RSA appoints its first Chief Security Officer

Eddie Schwartz, previously the Chief Security Officer (CSO) at security analysis company NetWitness, has been appointed to the same position at RSA. Although at the time of writing no statement has emerged from RSA, Schwartz acknowledged the move in several Twitter messages on 8 June and also changed his profiles on Twitter and LinkedIn to reflect the new position.

Less than a month after the March data theft from RSA's servers, the EMC Corporation – RSA's parent company – purchased NetWitness and brought it in to operate as part of RSA, EMC's security subsidiary. It appears that Schwartz will be RSA's first CSO, although EMC has a person in a similar role. Schwartz had been with NetWitness since January 2007, and has 25 years experience in IT and security technology management.

During the attack on RSA in March, sensitive data was stolen that included information concerning one of the company's most high profile products, the SecurID hardware-token-based, two-factor authentication system. It was not clear at the time of the attack how damaging the theft had been but then, last month, defence contractor Lockheed Martin was attacked. RSA later admitted that stolen SecurID information was used in the attack and has started to replace some, if not all, of the 40 million hardware tokens that it had distributed.

See also:

• RSA replaces SecurID tokens after hack, a report from The H.
• RSA hack could endanger the security of SecurID tokens, a report from The H.

(ehe)