RSA Conference: Innovation in a Sea of Booths

What started off as a conference meant to spotlight innovations in cryptography has become a swamp of sales-focused booths and occasionally outlandish presentations – exemplifying the chaos of an industry that continues to overwhelm security executives. As it does every year, Javelin engaged with vendors demonstrating on the expo floor, including managed security service providers; authentication vendors; and endpoint security companies, to name a few.  

This report spotlights several new and innovative vendors based on a select set of criteria. The firms had to have marketed themselves to financial services clients; be considered an early-stage company (no more than B-Series funding); offer an approach that meets a new need in the market, or that tackles an old problem in a new way; present a compelling use case; and provide a detailed understanding of their technology. The profiled startups broke down into the following categories:   

• Fraud and cybercrime attribution (4iQ)
• Automated attack protection  (Arkose Labs)
• Threat intelligence (HYAS Infosec Inc.)
• Breach attack simulation (SCYTHE)
• Behavioral biometrics (UnifyID)