The CyberWire's CSO and Chief Analyst Rick Howard offered some observations on what he's seen so far at RSAC 2020. He found two sessions particularly worthy of notice. One of them, a panel on encryption, noted that differential privacy--a family of methods that enables data to be worked on and in some respects used without compromising privacy--was arriving faster than many had anticipated. "What's interesting," he said, "is that the US Census is using the technology in this year's census." That's a big debut for a new technology.

Howard was also struck by a point CISA Director Chris Krebs made during his discussion of election security: there are 8800 election jurisdictions that run their own election infrastructure, but only about 2000 of them actually communicate with CISA on threat intelligence and other matters affecting security. So it would appear we don't yet have our act together.

Strolling the floor is always interesting. "The floor is always like Mardi Gras," Howard said, with lots of shiny objects and all the swag you can carry. But a few new product lines caught his eye. "It's interesting to see them on the floor, because that means they're going through the stages of becoming viable." One interesting set of offerings--and there are more than one of them--uses technology that will help you with the new California Consumer Privacy Act. They aren't compliance tools for organizations, but rather consumer-facing products that enable individuals to enforce their rights under CCPA. They offer assistance to consumers who want their personal information found and removed from databases that hold it.

And there are other offerings appropriate to the age of deep fakes, shallow fakes, and old-fashioned fakes. "There's a new product that looks at audio files." Should you call a help desk, for example, "within fifteen seconds they can fingerprint you, and know that it's you." Thus it's an anti-impersonation, anti-fraud product whose presence at RSAC suggests how rapidly such technology is maturing.

Our coverage of RSAC 2020 will continue through tomorrow. See the links below for additional news from the conference.