by Andy Smith

Another year past and another RSA show in the books! This year’s RSA show was a good one, most of all I believe it was a good sign for our economy and also a good sign for the security market in general. The exhibit hall was full, both with exhibitors as well as attendees. I remember the lean years where they had to pull the curtains in to make it appear full. This year the South Hall was packed and it is my understanding that next year it will again expand back to two halls for the expo. This is a good sign for all in the market.

Of course some of the over-riding themes at the conference was the emergence of SOCOMO (Social, Cloud, Mobile) and it’s impact on security. With cloud and mobile, what we are finding is that the network perimeter is expanding and not a fixed firewall edge anymore. With social and consumerization the endpoint is being re-defined to a consumer device be that a mobile device or in the future the “Internet of Things” like a refrigerator or a clock. This expanding network perimeter and consumer endpoints presents new challenges for corporate security.

One item to follow that will be interesting for all is how authentication solutions will expand. The challenge being the tradeoff between security and usability. Which new authentication options will gain traction, will anything every take over the trusty old password? I have been involved in network security and strong authentication space for years and the trusty old password seems hard to replace. I saw lots of interesting options on the show floor at RSA, all which could be interesting alternatives. In my mind, unless Apple or Google (or next up and coming OS) support some new standard out of the box then passwords will still remain the king.

For me the RSA show has always been about partnerships and industry trends and it was good to begin to form some new relationships. Lots of discussions with folks like Oracle, Palo Alto Networks, F5, Cisco, Quest and others as all our worlds start to merge and collaborate. A great show overall and we look forward to seeing you there in 2014.

Watch footage from RSA Expo 2013: