by Ericka Chickowski

Walking the floor and attending sessions at this year's RSA Conference, it became clear that this was, as my Ziff Davis Enterprise colleague Larry Walsh put it, a "recession RSA."

Traffic was light, and the energy was a bit muted. Last year RSA saw about 15,000 attendees; this year organizers expected about 12,000. Official post-conference numbers haven't yet been released, but the analysts I spoke to wondered if there were even 10,000 wandering Moscone.

While that's understandable, it is also a bit scary, considering this conference is one of the primary opportunities many organizations have to educate IT and risk management staff about the latest threats and risk mitigation techniques. Because, quite honestly, the threats are just multiplying.

Just think about last week alone. While the experts were discussing the rise in security incidents and vulnerabilities worldwide in San Francisco, we saw those principles in action within the real world with the breach of critical information about the joint strike fighter project and a breach at SunTrust Bank in Florida.

Good guys may slow down in a recession, but bad guys don't.