[cs615asa] Homework N

[Philipp Hunold]

Homework N

RSA Conference http://www.rsaconference.com/events/us15

I attended the RSA Conference in San Francisco, CA which is considered one
of the largest Security Conference there is.

The Conference had live streaming and most of the keynote presentations and
other discussion forums were recorded and are available under
http://www.rsaconference.com/events/us15/downloads-and-media.

There are a few industry trends I like to highlight.

Every company that has been breached spent millions on security products
like firewalls and AV systems. Relying on protective measure is not enough
nowadays, mostly because these technologies are signature mostly based and
need to be training to be able to protect only against known attacks.

Therefor providing visibility is key into fighting cyber crime and be
prepared against threats. Anti-Virus and Firewalls do a great job
protecting but not 100%. What to do with the last few percent of threats
you miss? As Amit Yoran, RSA President, said in his Keynote, “building
higher walls doesn’t help” (for long anyway).

Another trend is that threat intelligence has to be shared amongst and
within the industry. Fighting cybercrime together as a whole is more
effective then individually. Up until today there has been very little or
no sharing of threat intel on from ‘top-down’, but not amongst companies
directly. “Cyber criminals don’t discriminate, they steal money from any
bank!”
In order to securely share threat intelligence in a trusted and anonymized
manner standards and protocols are defined like STIX and TAXXI, but there
is still a long way until we truly share that intel and how do we make sure
we can trust the information? Hopefully the standards will provide that.

Everyone knows user passwords are weak and phishing campaigns and other
means of collecting credentials are highly successful.  Providing better
security without impacting the user experience is the another big challenge
for the security industry. What good is a firewall if the advisory had a
valid username and password? Providing seamless authentication including
certificates and biometrics amongst other things is becoming more and more
available. There is an alliance group focusing on the issue of providing
standards and solutions called FIDO https://fidoalliance.org/about/overview/
.

Security is an area within Information Technology that’s effecting every
aspect of any system. Patching software and systems on a regular basis,
running vulnerability scans and other tasks are a big part of running a IT
infrastructure. Additionally staying informed about the current threat
landscape and the technology advancements is very important. Last but not
least, having the ability to network at a security conference like the RSA
Conference is probably the most important and fun aspect of any conference.

Thank you.
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