RSA '08: Art Caveillo's keynote highlights data centric security

Shake it down, shake it down down. The words of the Commodore song, "Brick House," took on a whole new meaning this morning at RSA where the 8 a.m. keynote kicked off with a dozen singer/dancers changing up the lyrics to “She's a Bot Net.”

The five-minute number, greeted mostly with bleary eyes from the early morning audience, was prelude to a speech on holistic, information-centric security by Art Coviello Jr., president of RSA, the security division of EMC.

“We're in a perfect storm,” said Coviello. Technical innovations, coupled with regulations, more sophisticated attacks and gaps between technology deployed and the knowledge of the users continue to grow larger.

Coviello called for a number of measures, repeating often a term he called “intelligent security,” wherein software makers would use the tools at their disposal to build security into the infrastructure that operates the way people think instead of making people “think like the technology wants them to.”

Ultimately, this would drive a data-centric approach to security down into the infrastructure and, as he says, do away with the separate function of IT security as it becomes part of the infrastructure.

He also urged policy-makers to spend more on education to produce better-trained developers and IT workers, more government spending on security R&D, more federal leadership, and passage of the federal cybercrime bill that passed the House in 2007.

“Let's punish the criminals, not the businesses,” he said of the current regulatory landscape.

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