I guess that's the big question.

Cisco can best be considered "high risk, high return". Lets hope they adjust their security culture and we see those returns. Even the media following the financial markets has noted Cisco is taking a vacation at Club Microsoft. I don't think anyone even had to connect the dots for them. There have been some changes in Cisco's Chinese management, which I'm sure have nothing to do with this.. No dots here. No sir. Just things that look like nodes, and a general neglect for all things American that are not American Business. At least they are not Enron.

As the days roll on, Mike will not be sitting in the hot-seat any longer. I expect ISS to take his place, and rightfully so, they deserve every black-eye they get. Right now the Cisco legal team is doing the equivalent of a pre-fight pump-up. I'm sure of it.

Ed Felten has a good post over at the Freedom To Tinker blog that goes into a number of the legal issues this presents:

Any discussion of this argument has to start with the obvious: Cisco is claiming that part of its product is a trade secret. The software is key to the product’s function, and Cisco sells the product to essentially anybody who wants it. It’s hard to think of any reasonable sense in which this can be called a secret. (I know that legal definitions of terms like “trade secret” aren’t always intuitive, but still, this seems a bit much.)

Clearly an issue we are concerned with. The most stressful parts of the coming Cisco vs. ISS battle are going to surround this. Many bullets will fly. Some might strike the innocent, but they will fly for awhile and strike them far off in the distant future. We will be listening for the fire and keeping our heads down.

So what about Mike? Ira Winkler at the IT Defense Patrol blog offers this:

Let’s stop chastising Michael Lynn. He may have violated is employee agreement, but that is not really an issue for us. He may have technically violated Cisco licensing, and that is the whole point - any bad guy would probably do the same. However, he did it within a regulated environment, which where it should happen. And where it happens all the time. And the result is often publication of a security alert. Lynn's actions are no different.

Sure. Too bad it wasn't a well regulated environment, although its not like we have a goo... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]