I wasn’t terribly impressed by the vendor exhibits at this year’s RSA Conference. It reminded me more of an early 1990s Comdex than a mature, security-focused event for IT professionals. Perhaps my view was shaded by what I saw as a really amateurish implementation of the show’s wireless network (see “The best kind of security” for that saga), but the exhibit floor simply appeared, to me, to be an all-singing, all-dancing dog&pony show (with plenty of “booth bimbos” – male and female) put on for anyone with a free pass to the vendor exhibits, whether or not the attendee had anything to do with security - identity or networking.

Not everyone agreed with my impression, though.

Rob Ciampa Trusted Network Technology’s vice president of marketing and business strategy said: “The crowd was simply much savvier than I have observed in recent years. People were walking the floor with a clear agenda and a better grasp of their problems, though the latter – many admitted – needed a good deal more improvement.” He added, “Nearly everyone I spoke with had no confidence that they fully knew who was on their corporate network.” Now it could be that Rob’s impression is skewed by concentrating on the people who visited TNT’s booth, or it might be that even as the percentage of the crowd who had a “clear agenda” was smaller, the actual number of people was so much greater that there was a larger group of people in the target market for identity products.

If they were in the market, then they probably stopped by Identity Engines’ booth to see the new version (3.3) of Ignition Guest Manager, the service that allows you to comply with appropriate regulatory requirements and reduce security risks by maintaining complete control over who accesses which network services, where access is granted, and how long the access should last. New features in the 3.3 version are:

* Self-Provisioning — The ability to have guests provision their own wireless access at a kiosk or online portal. This allows, for example, conference attendees or school visitors to obtain secure, authenticated access when and where they need it without requiring the participation of administrative staff. The system can be configured for complete security and audit tracking, and Guest Manager can host multiple self-provisioning kiosks simultaneously, each with different privileges, such as access zones and duration, and each can offer different display characteristics and branding.

Dave Kearns is a consultant and editor of IdM, the Journal of Identity Management.