to the point where they made a commitment to 
its founders to continue to operate SecurityFocus as an independent 
company with the same mandate -- "It's all here - and it's all free."

The threat landscape has changed significantly over the past 10 years 
and so has the community. What was once a dispersed though vocal 
collection of users, researchers and analysts has become a much larger 
and more cohesive community of experts who have endeavored to make 
security more than just an after-thought. Vendors have also changed 
significantly, to the point where entire divisions are devoted to 
security research and education. Today, more information is shared 
openly within the community than ever before through the use of blogs, 
threat analysis, and whitepapers as vendors increasingly work with the 
community to solve today's security challenges. The enormous growth in 
dedicated portals and alternative news sources such as social networking 
sites allows us to get our security news and information from a variety 
of sources and as a result, it makes sense for SecurityFocus to evaluate 
how best to serve its readers.

With this in mind, the time is right for SecurityFocus to focus more on 
its core components. Beginning March 15, 2010 SecurityFocus will begin a 
transition of its content to Symantec Connect. As part of its continued 
commitment to the community, all of SecurityFocus. mailing lists 
including Bugtraq and its Vulnerability Database will remain online at 
www.securityfocus.com There will not be any changes to any of the list 
charters or policies and the same teams who have moderated list traffic 
will continue to do so. The vulnerability database will continue to be 
updated and made available as it is currently. DeepSight and other 
security intelligence related offerings will remain unchanged while 
Infocus articles, whitepapers, and other SecurityFocus content will be 
available off of the main Symantec website in the coming months.

While the news portal section of SecurityFocus will no longer be 
offered, we think our readers will be better served by this change as we 
combine our efforts with Symantec Connect and continue to provide a 
valuable service to the community. As always, if you have any questions 
or concerns you can reach us at editor-at-securityfocus-dot-com.