No theater chain wanted to touch it as it was perceived as keeping away movie goers from the other films. Sony is not, as I hear, going to release it via streaming or any other way fort now(or maybe ever) because of liability concerns. As Sony is 70M into it heads will be rolling over there big time.
What I don't understand is how a company that reported $8bn Â
in revenues in 2014 can continue to have substandard security.
It's not like data security is a new frontier. They've been getting hacked for at least 3 years. Films have been taken off their data and leaked to the internet.
RE: What I don't understand is how a company that reported $8bn Â
in revenues in 2014 can continue to have substandard security.
It's not like data security is a new frontier. They've been getting hacked for at least 3 years. Films have been taken off their data and leaked to the internet.
Believe me - this is my bread and butter, and I can tell you honestly that this is more common than you can possibly imagine.
The problem in most cases is that it's difficult for most companies to quantify the losses. In many cases, it's purely reputational (a company gets hacked, information leaves, it's news, but no actual money was directly lost). In others, companies have never had a breach (or one that they know of), so they simply assume staying with the status quo means they'll be safe (despite the fact that this threat is growing exponentially each year).
As a result, most companies don't dedicate nearly enough to security. Sony is an example of how bad this gets, because they've been very publicly breached before, and customer data stolen. You would think they'd have gone to extreme lengths to ensure this didn't happen again, but from the looks of it little changed since the last time they were taken down (albeit via different channels and different attackers).
Featured Saddam Hussein as Satan's gay lover, and music from the movie was nominated for an Academy Award.
The key difference is that there was never the suggestion to assassinate or kill off Saddam Hussein in the South Park Movie. That's really the line that shouldn't be crossed even in comedy and satire.
As a matter of fact, this is very reminiscent of the episode of South Park that they were planning to have depict an animated version of the prophet Muhammad. A lot of Muslims were infuriated, and there were some terroristic threats against Comedy Central by extremists. South Park was forced to edit the final product dramatically because of it.
Even South Park, which is probably the most relentless source of satire in the mainstream, made the calculus that sticking to their guns on something like this just wasn't worth the backlash.
I think Comedy Central mad that call, not South Park. My recollection was that Matt and Trey wanted to press on. A minor distinction but worth noting.
jcn, I'd be curious as to what companies you think benefit from this (strong security) the most?
I've heard a great deal about a company called FireEye.
Just about anything that has a 'cyber' in it's description is going to benefit from all this, but I think the companies that will really rake it in (and might ultimately become household names) are still in their infancy.
The more established guys like FireEye, Fortinet, Splunk, Palo Alto Networks would all be good bets if you were thinking of buying stock. They've all been on a good run recently and I don't think they'll be slowing down any time soon.
A lot of the smaller companies I'm thinking of will end up being acquired (like Silvertail by EMC, Sourcefire by Cisco, etc.). I'm thinking there's a lot to be done in the mobile space (and one early player here, Mocana, makes an interesting product and is part of the In-Q-Tel portfolio, the venture cap firm that was started by the CIA and who backed the FireEye startup - another is Tenable, whose founders created the Nessus network scanner).
Another open source vet in the security space founded Bromium, who have an interesting product that attempts to put a wrapper around a PC to prevent the spread of malware. Early returns in the lab with that one have been interesting.
Then there's the intel space, which is picking up. You're going to see a lot of monitoring of social media and the internet to determine where emerging threats (or existing intrusions) might exist. Companies like CrowdStrike or DataMinr might be interesting here.
Finally - incident/event management - lots of players here, but CO3 Systems and Mandiant are two I like (and of course I just realized that the latter was acquired by FireEye before they were bought up). CO3 will probably be snatched up by someone soon (don't be surprised if that's EMC as well to be part of their RSA product line).
suggested what happens is the start-ups, innovators etc will get gobbled up, and you could buy EMC stock.
EMC announced the acquisition of three companies today Maginatics, Cloudscaling, and spanning. two of the three are in the data protection space, and the third is in the cloud infrastructure which is a peripheral space.
As an ex-employee I've been doing this for a while (and I did as an employee).
if stock speculation was your angle.
I think EMC is criminally undervalued, but wall street doesn't agree, so the stock stays flat to slight increase (although I won't complain about my $9 options).
pjcas - EMC's kind of a strange animal. I can't say why the stock doesn't move more, but it seems like they've had CA disease for awhile now, acquiring companies faster than they can integrate them (and even worse, come up with a strategy for integration that makes sense when compared to their existing portfolio).
I thought for sure they'd be doing better (and I'm not holding any options I was given, I bought my stock), but when you talk about where the company might be in 5 years from today, you really wonder whether they haven't gotten too big to operate efficiently. Reminds me a lot of Cisco in that way, another company that I've held for a very long time and drives me nuts sometimes.
suggested what happens is the start-ups, innovators etc will get gobbled up, and you could buy EMC stock.
EMC announced the acquisition of three companies today Maginatics, Cloudscaling, and spanning. two of the three are in the data protection space, and the third is in the cloud infrastructure which is a peripheral space.
As an ex-employee I've been doing this for a while (and I did as an employee).
if stock speculation was your angle.
I think EMC is criminally undervalued, but wall street doesn't agree, so the stock stays flat to slight increase (although I won't complain about my $9 options).
pj, I only follow EMC tangentially, but some very smart investors started buying the stock recently - largely on the basis that the Company is absurdly cheap when you net out the VMWare stake. It's been on my list of companies to work on for awhile.
pj, I only follow EMC tangentially, but some very smart investors started buying the stock recently - largely on the basis that the Company is absurdly cheap when you net out the VMWare stake. It's been on my list of companies to work on for awhile.
Hey Brent...can I get some insider trading information from you to expand my portfolio? TIA!
It was only a matter of time before the hacker collective Anonymous put their two cents in regarding the Sony hack. Early on Friday, Anon set their sights on North Korea, the hacker group known as #GOP (aka Guardians of Peace) and Sony Pictures regarding the decision to pull The Interview from theaters. From the looks of things, they are planning on releasing the movie to the world themselves. From Twitter:
TheAnonMessage @TheAnonMessage
Follow
About the @SonyPictures hack by North Korea, well let's just say that—
Oh hold on, popcorn's ready.
6:08 PM - 18 Dec 2014 link - ( New Window )
Quote:
They can be upset all they want, but that doesn't mean the movie shouldn't be released.
Then again, Sony is not a U.S. company. So we have no national control over our "art."
Sony Pictures is pretty much an autonomous company within the US.
I'm sure the suits in Tokyo made this call.
Having worked in the cyber field for a long time, I couldn't agree with you more regarding cyber being the new battleground for our adversaries.
It's not like data security is a new frontier. They've been getting hacked for at least 3 years. Films have been taken off their data and leaked to the internet.
It's not like data security is a new frontier. They've been getting hacked for at least 3 years. Films have been taken off their data and leaked to the internet.
Believe me - this is my bread and butter, and I can tell you honestly that this is more common than you can possibly imagine.
The problem in most cases is that it's difficult for most companies to quantify the losses. In many cases, it's purely reputational (a company gets hacked, information leaves, it's news, but no actual money was directly lost). In others, companies have never had a breach (or one that they know of), so they simply assume staying with the status quo means they'll be safe (despite the fact that this threat is growing exponentially each year).
As a result, most companies don't dedicate nearly enough to security. Sony is an example of how bad this gets, because they've been very publicly breached before, and customer data stolen. You would think they'd have gone to extreme lengths to ensure this didn't happen again, but from the looks of it little changed since the last time they were taken down (albeit via different channels and different attackers).
I've heard a great deal about a company called FireEye.
Quote:
Featured Saddam Hussein as Satan's gay lover, and music from the movie was nominated for an Academy Award.
The key difference is that there was never the suggestion to assassinate or kill off Saddam Hussein in the South Park Movie. That's really the line that shouldn't be crossed even in comedy and satire.
As a matter of fact, this is very reminiscent of the episode of South Park that they were planning to have depict an animated version of the prophet Muhammad. A lot of Muslims were infuriated, and there were some terroristic threats against Comedy Central by extremists. South Park was forced to edit the final product dramatically because of it.
Even South Park, which is probably the most relentless source of satire in the mainstream, made the calculus that sticking to their guns on something like this just wasn't worth the backlash.
I think Comedy Central mad that call, not South Park. My recollection was that Matt and Trey wanted to press on. A minor distinction but worth noting.
I've heard a great deal about a company called FireEye.
Just about anything that has a 'cyber' in it's description is going to benefit from all this, but I think the companies that will really rake it in (and might ultimately become household names) are still in their infancy.
The more established guys like FireEye, Fortinet, Splunk, Palo Alto Networks would all be good bets if you were thinking of buying stock. They've all been on a good run recently and I don't think they'll be slowing down any time soon.
A lot of the smaller companies I'm thinking of will end up being acquired (like Silvertail by EMC, Sourcefire by Cisco, etc.). I'm thinking there's a lot to be done in the mobile space (and one early player here, Mocana, makes an interesting product and is part of the In-Q-Tel portfolio, the venture cap firm that was started by the CIA and who backed the FireEye startup - another is Tenable, whose founders created the Nessus network scanner).
Another open source vet in the security space founded Bromium, who have an interesting product that attempts to put a wrapper around a PC to prevent the spread of malware. Early returns in the lab with that one have been interesting.
Then there's the intel space, which is picking up. You're going to see a lot of monitoring of social media and the internet to determine where emerging threats (or existing intrusions) might exist. Companies like CrowdStrike or DataMinr might be interesting here.
Finally - incident/event management - lots of players here, but CO3 Systems and Mandiant are two I like (and of course I just realized that the latter was acquired by FireEye before they were bought up). CO3 will probably be snatched up by someone soon (don't be surprised if that's EMC as well to be part of their RSA product line).
EMC announced the acquisition of three companies today Maginatics, Cloudscaling, and spanning. two of the three are in the data protection space, and the third is in the cloud infrastructure which is a peripheral space.
As an ex-employee I've been doing this for a while (and I did as an employee).
if stock speculation was your angle.
I think EMC is criminally undervalued, but wall street doesn't agree, so the stock stays flat to slight increase (although I won't complain about my $9 options).
I thought for sure they'd be doing better (and I'm not holding any options I was given, I bought my stock), but when you talk about where the company might be in 5 years from today, you really wonder whether they haven't gotten too big to operate efficiently. Reminds me a lot of Cisco in that way, another company that I've held for a very long time and drives me nuts sometimes.
EMC announced the acquisition of three companies today Maginatics, Cloudscaling, and spanning. two of the three are in the data protection space, and the third is in the cloud infrastructure which is a peripheral space.
As an ex-employee I've been doing this for a while (and I did as an employee).
if stock speculation was your angle.
I think EMC is criminally undervalued, but wall street doesn't agree, so the stock stays flat to slight increase (although I won't complain about my $9 options).
pj, I only follow EMC tangentially, but some very smart investors started buying the stock recently - largely on the basis that the Company is absurdly cheap when you net out the VMWare stake. It's been on my list of companies to work on for awhile.
Link - ( New Window )
Hey Brent...can I get some insider trading information from you to expand my portfolio? TIA!
D'oh! Sorry Brett, looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. Also sorry to hear about the whole 'chained up in Cam's basement' thing.
Wimmin pretending to be girls is okay , tho.
Either way, Brent doesn't qualify. Maybe once she's older.
TheAnonMessage @TheAnonMessage
Follow
About the @SonyPictures hack by North Korea, well let's just say that—
Oh hold on, popcorn's ready.
6:08 PM - 18 Dec 2014
link - ( New Window )