RSA Conference 2009 – Recap and follow-up

by Steve Ragan - Apr 27 2009, 16:50

RSA is over and The Tech Herald is working on all the materials and recordings made at the show. With the theme this year being cloud-based security and computing, which everyone either offers or plans to offer it seems, one would think that there isn’t much to cover and talk about.

We beg to differ, and discovered some companies doing interesting things. All this week, we will work to bring you the information picked up at the show and add some things you might have missed.

Aside from the cloud, there was another topic this year that seemingly went unnoticed by the press: risk management and assessment. Some vendors are thinking of this, and talked openly about it. It seems, and this ties in to the cloud offerings, that the vendors this year opted from selling more and more and wanted to offer as much as they could in a single and tidy package.

While not 'unified' as it were, the offerings were taking a layered approach to network defense, and most of the vendors we talked to said they're looking to answer the question of how much is too much, and what can they use to get the most for their dollar.

Another aspect to the talks and musings from the floor consisted of 'virtual' offerings. Whether it was a virtual appliance or a virtual snap-in to an existing environment, there were some interesting takes on the issue. The problem was that some of the representatives at the booths confused cloud computing and virtual computing, which seems odd seeing as they sell virtual appliances.

The normal types of security were not to be left out at all this year. Web filtering, e-mail security, DLP and NAC were all present in one form or another. However, one booth actually had presentations from several vendors. They are an OEM, and instead of spending the money on a booth presence this year at RSA, the vendors partnered up with their OEM to show off their wears. We’ll cover them later this week.

The goal is to spend most of today sorting materials and hashing out articles. The rest of this week will focus on vendors and news from RSA 2009, as well as a few interviews thrown in for good measure.

There are two final notes that were important to me on a personal level. The first deals with the staff at this year’s conference. It’s a huge undertaking to make something the scale of the RSA Conference work. They arrive long before the rest of us, and stay long after we’re gone. While I’m ashamed that the notes I made for specific names are missing, thanks to a hard-drive crash, their images remain. Below is just the team outside the press room, there were hundreds of staff this year that worked behind the scenes.

 

 

 

The second item of note was Hotel Triton. The hotel already had a 'cool ranking' after I saw the lobby, but when I got a note on my pillow from Christina on the second day, wishing me a comfortable evening in the room, I was sold (Christina was the housekeeper for my floor). Here are some shots from the lobby.

 

That’s my workstation outside my room, as you can see. The lobby is large and has the same artsy feel. The kicker was the staff, who I noticed knew everyone by name that was attending RSA and staying at the hotel during the conference. This cannot be an easy task considering my observations were after hours and no one had a badge on.

Outside, as you see below, has its own fountain. During the day there are rubber ducks inside it.

 

To top it off, this was outside the main door to the Triton. Looking right, is the entrance to one of the coolest shopping areas in San Francisco (outside of Union Square) that I’ve seen in my travels.

 

Overall, RSA 2009 was a huge success for The Tech Herald this year. Needless to say, we can’t wait to do it again between March 01 and March 05 in 2010.

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