About The Site
The Talisker site was originally built in 1999.  It was then mirrored from networkintrusion.co.uk to securitywizardry.com in 2003.    The site quickly grew, becoming ever more popular.  It is widely regarded as the sole Internet resource for finding unbiased security product listings.   The site's audience is truly global, there aren't any Nations that haven't been represented in the logs over the years. We do resell certain products through partnership agreements, though we are careful to ensure that this activity does not influence the site. The html code is a little rough, we have concentrated more on content than presentation.

The contributors who help maintain the site are:

Security

Andy Cuff - CEO and Founder

Al Carchrie - Vulnerability Researcher

Amanda Cuff - Security and Financial Controller

Jeff Ames - Security Consultant

Mark Lewis - Security Consultant

Jacqueline Gough (Jax) - Security Consultant

Michele Jordan - Security Researcher

Matt Cuff - Security Vendor Liaison

Recruitment

Yvette Fenton - Senior Resource Manager

Rachael Crisp - Resource Consultant

Anneliese Meyer - Candidate Triage Manager

Sarah Thomson - Candidate Triage Consultant

Jordan Cuff - Candidate Collator 

The Radar on Internet Threat page has proved extremely popular, especially during periods of heightened tension where we experience hit rates of 12K/hour.

25 Jan 2006 President Bush can be seen standing in front of our radar page during his visit to the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, the NSA is just one of our high profile visitors, though it is very rare that we see inside their operations centres. The footage of this visit was seen on CNN, NBC and featured by a host of newspapers, from the US to China.  Many thanks to our supporters  for making us aware of our unexpected photo call.

 The site began life as a single page detailing all the commercial IDS products. There were already a few IDS lists out there, but many products listed would be out of date or obsolete, there were also a few good products which they did not include.  So the Talisker sit was born.  We have tried writing our own information and views on the products but found it counter productive, as all the vendors would bitch about what was said.  It is easier to use their material, after removing the marketing hype, in order to keep them sweet and the site up to date.

Why?
Andy Cuff was looking for the ideal IDS solution for the Royal Air Force, rather than choose one of the "Elite 4 products" he considered every available product, suspecting that the "not so Elite #5 product" could be the ideal IDS to use.  This list of available products was uploaded to the web and some of the seasoned IDS experts were invited to see whether any were missing, the response was good and before long a few had linked to it. When complimentary emails arrived, it was updated and the format changed to make it a little more aesthetically pleasing.

Tempting as it is to review products and their performance, I felt that the site would be more beneficial if it were to list every single product, so the site remains unbiased with regard to the products and whilst some of my own docs  do give guidance, I always recommend verifying the information prior to implementation. 

Andy Cuff's Background

I cut my teeth on networks as an administrator, when carrying out Pen Tests for the Royal Air Force covering  a variety of operating systems.  I have used many automated tools, however, most audits were carried out at the command line. The underlying IT Security Health Check would cover all aspects of IT security from susceptibility of personnel to social engineering through to business continuity, networking etc.  To fully understand the more obscure vulnerabilities I have had the great fortune to have received extensive training, in the last 7 years alone, roughly one week in 6, covering TCP/IP, SNMP, NT4, Unix, Linux, Oracle, Cisco, MS SQL, IIS, various Firewalls, various IDS, AV etc etc etc. 

We have built 6 Computer Incident Response Teams from scratch, a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding experience, So if you need one please don't hesitate in getting in touch

Having spent many weeks training on TEMPEST testing, not something I wish to repeat and I have also done quite a bit of counter-eavesdropping (bug sweeping) which can be very "interesting".
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