Thousands of the world’s security professionals, mostly of them middle-aged white males, gathered in San Francisco last week for the annual RSA Conference.
Traditionally, it’s the time of year vendors hawk their gear in halls containing a perturbing whiff of ammonia, research announcements provide relief from the festival of commerce, and government mandarins hobnob with corporate types – all with the implied intent to work together to protect people’s data.
Yet 2014’s event was always going to be a bit different. RSA, the security company hosting the event, had to defend itself against criticism over an alleged $10m deal with the National Security Agency (NSA) to include flawed encryption in its products…There was one criticism, amid the understandable ire around the damage done to global privacy, which stood out: that the NSA’s mass spying had perversely made life easier for digital criminals…
