The Interview: Art Coviello

Art Coviello, president of RSA Security, a security division of EMC, sat down with ChannelWeb's Stefanie Hoffman to talk about emerging security threats, IT spending issues and challenges his company faces. Here are excerpts from that discussion:

In light of an impending economic recession, where do you see the marketplace headed? Do you see companies cutting back on their security spending?

I don't see people cutting back on their security budgets. I think all companies could spend more cost effectively if they switched from investing in a solution that's reactive to one that's based on risk. In a time like this, companies get more cost effective.

What is RSA expecting in terms of growth for 2008?

Over the last couple of years, it's been around 25 percent. We've outpaced markets in security products that have grown in the mid teens, and we expect to have a continually higher growth rate because of the solution areas that we focus on.

What are some of the biggest problems businesses encounter when implementing security strategies?

A lot of security can be done more effectively if it's done in the context of information management. We see a lot of security problems that are really manifestations of poor information management. You can't secure what you can't manage. If one of the employees loses a laptop--maybe it contains credit card information--what is the probability that we could lose a laptop with this kind of information and what would the cost be? What's the expected value of the risk and how do I mitigate that risk?

What are some of the emerging security trends on the horizon that your customers need to be aware of when implementing those security strategies?

Our guys at the fraud center say it will be the year of more sophisticated Trojans. These Trojans literally capture the screen and see which letter and number you're clicking on. Many will redirect you, so you're fooled into putting your username and password in a bogus site.

There's also an increasing sophistication of attacks by groups of criminals who are very organized, very purposeful and extremely effective. They also get intellectual property so they can enhance their own country's industries. Government sponsored attackers are looking for secrets within their governments.

What is the biggest challenge you see for RSA right now?

The biggest challenge across the board is having enough talented people in consulting to give advice to customers. Having well trained partners is extremely important to us. Our channel is more important to us than ever before. The same is true of our end user customers. They don't have the in-house experience. They're counting on their resellers to have those kinds of capabilities.