Apr 22 2009

RSA and cybersecurity

Category: Information SecurityDISC @ 6:52 pm

SAN FRANCISCO - FEBRUARY 6:  Art Coviello, Exe...
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This week I was in attendance with thousands of people from all over the globe at RSA conference in Moscone Center San Francisco. The conference offers variety of training tracks and this year included two new tracks physical security & governance and risk & compliance. Since Novell CNE was one of my first professional certification, I was glad to see Novell making some headway’s in information security arena, especially Deloitte was promoting Novell identity management solution in the conference.

The cloud computing is the buzz word for this year conference. As far as virtual environment boundaries are concerned , it’s hard to say where it start and where it ends which complicate the matters and complexity of the cloud will introduce new threats and risks. With that in mind cyber security appears to be worse than last year. Attendance might be bit low this year due to budget cut but the conference floor was packed with vendors and enthusiastic audiences.

Most of the security expert understand that companies are cutting budgets and might be decreasing their investment in security. Having a proactive security strategy and spending the security dollars wisely is the key to success of a business in this downturn economy. One thing to understand about information security, there is no ROI (return on investment) in security. ROI is a total cost of ownership.

Another concern in the conference is that the threats and fraud goes up during downturn economy. Companies should have comprehensive policies to tackle insider threats regarding disgruntled employees who might be at verge of getting laid off to prevent them from stealing intellectual property.

There is an outstanding line of keynote speakers like Melissa Hathaway, federal acting senior director of cyberspace. She advised the current (Obama) administration. She will be discussing issues like how much federal government should be involved in protecting critical assets like power grids. The conference like RSA helps security professionals to sharpen their skills and work in collaborative manners to successfully defend their organizations from attackers.

RSA Conference 2009 Highlights
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAxAagvmu6w

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Tags: Cloud computing, Consultants, Information Security, Melissa Hathaway, Moscone Center, Obama, RSA Conference, San Francisco, Security