By Daniel Nowak, Lead Security Architect
I spent late last month in the San Francisco Bay area imbibing the energy of the original Sin city—the energy, the Golden Gate, the flavorful culture, the Blue Bottle Coffee.
Oh wait, that was a previous visit, or perhaps some other person. I, on the other hand, was spending my time basking in the overpowering fumes of a seemingly well-funded and a well-recovering information security market. The RSA Conference was the place to be for most information security professionals looking to network and learn about the latest and greatest in the security field. Most spent the earlier part of the week at BSidesSanFranciso before digging into the annual RSA conference at the Moscone Center in downtown San Fran.
What was interesting to me, was how this show, despite economic conditions, continues to draw not only the large players in this space, but the smaller vendors as well.
This year was no different. The traditional vendors put up their mega-floor-to-ceiling booths and made several announcements on partnerships, products and offerings.
But the incumbents, would not be outshined. Many announced their stealth plays including Crowdstrike, which was founded by Dmitri Alperovitch and George Kurtz formerly of McAfee. The company is approaching information security marketing with a focus on actionable intelligence technologies. ClickSecurity also showcased a new model for approaching big-data collection and analytics—which is rapidly being acknowledged as one of the core challenges within the modern infosec landscape.
Lastly, there was an interesting group of Chinese companies marketing all sorts of cyber solutions—but that isn’t really the most interesting part. They were handing out CD’s that contained software that allows you to connect to their “secure cloud systems.” I looked at mine, and left it in the wrapper….
But despite the announcements and the fanfare, the best part of RSA for me is the networking and conversations with peers. In sum, the general “street commotion” from this year was a different energy than the previous few. It reminded this audience that cyber-security is at the forefront of the mainstream media news outlets, and is one of the core topics raised in any national security discussion on Capitol Hill. The difference this year was the maturity of the industry and the realization that information security as a practice is finally coming of age.
RSA Conference 2012 is over, but if this event is a sign of the times, we are at the start of a new and very interesting intelligence-based age within our industry.