RSA Conference to Cover Legal Issues of Retaliatory Hacking

Evan Koblentz

Law Technology News

2013-02-22 15:12:59.0

Next week's RSA Conference, a prominent information security event organized by Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC Corp. and held February 25 to March 1 in San Francisco, has 19 sessions on its agenda related to law including the relatively new subject of retaliatory attacks.

Legal topics have long been part of the conference. In this year's addition, it's important to understand that the term "retaliatory" does not mean criminally hacking an organization in response to hack attempts against your own organization, explained conference speaker Serge Jorgensen, chief technology officer of Sarasota, Fla.-based security consultancy Sylint Group. Instead, the term refers to active defense measures to catch criminals such as intentionally creating insecure networks, planting false data in your own network, or putting homing beacons inside important documents.

Retaliatory hacking will be the subject of a mock trial and panel, with a second panel that delves into the international issues on the topic, said attorney and conference general manager Sandra Toms-LaPedis.

Litigation is covered in two additional sessions: E-Discovery: Exploring the Rising Star on Your Risk Horizon and Practical Advice for Cloud Forensics. Several other sessions focus on law itself, with topics such as data breaches, computer crime, data privacy, bring-your-own-device trends, and social media.

Other sesssions on Administration Cyber Security Priorities for Federal Information Systems; Lawyers, Regs and Money: The Breach Has Hit the Fan; Legal Aspects of Bring-Your-Own-Devices; and Techno-Ethics for Lawyers — How Technology Complicates Ethical Compliance may compel lawyers' attention.

Notable speakers include Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck, of the Southern District of New York; Magistrate Judge John Facciola, of the District of Columbia; American Bar Association e-discovery expert Steven Teppler, who is a partner at Kirk Pinkerton; and Hitachi Data Systems engineer Eric Hibbard, who advocates for e-discovery process standards.

Notable topics at the conference in 2012 were the bring-your-own-device trend, software reliability, and user authentication.

Evan Koblentz is a reporter for Law Technology News. Send email or follow him on Twitter.