FBI and Nick Leeson to address RSA Europe 2009

Cybersecurity, cloud computing and data security are to be the dominant themes at theRSA Conference Europe 2009in London next month.

US FBI agent Keith Mularski is to present one of the seven keynotes at the event, which will be held at the London Hilton Metropole from 20-22 October.

Mularski will be joined by UK Serious Organised Crime Agency investigator Andy Auld in discussing the workings of the cyber underground economy.

Rogue trader Nick Leeson is to talk about the lack of accounting safeguards that enabled his role in the collapse of Barings Bank.

"People are divided on their opinions of him, but his closing keynote promises to be fascinating," said Linda Lynch, RSA Europe conference manager.

The ways cloud computing is changing enterprise security the topic of the keynote to be presented by Qualys chief executive Philippe Courtot.

This is to be one of eight sessions at the conference dedicated to cloud computing that include topics like PCI compliance and mobile security.

Virtualisation and data security remain hot topics for the IT security professionals and business, said Lynch.

A highlight will be a panel discussion on whether virtualisation can threaten security and compliance.

Application security expert Hugh Thompson is to focus on data in his keynote on the new threat of so-called gateway data.

"This is innocuous information like the name of a childhood pet that can act as a gateway to more critical information," said Lynch.

Other data-orientated sessions include a case study from Telecom Italia on encrypting data and another from the SAS group on securing sensitive data.

Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee, looks at why, despite the damaging headlines, data security is still not being taken seriously enough.

New at this year's conference will be the "hot topics" track dedicated to breaking news and events, said Lynch.

The highlight of this track is likely to be a session by Howard Schmidt, chief executive of the Information Security Forum, looking at how governments are facing up to the cybersecurity challenge, she said.