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You're right about the capital intensive nature of this market; and about how competitive it is. But it's also a very broad market and there are many niches tha
by olefoo 17y ago
You're right about the capital intensive nature of this market; and about how competitive it is. But it's also a very broad market and there are many niches that are not well served. The linked article points out that organizations and people whose liquid assets are in the range of $100,000 to $5,000,000 are particularly vulnerable if they don't keep on top of their network security; but most businesses in that range don't have full-time staff in that specialty and don't know enough to effectively deploy packaged solutions.
The larger problem is that innovation in the banking sector is really hampered on multiple levels. It's highly regulated, consumers are relatively conservative; and on some level any offering in that market is asking customers to place their trust in entities they cannot possibly verify to handle their money responsibly.
Note: did anybody catch the sidebar that referred to the "secure Ubuntu brower loaded from a USB Stick"?
- tptacek 17y agoAgain, the major banks are addressing this problem directly across all their customers. Some of them are doing it with hardware fobs, and some of them are doing it with "true-r" software multifactor auth. It's a top-of-mind problem in banking. It doesn't matter what segment of the banking customer base you're serving: you are up against extreme competition for banking security. I'm not saying there's no opportunity with small business banking. I'm sure the banks themselves are painful enough to deal with that a Wesabe-a-like has a good shot at capturing the market. (NB: banking security kind of in our wheelhouse at Matasano).