RSA 2010: Jericho Forum 'winning hearts and minds'

Companies now understand the importance of protecting data throughout the enterprise

Independent security organisation the Jericho Forum said at RSA 2010 yesterday that its work is paying off, as companies begin to understand the importance of protecting data throughout the enterprise and not just at the perimeter.

The Jericho Forum was set up six years ago by chief security officers at blue chip firms to deal with problems that it felt were not being addressed by security vendors.

Its members believed that the old approach of safeguarding organisations with a strong perimeter was flawed.

"When we started, 50 per cent of the audience wanted to burn you at the stake for being a heretic," Paul Simmonds, chief information security officer at AstraZeneca and founder member of the Jericho Forum, told V3.co.uk.

"Now it's almost universally accepted that 'deperimeterisation' is important. We set out to change hearts and minds and we would award ourselves an A+ so far. "

The Jericho Forum used the show to promote its security self-assessment forms, which are filled out by companies and vendors and used to assess the level of security exposure that companies are happy with.

The forms should take only an hour to fill out, according to Simmonds, and are useful in a number of ways. Companies can assess their own security, and vendors can provide sales people with an easy point of reference with clients.

The Jericho Forum also celebrated the first year of its partnership with the Cloud Security Alliance.