Top 25 Quotes by John W. Thompson

I've learned several lessons over the years. First, never take yourself too seriously, or work is boring. Next, people make the difference. You can have great technology, but if it's not complemented by great people, it won't go anywhere. Finally, customers buy from people they like.

What we are seeing now is customers shifting their attention from security products like firewalls and intrusion sensors, to the policies that need to be in place, and the technologies that help them enforce policy compliance.

We think the managed security services opportunity is enormous and so we have been an active participant and probably the largest firm in this space outside of an IBM or EDS, which does large outsourcing contracts.

The thing we have to be careful of is that the Internet is a global communications medium, and if one country tips the balance in regulating its use or regulating what companies or individuals do on the web, it could have an economic impact that might be unintended, quite frankly, by the regulations themselves.

Second issue is the rapidly accelerating increase in the number of vulnerabilities that get discovered every day. And, equally importantly, is the shortening of time between the discovery of the vulnerability and the release of an exploit.