Simple credentials, such as passwords, are a hacker's best friend, says Phillip Dunkelberger of Nok Nok Labs, a founding member of the FIDO Alliance. That's why the alliance is working to reduce reliance on passwords by enabling advanced authentication.

Cisco has launched a new open source initiative focused on application identification, says Scott Harrell, vice president of the company's security business group.

Log analysis is often used for managed security, but are organizations going far enough with the information they have at their fingertips? Don Gray, chief security strategist for Solutionary, says there is much more organizations could be doing to predict breaches.

Researchers at Dell SecureWorks have identified some 146 unique malware families that are targeting cryptocurrencies. Approximately 100 of those have emerged in just the last year, says Pat Litke, security analysis adviser for the company's CyberThreat unit.

Although the growth of cloud-based data centers offers opportunities to more rapidly deploy applications, it also raises new security issues, says Steve Pao, senior vice president at Barracuda Networks.

CipherCloud's Paige Leidig discusses a new offering that helps enable organizations rapidly adopt a cloud application as it protects sensitive data and ensures compliance to policies and regulations.

The recent merger of Bit9 and Carbon Black will eventually result in a single, merged product offering, says Benjamin Johnson, CTO at Carbon Black.

Advanced, ever-evolving threats call for security solutions vendors to counter with equally advanced and sophisticated solutions. JD Sherry of Trend Micro discusses new strategic alliances and product sets dedicated to creating new measures of threat defense.

Two critical steps that banking institutions need to take in 2014 to help prevent fraud are implementing big data analytics and adopting far more sophisticated customer and employee authentication, says Gartner analyst Avivah Litan.

Distributed generation and plug-in motor vehicles are among the emerging security challenges to the smart grid. In an RSA 2014 preview, Gib Sorebo of Leidos discusses the threats to utilities and consumers.