Today the Daily Shield welcomes Steve Schwartz, EVP of Intersections Inc. Steve is in San Francisco this week attending the RSA conference. For those of you who may not know, the RSA Conference is an annual event where security professionals from around the world get together to exchange information and learn about the latest cyber-threats. The Daily Shield is pleased to share Steve’s comments from the conference floor.
This is my first RSA conference and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I spent the day wandering the exhibit hall and attending a few sessions. I came away with the following impressions.
First, there’s no recession in the security business. The exhibit floor is packed with vendors with large displays and the aisles are crowded with attendees. I have no past experience to compare this to but it felt vibrant. Symantec had a really interesting display where they set up a retail shop called “Black Market”. The shop was a physical representation of the kind of selling of data that occurs in the virtual world. Identities and credit card were shown in bulk boxes. Rootkit software packages, complete with technical support, were on the shelves for purchase. The underground economy is real, vibrant, alive and economically driven.
Second, and speaking of rootkits, malware is definitely a hot topic here. Customer Endpoint Security – what security the end consumer has on their computer – has displaced phishing and pharming as the largest concern at some financial institutions. For example, the Zeus rootkit has many variants and capabilities that make it very hard to combat and very powerful. Even wiping your computer and reinstalling the operating system may not wipe this threat as it lives in the MBR – master boot record – of the computer.
My experience here at RSA got me thinking about our product, IDENTITY GUARD® TOTAL PROTECTIONsm.
IDENTITY GUARD gives you at least two ways to safely transact online – ID Vault® and PRIVACY PROTECT®. ID Vault securely encrypts usernames, passwords and credit card information where criminals can’t access them. It also signs you into your favorite accounts without typing so keystroke loggers can’t capture your sign-in. PRIVACY PROTECT encrypts your keystrokes making them unintelligible to criminals.
I could go on, but it’s late. More tomorrow!
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