the State of Security

RSA 2010: Security in the cloud is everyone’s responsibility

by on March 2, 2010 David Spark

David Spark here reporting for Tripwire at the 2010 RSA Conference in San Francisco.

RSA conference officially launched on Tuesday morning with a full band playing “Let’s Get Some Encryption” to the Bangles’ tune of “Walk like an Egyptian.” Following and acknowledging the hype in an industry for which he was a founder, Whitfield Diffie, father of public-key cryptography, graciously received the lifetime  achievement award at the RSA conference.

Then Arthur Coviello, Jr. , Executive Vice President, EMC Corporation and President, RSA, The Security Division of EMC took the stage to discuss security in the cloud. Playing to the obvious economics benefits of cloud computing, Coviello mentioned that security issues were holding many people back. Coviello quoted CIO Magazine saying that 51% of CIOs claimed that security was the number one concern with a cloud computing deployment.

How do you trust the cloud if you literally and figuratively can’t see it? How can we make it secure, compliant, and governed? Coviello’s presentation was a call out to the community that cloud security will require everyone’s involvement. Since the cloud is a shared resource, we’re all going to have to be concerned about its security.

He suggested a series of ways to do this which combined the best of both worlds: getting the scalability and efficiency of the cloud while also identifying your organization’s hardware. That way you know where your data is and direct competitors aren’t physically on the same machine.

Check out more of Tripwire’s coverage from the 2010 RSA Conference in San Francisco.

Tagged as: cloud computing, EMC, IT Security, IT Security and Data Protection, RSA, RSA 2010, RSAC

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David Spark

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David Spark is a veteran tech journalist and founder of Spark Media Solutions, a media consulting and production company. Acting as the "media" of "social media," Spark Media Solutions helps its clients be seen as leading voices in their field through brand-quality media production and distribution through top tier media channels.