Security will dominate Interop Las Vegas next week as event organizers say more than a quarter of the vendors in attendance will hawk security-related products, and the “security zone” on the show floor is filled to bursting.

In addition, the event is launching CSO Bootcamp, a crash course in how to become a CSO that is modeled after the show’s existing and popular CIO Bootcamp that brings in CIOs to reveal the true nature of the job and the skills needed to be successful.

The Security Zone - a clustering of security vendors in one spot on the exhibit floor - is roughly doubled in area over last year and space has sold out, leading the show’s organizers to plan even more space for next time, says Lenny Heymann, Interop general manager.

Overall, Interop Las Vegas is expected to draw more than 400 exhibitors and 19,000 attendees, a slight uptick from last year’s 18,000, Heymann says, and features six keynote speakers. These include Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers, IBM's General Manager of its Internet Security Systems division Thomas Noonan, Nortel President and CEO Mike Zafirovski, Avaya President and CEO Louis D’Ambrosio and Microsoft’s Vice President for Servers and Tools Bob Muglia.

The sixth, Dave DeWalt, president and CEO of McAfee, plans to talk about the changing nature of attacks against corporate data. He also plans to address how to prevent data loss and the need to not only comply with regulatory demands about protecting data but also prove that it is protected.

These same issues are recurrent themes in the educational sessions devoted to security, says John Pironti, security track chairman for the show and chief information risk strategist for IT consultants Getronics. The shifting nature of threats, in particular, warrant close attention, he says, as the focus of attackers moves away from networks and toward applications. “We now have disparate adversaries,” Pironti says, “shifting from the braggers to the quiet professionals out to make money.”

As an example he cites the intruders who stole credit card numbers of TJX customers and sold them off. “[They] never even knew those guys were in the system,” he says.

Interop has divided its educational sessions into 17 topics from application delivery to collaboration to municipal wireless. The formal security track boasts the largest number of sessions with 10. There are also additional sessions in other tracks about the impact of security on storage, virtualization, networking services, service oriented architecture, VoIP, and wireless and mobility.

These sessions are trying to broaden how IT looks at security, Pironti says. The topic should be viewed less as hardware and software and more as a means to an end, he says. “Security is a business concept using technology to complement it,” Pironti says. “To do security well, it needs to be a part of business processes.” He says security is “25% technology, 75% people, processes, procedures and policy.”

As a result, businesses should first define what needs to be protected and why, and then perform threat and vulnerability analysis to determine where key assets are at most risk, Pironti says.

This new slant calls for a reevaluation of technologies, including network access control (NAC), which is regarded by many as an important authentication and security technology, he says. But one session - “The Truth about NAC” - will challenge whether it actually creates new vulnerabilities. The session moderator, Paul Hoffman, director of the Cybersecurity Association, says he will press panelists to say how current customer expectations differ from actual NAC products. He says he also wants them to paint a picture of what NAC gear will look like in two years, with the idea of helping business customers decide what and when to buy.

With NAC still in flux, Pironti says it may actually be time to reclassify it as a change-management or operational tool, helping to keep software up to date on network endpoints and make sure users don’t access data they shouldn’t.

However NAC is viewed, information on the topic is among the most sought after, with more than 250 people signed up for a full-day seminar called NAC Day. Presentations and discussions directed by Joel Snyder, a member of Network World’s Lab Alliance and a partner in OpusOne, include the fundamentals of NAC architectures, how they relate to each other and exactly what vendors can deliver today.

NAC interoperability is also a highlight of the show, with vendors demonstrating their gear working together in the Interop Labs demonstration area.

Vendors are using the show to announce new NAC products and capabilities as well. Trusted Computing Group will announce its standard for the protocol used when software agents on network endpoints report the security posture of the endpoints to NAC policy servers. Microsoft and Juniper Networks will announce that their access control gear supports the standard and will be interoperable.