April 4, 2008 - Volume 3, #34

Good Morning:
OK, last day of prep before the big RSA fiesta starts. I'll be on a flight out to SFO first thing Monday morning, so I figured I'd do a special pre-RSA Incite to give all of you heading out to the show (yeah, the 10,000 vendors and 2 customers) a preview of what's to come.

First of all, set aside some time in your calendar to come see my session called "Avoiding the Security Groundhog Day," at 8:30 AM on Thursday. I know, after all the parties on Tuesday and Wednesday you don't want to get up early. But when are you going to get to see me, Ron Woerner, the Mogull, Dave Mortman, and Captain Privacy on the stage at the same time? If you want to hear my thoughts on the session, I recorded a podcast with the RSA folks [1] to discuss why I think the session is important.

So what's with the RSA conference "theme." Why do the RSA people even care? Does Interop have a theme? No, besides networking your stuff. Does the VMWare conference have a theme? Who the hell is Alan Turing anyway? And even if RSA wants to say "Turing Lives," we all know he's been dead for 50 years. 

You know they are stretching when this is the money quote from Turing: "We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done." Churchill he is not.

I know how all of this started. Basically Jim Bidzos was trying to make the conference a little distinctive. A bunch of crypto heads sitting in a room talking about prime numbers and factoring isn't very sexy. So they came up with a theme each year to distract us from the fact that it was a bunch of digit heads rubbing their antennas.

Now they have to keep coming up with new themes, which get stupider and less relevant every year. Maybe next year's highlighted theme will be physical security. And then they could get buttons with Attila the Hun. I hear he had a pretty good security detail. 

For me, RSA is a lot of fun. Keep that a secret because the Boss thinks I'm working hard at these shows. Actually the schedule is brutal. 7 AM breakfast meetings and I don't stop until the wee hours, usually at the W bar. I'm doing 3 formal conference sessions, 2 panels (I'll be at the Shavlik booth speaking with Eric Schultze about PCI on Tuesday at 2 PM and Thursday at 11 AM), and over 20 meetings. Yes, brutal.

I'm an information junkie, so there is nothing better than drinking from the firehose. Information, tidbits, gossip, and other data points come flying at me. The biggest problem is that my schedule doesn't allow me to really attend any of the sessions unless I'm speaking. I know there are a bunch of good one's that I'd like to see. I also don't have a lot of time to roam the show floor. But alas, it's better to have a lot of demands on my time than not a lot. So I'll take it.

FYI, I'll try to do an extended laundry list of RSA activity in lieu of full Daily Incites next week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. I'm sure I'll also get pulled into a few "Live from RSA" videocasts and podcasts as well. The hope is that you'll be seeing a lot of me next week, but not promises.

Have a great weekend and I hope to see you at RSA. If you see me (and I'm not running to a meeting I'm late for), please come up and introduce yourself. I usually don't bite and just got my rabies shot.


Technorati: Information Security [2], CSO [3],Security Mike [4], Internet Security [5]

[6] The Pragmatic CSO: Available Now! Read the Intro and Get "5 Tips to be a Better CSO" www.pragmaticcso.com [7]

Get Your Special Report: 6 Easy Steps to Protect Your Identity and get access to Security Mike's Portal today www.securitymike.com [8] [9]

Top 3 RSA Themes

this [10]

this [11]

this [12]

this [13]


The Laundry List (other "hot" topics)