Last week security firm @stake Inc. fired its CTO, Dan Geer, following the publication of a report Geer co-authored with six other security experts that cited corporate IT monoculture based around Microsoft Corp.’s (or anyone else’s) technology as a major security risk. Now Geer has spoken with eWeek about his dismissal.
Geer said that he was surprised by his firing. “My job was to be out in front far enough that a company the size of @stake could be at the front of an industry like this,” he told eWeek’s Dennis Fisher.
Fisher indicated that @stake has denied any connection between Geer’s dismissal and their connection to Microsoft Corp., which has been a client of theirs for several years. Geer said that the timing of his dismissal, the release of the report and his former employer’s add up to a “Venn diagram of facts [that] doesn’t intersect.”
He admits that any possible direct connection between Microsoft and his dismissal “will be forever impossible to ascertain.” He’s not worried about the future, though. Fisher indicated that Geer has been “inundated with offers and ideas” since last week’s imbroglio.