Wishing RSA away

 Someday if we're lucky, the RSA Conference,, which bills itself as the "world's largest information security industry conference and expo," will fade away like Comdex and the products shown there will disappear into IT history like acoustic couplers. IT security is, of course, absolutely necessary, but it is costly, puts IT departments at odds with end users all-too-often and adds layer upon layer of complexity to everyday computing tasks. Still, some vendors showing their wares at next week's event are making strides in various ways to advance IT security so it becomes less of a burden to both end users and IT shops. Here's a few examples:

• Napera Networks Inc. in Bellevue, Wash. is introducing its N24 and N24S appliances to assure that computers attaching to your network meet your access policies. They work with Microsoft's Network Access Protection technology embedded in Windows Vista and soon to be in XP. But Napera went beyond narrow Windows-centric thinking and built its own client for Mac OS X users, so you'll know that your Mac users have the latest in Apple security. Plus, the company considered cost, pricing the N24 at $3,495 and the additional stackable N24S boxes at $995. The appliances are set to ship in May.
• PGP Corp. in Palo Alto, Calif. is pushing a standards-based approach to key management, which is critical to enterprises who are engaged in different encryption strategies, whether file-, disk-, e-mail- or over-the-wire-based approaches. So, just in time for RSA, PGP will publish its application programming interface so vendors and enterprises alike can tie their various encryption strategies to a single key management console.
• Blue Coat Systems Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif. has shown that its approach of working with other security vendors' tools to accomplish URL filtering is paying dividends to make Web surfing safer for business (and home) users. Blue Coat uses seven different URL filtering databases and threat analysis software from another four companies. Combined with its appliance-based real-time WebPulse technology, it's now able to assess the dangers of the content of more than 100 million new Web pages every day.

Security done right shouldn't be as difficult as it is today. And it isn't going to get that much easier soon, which is why the RSA Conference will be around for years to come. Pity.