Since we’ve jumped on the Totally Transparent Research bandwagon, sometimes we want to write about how we do things over here, and what leads us to make the recommendations we do. Feel free to ignore the rest of this post if you don’t want to hear about the inner turmoil behind our research…

One of the problems we often face as analysts is that we find ourselves having to tell people to spend money (and not on us, which for the record, we’re totally cool with). Plenty of my industry friends pick on me for frequently telling people to buy new stuff, including stuff that’s sometimes considered of dubious value. Believe me, we’re not always happy heading down that particular toll road. Not only have Adrian and I worked the streets ourselves, collectively holding titles ranging from lowly PC tech and network admin to CIO, CTO, and VP of Engineering, but as a small business we maintain all our own infrastructure and don’t have any corporate overlords to pick up the tab.

Besides that, you wouldn’t believe how incredibly cheap the two of us are. (Unless it involves a new toy.)

I’ve been facing this conundrum for my entire career as an analyst. Telling someone to buy something is often the easy answer, but not always the best answer. Plenty of clients have been annoyed over the years by my occasional propensity to vicariously spend their money.

On the other hand, it isn’t like all our IT is free, and there really are times you need to pull out the checkbook. And even when free software or services are an option, they might end up costing you more in the long run, and a commercial solution may come with the lowest total cost of ownership.

We figure one of the most important parts of our job is helping you figure out where your biggest bang for the buck is, but we don’t take dispensing this kind of recommendation lightly. We typically try to hammer at the problem from all angles and test our conclusions with some friends still in the trenches. And keep in mind that no blanket recommendation is best for everyone and all situations- we have to write for the mean, not the deviation.

But in some areas, especially web application security, we don’t just find ourselves recommending a tool- we find ourselves recommending a bunch of tools, none of which are cheap. In our Building a Web Application Security series we’ve really been struggling to find the right balance and build a reasonable set of recommendations. Adrian sent me this email as we were working on the last part:

I finished what I wanted to write for part 8. I was going to finish it last night but I was very uncomfortable with the recommendations, and having trouble justifying one strategy over another. After a few more hours of research today, I have satisfied my questions and am happy with the conclusions. I feel that I can really answer potential questions of why we recommend this strategy opposed to some other course of action. I have filled out the strategy and recommendations for the three use cases as best I can.

Yes, we ended up having to recommend a series of investments, but before doing that we tried to make damn sure we could justify those recommendations. Don’t forget, they are written for a wide audience and your circumstances are likely different. You can always call us on any bullshit, or better yet, drop us a line to either correct us, or ask us for advice more fitting to your particular situation (don’t worry, we don’t charge for quick advice – yet).

Share: