RSA 2009

From the police prowler parked outside to multiple Homeland Security presence at the expo hall to the number government attendees, you can feel big brother's presence here at the RSA conference 2009. With relatively liberal budgets in this economy I would imagine federal employees are quite welcomed; unlikely me who mistakenly took out a company badge (my employer is competitor with a lot of the exhibitors), I was barred from most booths.

Fear mongering is still the sales pitch this year: most presentations were about how easily you can be hacked, or what productivity/monetary loss will incur when that happens. Details were scant. Few got pass "we are the most secure solution and can help your manage and secure your business most effectively". Sigh. Microsoft had a guy presented a deck about trust model, looked educational but I only got to see the last 2 slides, others gave him deer in the headlights. Oh well, may be that's why "we are the most secure solution" was pitch of the choice.


Data loss prevention was surely in the picture. Quite a few appliances were on display that claim to help achieve compliance. Others were mostly encrypted storage. One company sells a hard disk enclosure + encryption solution: the enclosure has hardware that handles the crypto, you unlock it with a mini USB key. Interesting, never seen that before, works on existing hardware, sounds like a good solution. But the most prevalent of all DLP were, surprisingly, encrypted USB keys, for storing data or credentials. Gum'on, it's 2009, these are commodities available at the supermarket, you're cheapening the show.

The highlight of my day had got to be Garner's DLP solution on demo: the PD-4 Bulk Hard Drive Destroyer uses a 1/4 inch cutter to cut into a standard 3.5" hard disk, bending it the in middle. It costs almost $7000 so the question naturally came out "How is this better than a hammer?" "No flying pieces, plus you can watch." Right on.

The bucket full of trashed hard disks looked kind of awesome

In general, I was disappointed. There were no novel products introduced. All the same old encrypt the disk or scan the traffic were so done and yawn inducing. PGP got to be the most innovative, not in their product, but in their sales pitch: they were passing out kegs of free beer, and had Phil Zimmerman signing T-shirts. I don't drink but I did get his autograph - there was no line.


Reporting from the Expo Hall at the Mascone Center in San Francisco, it's RSA 2009.