From tiny acorns mighty oak timber develop – RSA is again on the town

RSA Convention You higher be careful, you higher not spam, you higher not phish, I am telling you why: RSA is coming to city.

For the thirty second yr there’s an RSA convention and an estimated 35,000 safety people are converging on San Francisco for an occasion that has change into an icon – in good methods and dangerous. What began as a number of of us assembly in an area to push an encryption thought has grown right into a mass gathering that, pre-COVID, was hitting 50,000 attendees.

Nowadays it is quieter. RSA did the hybrid convention factor for a yr or so however now it is all in on bodily conferences. That is not stunning given the quantity of expo money available, nevertheless it additionally brings attention-grabbing people into the fold.

Our safety editor Jessica Hardcastle shall be moderating a session on the primary day and no prisoners shall be taken.

It has been attention-grabbing to see how the present has developed over time. This hack is a 20-year veteran of the convention and seen it morph from a bunch of geeks with some attention-grabbing concepts into a world phenomenon – albeit with some caveats.

9 years in the past we had the alt-RSA con with TrustyCon, after it turned obvious that RSA had borked the Twin Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator (Twin EC DRBG) encryption for money – a declare nonetheless denied.

After which there was the fiasco of 2018, when the present’s organizers insisted there have been no ladies available for keynotes. This was shortly disproved with the Our Safety Advocates or OURSA convention, which took lower than a day to arrange. The convention workforce realized from this, though this yr’s con line-up appears like it’s kind of male heavy.

However we’ve the heads of the highest cyber safety companies giving talks on the present. In fact, they are not all nice – RSA has nothing to do with the present itself lately, having bought the rights to a non-public fairness agency in 2022. Nevertheless it’s nonetheless a great gathering and far of the present’s enterprise is finished in lobbycon, the place correct connections are available.

So we’ll benefit from the occasion and assembly up with pals, listening to good talks, and chewing the safety fats. El Reg shall be within the ground snouting out tales, so say hi there in the event you see us. ®