Trend Micro @ RSA 2012, Part 2

As I promised in my previous post, here are some of the important keynotes, talks, and panel discussions at RSA 2012:

The opening keynote by RSA chairman, Art Coviello, entitled “Sustaining Trust in a Hyperconnected World,” highlighted the immensity and increasing rate of targeted attacks, including the one that befell RSA last year. He also mentioned that “risk” is a function of three components—how vulnerable you are to attacks, how likely you are to be targeted, and how much is at stake. He also emphasized the need to evaluate risks at the two ends of a targeted attack or APT—outside-in (infiltration) and inside-out (exfiltration). He even quoted Sun Tzu in the “Art of War” when he said, “Know your enemy. When the trees move, the enemy is advancing.” A video of his keynote is available here.
Ashton Carter of the U.S. Department of Defense also presented a keynote entitled, “Enhancing Cybersecurity Through Public-Private Partnership.” He covered some key items in his first talk in the “CSA@RSA2012 Summit” (described in Part 1), especially on the ongoing discussion of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which focuses on what works and what does not in government-private sector or public-private research collaboration.
The panel discussion entitled, “Deconstructing the Breach,” primarily covered how cybercriminals use the cloud as a means to their desired end such as using cloud infrastructure like Twitter to host botnet command-and-control (C&C) communications.
“The Rise of Hacktivism” was a panel discussion on the rise of hacktivist attacks that result in targeted attacks and information theft for espionage or profit. Anonymous incidents and how the industry is dealing with these were discussed as well. A recording of this panel discussion may be found here.
Philippe Courtot (mentioned in Part 1) also presented a keynote entitled, “The Urgent Need for a More Effective Approach to Security.” Much like the panel discussion he was a part of, he spent some time discussing the Trustworthy Internet Movement. A video of this keynote may be found here.
FBI director, Robert Mueller, also reinforced points made in previous talks. His keynote entitled, “Combating Threats in the Cyberworld: Outsmarting Terrorists, Hackers, and Spies,” was broadly in line with the “Protecting State Secrets in the Cloud” presentation as well as the earlier keynote from Ashton Carter. Director Mueller specifically focused on stronger collaboration between law enforcement agencies and the private sector to “work together to protect the safety and security of our citizens.” A video of his speech may be found here.
Two more talks to watch that words will not describe well are “Security Bushido: The Way of the Cyberwarrior” and “The Hugh Thompson Show.”
Watch out for the “Remarks from Tony Blair” though the video has yet to be made available.

Trend Micro @RSA

Like many other vendors, Trend Micro had a booth at “RSA,” which was visited by droves of people. It was great to see people lining up to see the Trend Micro booth and see what we have to offer, particularly our cloud security products such as SecureCloud and Deep Security. We also talked about our research efforts and success stories like those focused on the LURID downloader as well as our involvement in the Ghost Click affair. We also had two unique attractions—the Oxygen Bar, which was an awesome idea, if one connects the dots between the cloud and oxygen.

We also had Trend Micro cars roaming the Moscone Center grounds. Check out the attached picture of one Trend car with our own CTO, Raimund Genes, and VP for Marketing, Susan Orbuch.