An Irreverent Look at RSA San Francisco 2012 – Suggested Smackdowns

Today is Day three of the Exhibition Hall at RSA San Francisco 2012 - The ceremonial exchanging of chotchkes among vendors will begin shortly after one o'clock and will continue until the show ends at three. The sprint through by some attendees eagerly hoping to build their t-shirt collection without attending a presentation may be out in full force.

Some Day two observations - Day one below. Qualys attracted huge numbers to their booth with their breakfast wraps. Impressed that people will stand in line for some of the hardcover book giveaways/autographed if you would wait (titles to be added later). Not as impressed with how long people will stand in line for a slider. No line at the same booth for a blue martini! Exhibition hall presentations in the booths were "okay" with respect to attendance. The theatre presentations inside the Exhibition Hall, mixed. Sympathies to the booths who had to view the sumo wrestler guy in one booth all day long. Long line to get into a casino party in the evening. Perhaps because after more than 20 minutes of the "start" time, they still weren't letting people in.

Nice study by NSS on next generation firewalls. Capture rates of bad stuff versus price/performance. SonicWall did extremely well. Palo Alto Networks, pretty well. Juniper Systems did not do well at all. Very high price per protected Mbps and a low block rate. Barracuda probably isn't pleased either. They barely finished above average values in the study. Fortinet - great block rate, but expensive (not as high as Juniper, though). This wasn't a single vendor sponsored study. Go to SonicWall's site to obtain the report and and check out the visual.

Day one of the Exhibition Hall at RSA San Francisco 2012 was relatively low key. The presentations were pretty well attended. The walkways weren’t packed. The show people FINALLY put booth numbers on the floor in front of the booths and on ceiling banners, mentioning some of the companies in that row. Bravo!

Many of the presentations were on mobility and security. See a Channelnomics posting, “RSA Conference Buzz is All about Mobility” for a discussion on this. http://channelnomics.com/2012/02/28/rsa-conference-buzz-mobility/

Walking Down the Aisles and Tchotchkes!

A few magicians. A booth with trade show “hostesses” in blue Kate Perry wigs. A handful of racecars. Now a smackdown of these on Howard Street in front of Moscone South where RSA 2012 would have been interesting. Barracuda had one in their booth instead of their tour bus. Interestingly enough, Go Daddy didn’t have a car in their booth. They had an almost life size figure of Danika Patrick and were showing product adverts and Go Daddy commercials in their booth. Sound bites from presentation attendees being filmed in the ESET booth.

Magicians. An eight-foot transformer in the FireEye booth. FireEye also had a packed event in the evening. Several golf games. Opportunities to win iPads. Opportunities to win Kindles. A drawing for a large screen LCD TV. A booth where you could punch some guy.

Complimentary drinks from five to six on Tuesday during the Expo Hall Pub Crawl... Most of these offerings seemed to be in the three digit aisles. Ditto with some free food. Popcorn compliments of Trend Micro. A handful of booths offering coffee drinks. About twenty-eight rows in the event.

Way too many pens. Lots of candy. A return of round stress balls. Lots of LBT’s, Little Black T-shirts (actually they tended to be on the large size). Pink ones seemed to be given out in one both. Did I say pens? Did I say candy? Money clip. Branding bags. Several booths handing out the abbreviated “Something” for Dummies books. These are actually informative. Thanks, Quest, among other companies.

The big keynote will be on Friday by former Britain Prime Minister Tony Blair. Perhaps attendees who purchased his biography will get a partial rebate. Informative, but not too exciting. Tuesday keynotes – Qualys’ CEO Philippe Courtot, McAfee Chief Technology Officer Stuart McClure and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Some Suggested Smackdowns for the Next RSA San Francisco

These could add some excitement for next year. Instead of “he said, she said” spread across multiple aisles, put some competitors in the front of a room, and have add it. Audience applause for the winner. Losers split the cost of beverages for attendees.

Secure Web Gateway Smackdown - The formerly public traded company McAfee, the formerly publicly traded company Blue Coat Systems, Websense, and Zscaler.

Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) Smackdown - Palo Alto Networks, SonicWall, Check Point. BTW. NSS has put out an interesting study showing that the SonicWall’s largest NGFW firewalls have the best price/performance and capture rates of bad stuff.

Endpoint Security Smackdown (only companies with a booth eligible) - Symantec, McAfee, Sophos, Kaspersky, Ahn, G Data, Trend Micro.

A Suggested Required Drinking Game for Presenters

Every time the audience catches the presenter saying “next generation”, the presenter should have to down a shot of something.

RSA Conference 2012 San Francisco – SC Magazine Awards 2012 Coming to San Francisco

We're now less that a month until RSA Conference San Francisco, running February 27 through March 2. The theme, The Great Cipher, Mightier than the Sword". Free seminars, training, keynote speakers such as former Prime Minister of England Tony Blair, the Expo Hall Pub Crawl, the Codebreakers Ball, and tchotchkes! The event is great for training, to get an advance look at what may be coming up in the trade, and to network with all those people you used to work with at other security vendors.

http://www.rsaconference.com/events/2012/usa/mightier.htm

Visit kensek.blogspot.com during RSA Conference San Francisco for at least one “view from the floor” update.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

• When was the last time you even used a pen, with the exception of signing a bill at a restaurant? So why are you standing in line for one or collecting them?
• That t-shirt you’re debating to attend the presentation to obtain will not impress people at your health club
• The woman walking up to you in very high heels and a LBD. She only wants you for your scannable info
• Turning your badge over prior to asking questions at a booth screams, “I work for a competitor and think that this will hide my identity.”
• Go to www.SFGate.com or www.opentable.com to look for places to munch at around Moscone
• If you are working the booth and someone is chatting with you while looking side to side or down: the former, according to neurolinguistic programming, means they are an auditory, the latter, means kinesthetic. At a trade show, it means either they are looking at the people you hired to be in the booth or they are looking for the tchotchkes.
• One letter – “W”. If you have to ask why, you may want to go back to Moscone and attend another seminar or gather some more tchotchkes

Also held during RSA, but not part of it, are the SC Magazine 2012 Awards. These are February 28 Intercontinental Hotel on 888 Howard Street (just down the block from RSA Conference 2012 and the Moscone Convention Center) in San Francisco.

To view some of the finalists for the SC Magazine Awards 2012 -

http://kensek.blogspot.com/2011/11/sc-magazine-awards-2012-finalist.html or a comprehensive list at http://www.scmagazineus.com/finalists/section/2386/.

Free Pass

For information on acquiring a free pass for the exhibitors hall - http://blog.proofpoint.com/2011/11/free-rsa-security-expo-2012-passes

Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization Meeting During RSA

Coinciding with RSA, on February 23-24, the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (www.AMTSO.org) will be having a members meeting. According to their website, `The Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO) is as an international non-profit association that focuses on the addressing the global need for improvement in the objectivity, quality and relevance of anti-malware testing methodologies. AMTSO membership is open to academics, reviewers, publications, testers and vendors, subject to guidelines determined by AMTSO. The site is also a great resource for free documents on testing guidelines and best practices.