GoCertify Darkens the Door of RSA Conference 2015 in San Francisco

You never know who you're going to run into at a convention. If it's a film industry convention, like the currently unspooling Cinemacon in Las Vegas, then you literally bump into anyone from Johnny Depp to Angelina Jolie. (You might even see them both together, if anyone ever decides that the annals of history will never be deemed complete without a sequel to "The Tourist.")

There aren't as many honest-to-Hollywood celebrities at computer and technology conventions and conferences. Some of the biggest stars aren't even people. GoCertify just got back from San Francisco and attending the 2015 edition of the annual RSA Conference, which turned 25 this year. One of the biggest stars at RSA this year was a certification, the new Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) from (ISC)² and Cloud Security Alliance.

RSA is big. There are many thousands of industry watchers in attendance, and hundreds of exhibitors standing by to show off the latest security technology advancements, all of it crammed beneath the roof of the San Francisco's cavernous Moscone Center. Even with everything that went on, however, the announcement of the CCSP was a big deal, and (ISC)² took advantage of the heavy concentration of security geeks by offering training sessions for its vaunted CISSP and CSSLP credentials.

(Semi-rival security organization ISACA, which typically goes toe-to-toe with (ISC)² in industry-wide certification salary surveys, also had a large presence.)

There were some human celebrities in attendance as well. Long distance swimmer Diana Nyad, famed for stroking and kicking 102 miles from the Bahamas to Florida's Juno Beach in 2013 at age 64, provided a keynote address. Nyad is an inch shorter than 5-foot-7-inch actor Tom Cruise, but she stood tall as Valkyrie at the podium.

Nyad's memorable address, titled "Never Ever Give Up," was a stirring testament to the strength of the human will and imagination, both of which have been big factors in the golden age of information technology.  Nyad urged her listeners to "never underestimate the power of the human spirit," but she also suggested that her remarkable accomplishment was anything but an individual feat.

Nyad emphasized that a "team" is what wins and accomplishes great things. During her keynote, she told of a time well into her epic swim where she was hallucinating and saw in her mind the yellow brick road (from "The Wizard of Oz") and the seven dwarfs (from "Snow White") in front of her.  Nyad asked her assistant whether the assistant saw them as well. The assitant pondered the question and then said, "Yes." She then told Nyad to keep following them, because they were going the same place she was.

(The moral of the story is that, um, even when you think you're alone, Disney characters are with you. That, and always let an assistant be your guide when you've been swimming for dozens of hours and you start to see things.)

At any rate, GoCertify hears (and frequently contributes to) the drumbeat that continually rolls through the hallowed halls of IT blaring that security technology is one of the hottest sectors in the game, with jobs aplenty and salaries skyrocketing. RSA 2015 may not be the best place to take an unbiased reading of the situation, but we saw plenty of evidence there that the future of IT security is still burning bright. Get your certification and get in the game!