RSA Leverages TrendMicro Technology in New Deal

RSA announced this week that it will tap TrendMicro technology to add a higher level of real-time threat intelligence to the RSA FraudAction Service, which is operated by RSA’s ’round-the-clock Anti-Fraud Command Center.

The new partnership links FraudAction with TrendMicro Smart Protection Network to leverage threat intelligence gathered by TrendMicro and bolster RSA’s ability to pinpoint fraudulent activity by crimeware creeping on the Net. TrendMicro Smart Protection Network is a cloud-client security infrastructure designed to pinpoint and block online threats. TrendMicro is billing it as the company’s next-generation solution. In fact, last week it introduced its own set of threat services, Threat Management Services, built upon the Smart Protection Network.RSA executives point to this latest collaboration with TrendMicro as an example of how RSA is trying to lead the charge in developing a more seamless enterprise security ecosystem, regardless of vendor affiliations.

“This inventive collaboration between two leaders in online security is another step ahead in the fight against the global cyber-threat that continues to escalate as online fraudsters become more organized and effective than ever,” said Tom Corn, vice president of product marketing at RSA, in a statement. “The ability to combat cybercriminals requires a far more purposeful collaboration within the industry – such as that between RSA and Trend Micro – and a strong security ecosystem focused on mitigating risk.”

This ecosystem mantra has long been a hot-button topic for RSA President Art Coviello, who touched upon it again at 2009 RSA Conference Europe this week.

“The challenge for the security industry is to not only enable the ubiquitous adoption of these promising technologies but also to take advantage of them to protect information in what has become a boundary-less IT environment,” he said.

This was one of several product and partnership announcements from RSA this week that coincided with the security conference in London. The security division of EMC also announced a suite of three new consulting and advisory services meant to complement solutions such as FraudAction. The Security Operations Strategy and Assessment service offers clients vendor and product-agnostic security operations recommendations they can act on. The Security Operations Management service provides operational run-books and workflow to support day-to-day management of security operations centers. And the Security Operations Analysis and Design service offers an incident handling framework and guidance in the development of security operations policies and procedures.