Day 1.5 from RSA Conference 2008

Wed, 04/09/2008 - 4:37pm — Kevin Lo

It's TechSoup's first year at that annual RSA Conference, billed as one of the biggest IT conferences in the country, and certainly the most influential gathering of experts in the field of security.

A series of high-profile keynote speakers kicked off the show on Tuesday, including executives from RSA (the security division of EMC Software, the enterprise software company focused on storage), Symantec, and Microsoft. Although it can sometimes be difficult to navigate the paranoia and fear-mongering surrounding the topic of security, a common theme of the talks has emerged that security is comprehensive. Whether Microsoft calls it a "trusted stack of applications" or Google calls it "incorporating security in the software development life-cycle," IT professionals agree that security is not an afterthought.

The keynote speakers also placed great emphasis on the emerging threats from the blurring between "internal" and "external" networks and the way that data is "permeating" across networks. For example, while applications like LinkedIn and Facebook allow HR departments to connect and reach out to more people, their functionality also introduces more uncertainty for any organization's IT and security infrastructure.

For the nonprofit sector, where the improved reliability and ubiquity of Web 2.0 applications seemingly opened up a new modus operandi, executive directors and accidental techies alike still need to stay abreast of these new security trends in order not to be victimized by the latest threats. This may be as simple as keeping up with the latest policies or as comprehensive as taking inventory of where your data lives. While nonprofits may not have the IT budgets they deserve, they can certainly enforce the policies that they (hopefully) already have in place.

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