RSA Beyond the Demo Booths

RSA, The Security Division of EMC Corporation, is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, United States, and maintains offices in Australia, Ireland, Israel, the United Kingdom, Singapore, India, China, Hong Kong and Japan.

RSA organizes the annual RSA Conference. RSA’s well-known products include the RSA BSAFE cryptography libraries and the SecurID authentication token.

RSA was named after the RSA public key cryptography algorithm, which was in turn named after the initials of its co-inventors: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Len Adleman.

Alan Shimel has some interesting comments about recent RSA happenings, “I was speaking to Adrian Lane of Securosis last night about the comment I made on their blog last week. I said, “does anyone expect to see a real live demo on the floor of RSA?”

“Securosis is an information security research and advisory firm dedicated to transparency, objectivity, and quality. We are totally obsessed with improving the practice of information security. Our job is to save you money and help you do your job better and faster. We’re here to cut through the noise and provide clear, actionable, pragmatic advice on securing your organization.”

Is there anything beyond the great bag you get when registering? Yeah, it sure is pocked full of paper, chatchkes, and CDs. Does anyone read that stuff? Do you? What is the real value of RSA to you?

The RSA show is a great event. It truly is where the security industry gathers. But does anyone actually look at demos on the floor anymore. Are we just so used to seeing paid magicians, booth babes (yeah they are here in force this year) and canned power points. Do we really want to see products working here? Hell I am not sure we really see if products are working when we buy them even.

But does that mean RSA is without value? Of course not. It is a great networking event and business development orgy. On top of that, if you don’t show up here people ask why. Did they not have enough money for a booth? Are there other problems there? Many companies spend their precious marketing dollars on the booths, the giveaways and all that is involved in bringing a team here for the show. But would they be better off keeping their powder dry?

The answer is you have to understand what are your goals for attending RSA. Based upon that you need to then figure out what resources are going to be required to achieve those goals. If lead generation is what you are after, frankly there may be more efficient ways of filling the funnel with leads. If branding and “being seen” are goals, there is not a better venue. If channel and partnerships, M&A and business development are on the agenda, RSA may very well be nirvana.

But if you have not figured out what is important before you jump in here, you are probably wasting money and time. I see and unfortunately have been involved with companies that didn’t learn this lesson. Bringing down bloated amounts of personnel, signing up for a booth beyond their means and needs, just screams mismatch between goals, resources and methods. Don’t make that mistake. Dig in beyond the bag at RSA.”

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