RSA chief: So grateful to partners for attack response

Vendor's top dog Art Coviello thanks the channel for managing security breach fallout

RSA chief executive Art Coviello has expressed his pride in the way his firm's channel partners handled the aftermath of the security breach suffered by the vendor earlier this year.

Speaking to ChannelWeb yesterday, the security bigwig claimed partners had done much of the heavy lifting in keeping customers informed of the situation and dispensing advice, following the attack in March.

"I could not be more proud of the way RSA employees rallied around the company," he said. "But I just viewed the whole partner community as an extension of the employees. I could not be more grateful or appreciative of the role they played in getting the word out and giving the customers the right advice."

Coviello claimed that, while attacks were often incorrectly linked and grouped together by the press, the volume of breaches taking place showed "the times we live in". The whole security industry must think differently about how to offer protection, he added.

"From a security perspective, you have to know who is going to attack you if you are going to do a better job protecting yourself," said Coviello. "Perimeter security is either not efficient or not effective enough for today's attacks.

"We have to think differently about security, and we have to start by understanding the IT environment. [It's like] if you added 50,000 cars to the M4 commute, but maintained the same rate of speed, would you be surprised if there were a lot more multi-car pile-ups?

"On top of that, there is mobility, consumerisation of IT and cloud. Is it any wonder that there are more successful attacks going on? This is not the fault of security professionals – it is the times that we live in."