It’s here. RSA Conference 2012. For those of you preparing to venture off to San Francisco next week for the biggest IT security conference of the year, the SecurityWeek team has prepared a preview and guide to help you navigate through what can be an overwhelming conference at times, and help you get the most out of your conference experience. (Also Read RSA Conference 2012 Preview Part 2: Getting The Most from Your Conference Experience)
In less than a week, thousands of security professionals, journalists and others will descend upon the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The reason – it’s time for the RSA Conference.
Now in its 21st year, the conference serves both as a meet-and-greet for vendors and customers as well as a place for sharing information about the current security threats and the technology that’s out there to stop them. This year, conference organizers told SecurityWeek they have tweaked the event to add more content targeting everything from cryptography to securing the growing number of mobile devices in the enterprise.
“We created a new track for mobile security,” said Sandra Toms LaPedis, area vice president and general manager of the conference. “This track tackles the security of mobile devices in the enterprise. Sessions focus on managing employee-owned devices, smartphone/tablet security, and mobile security policies. In this track you’ll find information on, mobile malware, handling eDiscovery on employee-owned devices, mobile application threats, managing consumerization, and emerging threats to mobile devices and mobile workers.”
This addition comes as organizations face the inherent challenges accompanying the bring-your-own-device culture adopted by many corporations. Among the topics in this track are sessions ranging from talks on analyzing Android malware to the National Security Agency’s approach on securing mobile devices.
But dealing with the plethora of iPhones, iPads and Google Android devices in the hands of employees is not the only new focus of this year’s conference. Organizers are also targeting the subject of security associations with a half track focused on connecting attendees with professional organizations with information on training, best practices, credentialing and more.
“We also have a track focused on Security Trends (formerly Business of Security) that looks at some of the big picture trends in our field,” said Hugh Thompson, RSA Conference Program Committee Chair. “We have an interesting cross-section of presentation in this track this year ranging from how Company 2.0 will view security (including a panel with Zynga and Facebook) and talks about the securing the cloud against the next wave of threats.”
All totaled, the conference has 19 class tracks and 210 sessions, with encores of various sessions held throughout the week. Then there are the keynotes, which feature speakers ranging from FBI Director Robert Mueller III to security execs like Symantec CEO Enrique Salem.
“We have several sessions and topics that are generating a lot of buzz,” said Thompson. “One is our Hacktivism keynote. There has been a big uptick in hacktivist activity over the past year. This panel will explore some of the key issues and look at how the information security community can respond to these types of attacks. Another important issue is targeted, sophisticated attacks.”
“In the agenda we (also) have several sessions focused on the implications and mechanics of these attacks,” he continued. “I’m anticipating that these will be very popular given recent events. A third area is mobile security. At last year’s conference, sessions focused on mobile security were among the most popular. I think we’ve seen a definite maturity in this area. We have talks that run the gamut on mobile security from the latest exploits through to enterprise management strategies for employee-owned mobile devices.”
“Our registration numbers are trending very positively,” LaPedis said.
The conference will run from Feb. 27 to March 2.
(Also Read RSA Conference 2012 Preview Part 2: Getting The Most from Your Conference Experience)
