RSA Security Conference: The race to plug a $6 trillion security hole

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More than 50 thousand of the world’s top computer security professionals will be in San Francisco this week for the RSA Conference. While they talk, the hole in the cybersecurity world is getting bigger every year and is on track to swallow $6 trillion in annual damages by 2021 — a doubling from $3 trillion in 2015, says Cybersecurity Ventures.

Also: IT security: Five essential steps to keep the hackers at bay

The hole is getting bigger even though we are filling it with money — more than $1 trillion will be spent on prevention this year.

We have new cyber security startups launching with new technologies all the time. But it seems to make little difference in slowing the problem. When can you relax knowing you’ve done enough? Even if you bought everything at this year’s RSA show and used the advice of every expert, you would still be vulnerable. 

RSA 2017

A hole outside the RSA Conference in 2017

Photo; Tom Foremski

The cost of cyber security is a rising cost of business, with seemingly no end in sight. It’s unsustainable. Cyber crime is so massive it has been described as the largest and fastest transfer of wealth in history. 


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A skills shortage of cyber security professionals isn’t helping. There are several sessions at RSA on this topic — even some suggestions that include books written for school children with security themes in their stories. The goal is to prime the talent pump decades before the people are needed. It’s a long play. We need something faster.

The RSA Conference  — “Where the world talks security” — will need a better tag line next year, because everyone knows that talk is cheap.

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