With the prominence of traditional media diminishing and the buzz growing around how brands should behave in social communities, we took a look how this was impacting conversation and content during the UK’s largest IT security tradeshow, InfoSecurity Europe.

The general buzz around #Infosec and #Infosec 2010 kicked off on Monday 26^th April, with conversations peaking around 10am and 2pm on the first and second days of the show. With conversation beginning to dwindle on Thursday morning, it was Symantec’s acquisition of PGP and GuardianEdge mid-day on Thursday that caused the chatter to peak.

The #Infosec hashtag peaked at 26 tweets an hour and we reviewed roughly 752 tweets mentioning Infosec during the course of the show.  I’m not a mathematician, but that is around seven per cent of the 12,000 registered information security professionals using the show hash tags. Whilst, this may seem low, hash tag tracking is just one tool for monitoring conversation. Vendors were actively being discussed, old colleagues were arranging to meet and when Symantec made its announcement, the news quickly spread.

So, who was talking about what?

On Twitter…

Symantec to acquire PGP and GuardianEdge

Seizing of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s computers

Who needs exploits when you have social engineering

PDF malware using net attack technique

In the media…

Symantec acquires PGP and GuardianEdge (169)

Data breach notification law coming, says watchdog (54)

PwC report shows bleak security landscape (22)

And, the analyst take..

Gartner, Bob Walder: Infosec 2010 London “the only surprise being that HP didn’t try to trump Symantec’s acquisition announcements by grabbing McAfee!”

Bloor, Nigel Stanley: Time to hug a PGP employee? “Very rarely do I ever get to witness the effects of a corporate takeover first hand but the acquisition of PGP by Symantec”

Bloor, Bob Tarzey: The big yellow monster strikes again “the latest news makes Symantec even more of a force to be reckoned with”