Radsoft
 About | Buy | News | Products | Rants | Search | Security
Home » News » Roundups » Zone Labs

Zone Labs: Anatomy of a Coverup

How angels stay clean and scandals stay silent.

Part Six - Creating Hysteria

Steve Gibson began the preparations for Shields Up on or before 21 November 1999 - two years ago. Most Shields Up pages were online before the end of the year.

Shields Up was an immense success - measured in visits to the site - in an incredibly short time. Of course we have only Gibson Research Corporation to trust for these 'McDonalds stats' but still and all. Gibson's Shields Up utility attracted surfers with the promise of letting them test the efficacy of their personal firewalls - and then promptly led them to a web site section dedicated entirely to selling Zone Alarm.

Gibson's ability to create hysteria worked its magic. Within a short time Zone Alarm was a major download on the Internet, and e-zines were standing in line to be able to give it a favourable review. And while the Harry Homeowner version of the firewall was free for personal use, the corporate version was not - which was where McAfee cleaned up, just as he had with his anti-virus software a decade earlier.

Prev | TOC | Next

About | Buy | News | Products | Rants | Search | Security
Copyright © Radsoft. All rights reserved.