Monday Morning News Kick Off: RSA Conference 2010 Kicks Off; News Summary

Welcome to the Monday Morning New Kick Off post from the ITAC blog. We are very excited about all the news that will be coming out of the RSA Conference 2010 this week…and, we are also excited to announce that our editorial team will be on site at RSA, blogging and tweeting about the event in real time. So, we recommend that you stay tuned and be sure to visit this blog throughout the week. We are aiming to provide you with the latest and greatest news as it comes — real time — from RSA 2010. And, in the meantime, we wanted to provide you with a quick summary of news already coming out from the show. Happy Monday!

RSA Conference 2010 Opens Today in San Francisco
Information security professionals and business leaders from around the world convened today to open the 19th annual RSA Conference being held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Taking place March 1-5, RSA Conference 2010 provides information security professionals with the best educational opportunities and access to the most important issues through interactions with peers, industry luminaries and emerging and established companies. Read the full RSA Conference press release here.

Cyber Warriors Gather as Online Battles Rage
US national security leaders and top cyber warriors from around the world are gathering here to plot defenses against criminals and spies that increasingly plague the Internet. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House Cyber Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt will take part in this week’s RSA conference along with computer defense companies and technology icons such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Craigslist creator Craig Newmark. “We have before us more data moving into the cloud and more sophisticated cyber criminals,” said Qualys chief executive Philippe Courtot, who is among the keynote speakers at the premier event that kicks off on Monday. Read the full Sydney Morning Herald article here.

RSA Conference 2010 Preview
Here we go again. Thousands of the world’s data security specialists and the vendors desperate to sell to them are about to descend upon the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco for the RSA Conference, which is now in its 19th year. The first ever conference was held in 1991, in Redwood City, attracted 50 delegates and didn’t even last a full day. Different now. Much has changed, not least the scale and nature of the industry that we now call information security. The RSA Conference today has become big business itself – even my hotel keycard has been sponsored by RSA and Microsoft. Read the full SK Magazine article here.

RSA Conference to Spotlight Threats, Security Strategies
From data protection to cloud computing to application development, this year’s RSA Conference is keeping an eye toward practical strategies for dealing with today’s cyber-threats. The conference, which will run from March 1 to March 5 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, has expanded this year to include 250 sessions across a total of 18 class tracks. Two of the class tracks—’Data Security’ and ‘Security in Practice’—are brand new. The Security in Practice is focused on helping businesses deal with the day-to-day, practical challenges of implementing security, explained Hugh Thompson, chief security strategist at People Security and Program Committee Chair of the conference. Read the full eWeek article here.

Government Voice to Echo Loudly at RSA Conference
The 2010 iteration of the RSA Security Conference which opens Monday in San Francisco will feature an impressive array of influential government heavyweights among its featured keynote speakers. After the Obama Administration declined to deliver a specific strategy around cyber-security at RSA in 2009, it appears that a stronger message will be sent by government officials this year. As issues of electronic infiltration, exploitation and data theft continue to gain greater attention everywhere from the White House to the electrical grid, driven by some notable incidents and attacks reported over the last year, this year’s version of the IT security industry confab bears a decidedly government flavor — in addition to its annual showcase of top IT security industry executives. Read the full eWeek Security Watch article here.

Wow, it’s going to be quite a week! It seems that the Obama Administration is going to use RSA as a platform to address all of the cyber security issues that it has been slipping on – at least that is from a PR perspective. Stay tuned for more breaking RSA news!