RSA

What a week for the RSA cryptosystem! A group of prominent researchers published a paper blasting it as woefully insecure, RSA said there's nothing wrong with the RSA algorithm, it's an implementation issue mainly with random-number key generation, and now the cryptography researcher behind the paper, Arjen Lenstra, signs off the week with a few thoughts about it all.

After six months of investigation and what it says is plenty of evidence of who is to blame for the data breach that undermined 40 million SecureID token users, RSA announced only that it can say only that the culprit was a hacker and a "nation state." Why so coy, RSA?

Plus: Sony comes up with spiffy new name for spiffy new handheld.

Industry rumor is building this week that RSA, the security division of EMC, is poised to acquire NetWitness, a privately-held company whose flagship product is used by U.S. government agencies and in the enterprise to detect and analyze security threats.

With the theft of sensitive data about RSA's SecurID technology, large businesses should reassess the risks to the assets the two-factor authentication deployment is supposed to protect, a risk management expert advises.

Company exec warns customers that stolen information could be used to more easily penetrate customers' systems.

Deciding to move enterprise data into cloud-computing environments is still a decision fraught with anxiety over security, as well as operational and legal issues, say IT managers, but the prospect of cost savings and ability to "burst" data into the cloud during peak periods is proving irresistible.

Microsoft's Bill Gates being a turning point at which RSA became an all-encompassing security forum. "It was a big acknowledgment for Microsoft to send its top executive here," she says. The conference has drawn Cisco's CEO John Chambers, U.S. department of Homeland Security secretaries Michael Chertoff and Janet Napolitano

Web 2.0 technologies and cloud computing are extending traditional enterprise network perimeters to the point that they are practically vanishing, says a report released this week by RSA, the security division of EMC Corp. The report further states that information security managers who understand the associated risks and learn how to manage them can help their companies adopt such technologies on their own terms.

EMC's RSA division Monday announced an upgraded version of its data-leak prevention suite, adding over twenty policy templates for recognizing personal identifiable information in countries around the world, including Spain and New Zealand.