RSA Conference 2010
Just got back from the RSA conference in San Francisco last week. It was quite a show — some heavy hitters were in attendance, including Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, FBI director Robert Mueller, and a very cryptic NSA spokesperson. For you geeks out there, Whifield Diffie, Martin Hellman, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and David Chaum played big parts in the keynotes and panels. It was interesting to see both the public and private sectors well represented here compared to previous RSA conferences, and there was definitely more openness between the two. The paranoia level was high, with many keynotes commenting on organized cybercrime, cyberwarfare, cloud security. Janet Napolitano actually tried to recruit hackers and other security talent for DHS in Hollywood-esque fashion!
The sessions were actually quite good, with tracks in application development, law, hackers and threats, data security, policy and government, and governance, risk and compliance. One session I attended on data breaches was interesting; the speaker asked the audience to raise their hands if they had experienced a data breach, and three quarters of the room raised their hands. Data breaches are occurring, and to their credit, companies seem to be aggressively pursuing a strategy of prevention over cure.
