A triangle, similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but for infosec. Starting at the bottom, the first row includes: single PAIN of glass, AI / Deep Learning / Galactic Magic, less than 100 percent false positive rate, STOPS ALL ZERO DAY, introduces 0day, founded in Silly Valley or Tel Aviv. The second row includes: celeb meet and greet at RSA, Gartner sycophant (crossed out) vassal (crossed out) Magic Quadrant Leader, NBAD / SINBAD. The third row includes: acquired by Cisco or Palo Alto Networks, PERIMETER DEFENSE BUT CLOUD, friend is on the advisory board, sent you a free Apple Watch for a demo. The fourth row includes: published a branded vulnerability, business plan or child’s fingerpaint art?, AI less accurate than nested if statements, feature as a product. The fifth row includes: security posture chiropractor, solves the OWASP top 10, less painful than a swarm of literal wasps, the Miss Cleo of Cyber. The sixth row includes: 60 percent of the time, it works every time. The seventh row includes: MITRE ATT&CK namedrop, whatever tf platform means, outlining clouds in crayon as asset management. The eighth row includes: has a zero trust whitepaper, greater than 10 percent not-a-white-dudes on the leadership team. The ninth row includes: next-gen, “Shift Left,” enterprise-grade. The tenth row includes: threat model being addressed isn’t from a DMT trip, subscription model. The eleventh row includes: will be obsolete after re:Invent or Cloud Next. The twelfth row includes: FUD-free marketing, UX that isn’t just demoware. The thirteenth row includes: IAM as the new perimeter. The fourteenth row includes: doesn’t cause a kernel panic. The fifteenth row includes: helps satisfy SOC2. The sixteenth row includes: resilience. The seventeenth row includes: developers don’t hate it. The eighteenth row includes: product works. There is also an eye with a hot pink iris and a hexagram pupil at the top, for flare.

What more is there to say, really?


Thanks to Chris Hoff in 2013 for the original inspiration.