RSA Conference

RSA Conference
RSA Conference Exhibit 2016
Status	Active
Genre	Professional Conference
Date(s)	February 13-17, 2017
Frequency	Several times a year
Country	USA, United Kingdom, Asia & Japan, United Arab Emirates
Years active	26
Inaugurated	1991
Founder	Jim Bidzos
Previous event	San Francisco, California, USA; February 13-17, 2017
Next event	Marina Bay Sands, Singapore; July 26-28, 2017
Participants	IT Security Professionals
Attendance	45,000
Sponsor	RSA Security, Intel, Microsoft
Website
https://www.rsaconference.com/

The RSA Conference is a series of IT security conferences. Approximately 45,000 people attend one of the conferences each year. It was founded in 1991 as a small cryptography conference. RSA conferences take place in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the United Arab Emirates each year. The conference also hosts educational, professional networking, and awards programs.

The idea for the first RSA conference was conceived in 1991 in a phone call between then RSA Security CEO Jim Bidzos and the Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The first conference had just one panel, called "DES and DSS: Standards of Choice." It focused on why attendees should not adopt DSS, a standard that was expected to challenge RSA Security's status as the de-facto standard for digital signatures.

The event steadily grew. In 1993 the event was renamed "RSA Conference" and attracted more than 200 attendees that year. Over time, the conference became more business-oriented with an older demographic and more vendors, which led to competitive issues for a time in the 1990s; European competitors to RSA Security sometimes could not get a booth, so they hired people to pass out flyers at the RSA conference encouraging attendees to visit them at hotels nearby. In 1995 the conference criticized the Clipper Chip. If implemented, the chip would have given the U.S. government direct access to evidence on telecommunications devices with the chip installed. The conference put up posters with "Sink Clipper" in big letters. By 1997 the conference had grown to 2,500 attendees. The first European RSA Conference took place in 2000 and started with just 5 tracks.

According to Network World the conference's focus expanded from cryptography into a broader IT security conference with larger attendance in 2005, when Microsoft CEO Bill Gates did the keynote presentation. According to Bidzos, the purpose of the conference became "for all kinds of things: drive standards, organize some opposition to government policies, promote the RSA name, [and] give all of our customers an opportunity". By 2008 the conference had 17,000 attendees and 375 participating IT security vendors. It had 18 tracks and 230 sessions.

At the 2010 RSA conference, the Obama administration publicly revealed the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), which was created in 2008 and formerly kept a secret. In 2011, a California-based IT security company, HBGary, withdrew from speaking and exhibiting at the RSA conference, citing safety concerns. The company announced plans to reveal the identities of some members of the hacktivist group Anonymous and received retaliatory threats and hacks. In 2014, 8 speakers boycotted the RSA conference after its sponsor, RSA Security, was accused of adding a backdoor to its products, so the National Security Agency could monitor users of RSA Security technology. The boycott began with then F-Secure Chief Technology Officer Mikko Hypponen. He wanted RSA Security to apologize, whereas the company's statement was that the allegations were not true. Some noted that the RSA conference and RSA Security company are only loosely connected. Discussion at that year's conference was focused heavily on leaks by Edward Snowden and NSA involvement with American technology companies.