Observations From RSA Conference 2011 – Wednesday February 16

Much of the messaging at RSA Conference 2011 is around some combination of the words cloud, compliance, and VM. Presentations in the booths not working in those phrases are less well attended, except for the tchotchkes collectors.

IDC had a full room at their breakfast briefing on “Corporate & Consumer Security in the Next Decade: Peace, Love, & Happiness?” About a dozen of their analysts took part in a panel discussion with the attendees.

It was a (personal) day attending booth presentations from web security, firewall, and endpoint security vendors. Some bullet point observations:

• Trend Micro - Filled the theatre room within the exhibition hall with their talk on what they were doing with VM, among other topics.

• Symantec - Presentations, sneak peeks of Version 12 of the consumer internet security product. Talking about “Insight” as part of the product, and recruiting beta customers. They also have protection for Droid now. Double winner on Tuesday night from SC Awards 2011.

• Kaspersky – Has protection for Droid.

• Sophos – Interesting presentation on deconstructing a virus.

• McAfee - Naming names. One of their slides showed how their endpoint product has tested against a dozen of the usual suspects. Also prominently displayed their 12 Finalist and 2 Winner awards from SC Magazine 2011, awarded the previous night.

• ESET - Spoke about their performance, history of testing well with Virus Bulletin, and had a naming names slide showing how they perform versus some of their competitors.

Other endpoint companies with a presence on the exhibition floor included BitDefender, Bit9, Comodo, and GFI. If you don't have a presence on the floor...

A “What were they thinking?” question has to go to Barracuda for having an evening reception at the Gold Club, near Moscone Center and RSA. No dancers during the reception, but still. Supposedly, Barracuda's 2011 Tour Bus was owned by or leased from the Dave Mathews band.

Thursday on the exhibition floor is usually relatively quiet. Thursday evening is the Conference Codebreakers Bash at San Francisco City Hall. Bill Clinton will be giving the Friday keynote.