RSA 2009 Ramblings

It’s that time of year again…the trees are budding, folks are exiting the winter doldrums and the RSA conference is back again. Yep, every IT Security vendor from New York to Norway, Boston to Budapest and California to Canada is trying to tell you how their solutions will help your organization secure something. 

Some observations from Day 1…

First off – the major news publications are paying attention to our announcement of AppDetectivePro 6.0 User Rights Review.

Oracle acquiring Sun somehow has dominated the conversations on the exhibit floor and briefing rooms. With this announcement, Oracle has managed to dominate headlines at RSA, and its not exactly a security play.

However, there was definitely some banter on the Pentagon hack of their F-35 Lightning II jetfighter project data. What had some folks buzzing was the Journal article’s startling statistic that the government has experienced 18,050 breaches last year.

Compliance is king. We’ve been saying it at AppSec for quite some time now – but honestly organizations MIGHT be getting it now. You can’t silo compliance and security separately – smart companies get this, like us! But it never ceases to amaze when companies integrate half-baked compliance language into how they position themselves…

We met with Byron Achiodo of USA Today/Last Watchdog blog today – if you aren’t reading his articles (or his book) you are missing out. http://lastwatchdog.com/  Its interesting listening to what he’s working on because he is a guy who wants to get inside what is REALLY happening in the hacker universe – what are they doing, how, and how the heck to we stop them? (Um, protect your database environment.)

There’s a lot of anticipation for Melissa Hathaway’s keynote tomorrow on her review of President Obama’s cybersecurity plan. There’s a lot at stake to determine the key areas of focus, not to mention the $$$ supporting this plan.

Flower power - FaceTime staged mock protests across the way from our booth complete with sit-in’s and a guy strumming a guitar. When did the Moscone Center become part of the Haight?