These are tough times to start up a security company, but entrepreneurs should not give up hope altogether, a panel of venture capitalists said Thursday at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

Though security was one of the hottest investment areas during the post-9/11 economic downturn, investors today feel that those investments generally have not paid the returns they expected with few initial public offerings or acquisitions of security startups. "The reality is, not as many exits came out of that era as people were hoping for," said Mark McGovern, tech lead with the In-Q-Tel investment firm.

At InfoWorld.

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