RSA's Art Coviello spells out security challenges ahead

Since EMC has acquired RSA last year, how is the integration progressing and how have your respective customers reacted to the change?

The integration is a model for other parts of the high technology industry. RSA has consistently reported growth of more than 20 percent in each quarter since the acquisition, compared with an average of less than ten percent growth in our last four stand-alone quarters. The marketplace has clearly embraced our information-centric security strategy and buys into the reality that information security is an information management issue. Our mutual sales teams have worked closely to make the most of each other's capabilities and accelerate wins in the field. That has meant tapping each other's strengths and highlighting the synergies between security and storage - and this multi-dimensional integration has produced some impressive sales wins.

Integrating RSA functionality into EMC products and solutions is also significantly enhancing customers' ability to protect their data. And, with an eye toward our combined futures, EMC and RSA are designing a common platform that will integrate key security technologies into a range of applications.

All of the attention surrounding security breaches in recent years has helped people understand that information security is inseparable from smart information management. And, it's no longer enough to protect the perimeter that surrounds information. Information moves, and so you also have to protect the information itself, wherever it goes and whoever is trying to access it. RSA's technology is uniquely suited to achieving EMC's vision for information-centric security.

What trends cause you concern for the future?

Criminals are constantly becoming more organized and sophisticated and are developing technology which they use to gather personal data from multiple sources and then put together to form a clear profile for exploitation. The focus has shifted from getting inside the perimeter to exploiting vulnerable data and creating false identities. I am concerned that the attacks largely focused today on financial institutions are going to become increasingly focused on other industries rich with personal details, such as healthcare. I have also seen increased movement in Trojans and Man-in-the-Middle attacks with trends towards attacking vulnerable points of contact, such as account enrollment.