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RSA considers cloud, mobile


London, 13 Oct 2011

RSA is working on new technologies and new directions all the time, says Uri Rivner, head of new technologies: identity protection at RSA.

In terms of areas RSA is working in, there is a strong focus on mobile, he says. "We talk about all sorts of new technologies around making sure that when you do any kind of mobile activity, you're protected against cyber crime. That's one area we're investigating."

Another important area for RSA is the ability to look inside a network. In April this year, RSA acquired Netwitness, a network monitoring company, after being a client for several years.

"Netwitness allows you to capture everything that is going on inside your network and then quickly investigate any kind of incident with all the context you need to understand the full implications of that incident."

The ability to look inside a network is important, says Rivner, as "the perimeter defences are no longer sufficient and you will need to look inside your network to identify intrusions”.

It is not possible to prevent intrusions, he explains, because of the level of sophistication of attacks. "The level of military-grade attacks that we're seeing now, they couldn't care less about your perimeter defences. They find ways to simply bypass all of that. That's why you really need to look on the inside."

RSA is also looking at building a more threat-resistant infrastructure. "You have some pockets of data that are more sensitive than others, and you want to make sure that even if the endpoint is infected with some sort of malware, your infrastructure is still protected."

He says there is an opportunity to use new technologies to help this. Virtualisation can help to segregate data zones, he says, to control the infrastructure better. "Virtualisation, which is often perceived as a security risk, can actually be harnessed to increase security if you do it properly."

Another direction for RSA is cloud security. With cloud, says Rivner, "we talk about organisations that have so many providers that are outside their own data centre. How do you actually work with all these providers securely? How do you authenticate to these providers? How do you manage identities around that?" he asks.

"Today, the level of technology in the security operations centre is still not sufficient to handle more advanced threats. That's why a lot of organisations are now looking to use more advanced technologies in order to make sure they are better prepared to fight these sorts of more advanced threats."

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