I am going to be in Israel from October 25th to November 3rd, and looking to meet with candidate clients in fabless semiconductors, security, enterprise software, cloud, green and water technologies.

I am also open to meeting with Israeli VCs who have portfolio companies.  

If you can bring your companies together in a conference room at your offices, I am open to putting on a free 45 minute session on the basics of PR, the application of the social web for communications strategy, and content development strategies.

I'll also be helping Jeff Pulver with the #140Conf Tel Aviv which takes place on November 2.  This is going to be a very special event.  Please join us by registering here.

Startups Welcomed:)

If you're a startup, and even if you don't have an immediate budget for PR, I am still open to meeting you if you we can meet at The Diaghilev Hotel in Tel Aviv which is at 56 Mazeh at Rothchild.  I might be able to give you some basic pointers on messaging, communications strategy and outreach.  

I don't charge for this.  

I just do it because I love helping startups.  

There's lots of great coffee places near my hotel, or maybe just a walk up and down Rothchild Boulevard might be something good to do.

To learn more about the companies in have worked with just click here.

Reach out to me any time, here.

One of the areas I try to focus on with technology clients is to work a company's Chief Technical Officer to help set the tone and being a credible voice for the company's thought leadership.

Take a clue from client, Dan Cornell, who is the primary author of the Denim Group's blog, is active on Twitter and authors contributed articles such as this one in Securities Technology Monitor.

Here's some helpful tips to follow:

1.  Realize your company's CTO is busy, so start with some realistic goals for contributed stories.  Depending on your market space, aiming for two per year or once per quarter might be a great place to start. 

2.  Think about vertical market media and how your technology, platform, or service  helps solve problems or disrupt markets where you are impacting.

3.  Be helpful.  Be informative.  But don't sell.  You're being given a precious piece of real estate, on a publication's site or in their physical publication.  Respect it as such, offering helpful, practical and actionable insights that demonstrate your expertise.

4.  Build extended content from your contributed article.  Have links to related work you have done.  If you are recommending an inventory of actionable items, develop a worksheet the reader can download and take action.

5.  Embed video.  You don't need high end production values.  A Kodak Zi-8 is an ideal platform, and what I use on many of my own at my YouTube channel.  Your iPhone - or any current smartphone also produces great quality videos as well. 

6.  Don't just publish.  Engage.  As your readers for feedback.  Post your article on your social profiles and make sure your sales and business development teams do likewise.

7.  When you are pitching your story idea, look into the publication's editorial calendar, giving you a road map of what the publication is going to be covering in the year to come.

8.   Provide an abstract as a baseline for the contributed article.  Generally a paragraph or two will more than suffice - outlining what the author intends to write about, why it's timely and relevant to the readership of the publication.

9.   Make it exclusive.  While implied, make sure the editor you are working with know that this is an original body of work and that it won't appear verbatim in another publication.

10.  Buy article reprint rights.  Here's an example from Ziff-Davis.  Even in this digital world, reprints make great sales tools for your business development team.  Make sure you also adhere to linking rights.  Your milage will vary from publisher to publisher to best to inquire before you start promoting your work.

Have you had success with contributed articles?  Chime in and share your story.

Photo shot with a wide angle lens somewhere in Iceland by Alan Weinkrantz - feel free to share with appropriate credits.

This year's CES is going to have tons of noise and hype about smart phones and tablets.  

Tomorrow, Apple is going to launch is new MacApps store.  In your search for something shiny, something new, listen to what Dan Cornell, CTO of Denim Group (client) has to share with his insights on mobile security issues and what he calls SmartPhones / Dumb Apps.

Client, Denim Group, today announced its annual guidance on application security trends for 2011.  

Mobile Applications, Shifting to The Cloud, Malware on the iTunes / Droid Stores, The Smart Grid and More, Give Rise to New Forms of Application Security Threats in the New Year to Come

You may view the news release here on Yahoo News, or read / print the document below.

If you would like to interview Denim Group, CTO, Dan Cornell, please reach out to me - alan at weinkrantz dot com.

Click here to download:

2011Trends-_clean4.0.doc (41 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

2011Trends-_clean4.0.doc (41 KB)

Client, Denim Group, has a compelling presentation on the subject of Software Security Vulnerability Remediation.  It's a handy and very practical "How to Guide" that can be adapted as source material for stories on the subject.

Denim Group does a lot of software security remediation projects, so they put together a how-to-guide based on their experiences.

How-To-Guide for Software Security Vulnerability Remediation

Client, Denim Group just made the “technology preview” release of their Vulnerability Manager application available.  This is an internal Denim Group project they’ve been working on for a number of months.  It has been through a number of private and semi-public demonstrations, so they are really excited to make it available to a broader audience.

If you're an industry analyst, journalist, or blogger covering application security, reach out to me at: alan at weinkrantz dot com for a briefing.

Here's a quick overview....

Vulnerability Manager is a Java/Spring/Hibernate-based web application allowing organizations to automate and centrally manage administration of many of the functions of an application security program:

· Create and maintain a portfolio of applications

· Import and merge vulnerability results from a variety of free and commercial static and dynamic scanning tools

· Automatically generate WAF and IDS/IPS rules for identified vulnerabilities (virtual patching)

· Track attack statistics for vulnerabilities based on WAF and IDS/IPS logs

· Bundle vulnerabilities and send them to defect tracking systems

· Track team maturity practices according to standards such as OpenSAMM

There is an online screencast demo here:

Vulnerability Manager sprung from a number of conversations and engagements we had with clients discussing the problems they faced getting application security programs working in their organizations.  At Denim Group we have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with folks across the spectrum of application security maturity and we think we have assembled some capabilities that will be compelling to many organizations.

· In short – it still needs serious work before I would put it in production.  Please be kind and constructive in your feedback

· It works well for our example files under controlled conditions.  Outside of those circumstances…  good luck (please let us know about any issues)

· The application has not been through a proper security review and has, in fact, been built in an ad hoc manner that we are aggressively working to correct (please do as we say, not as we’ve done thusfar)

· A number of must-have features surrounding configuration and workflow have not yet been completed.  Those are in progress

· “Vulnerability Manager” is a terrible name for an application and we promise to come up with something cooler

Client, Denim Group, an IT consultancy and strong contributor to the larger application security community, has just announced that it foresees shifts in the application security landscape this year. As a trusted advisor to many Fortune 500 and large public sector organizations, the firm has just announced its guidance on the top application security trends for 2010.

Members of the media, industry analysts, and bloggers - if you need topical expertise on Application Security, Software Security and issues critical to assessing and mitigating risks with their existing software  please reach out to me at alan at weinkrantz dot com.  I'll connect you with client, Denim Group.  

Follow Denim Group Principals - @danielcornell and @johnbdickson on twitter.

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