A research vice president at Gartner said on Monday that enterprises are paying too much for security software, even though vendors simply aren't doing enough to keep up with the prevalence of threats on the Internet. The crux of the issue, according to Neil MacDonald, seems to be that security vendors are "maintaining high profit margins on firewalls and antivirus software" despite these products being nothing more than commodities. Mr. MacDonald was vociferous in his condemnation of how security products are actually increasing their prices over the years across a backdrop of lowered effectiveness, contradicting pricing schemes across the rest of the IT industry. While I felt some slack should be cut in terms of addressing the ever-evolving threat landscape, MacDonald appears to have a point here where pricing is concerned. To that, he recommends that buyers should aggressively negotiate for better prices.

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