The annual RSA Conference Europe security event starts in London today, with a packed schedule covering topics as wide ranging as wireless security, internet usage and breach notification laws.

RSA Conference Europe director Tim Pickard said the event will see the launch of a global industry initiative to improve software security. There will also be keynotes by cryptography specialist Bruce Schneier and ID theft expert Frank Abagnale, as well as the usual welter of product releases.

Document and data security firm Workshare will launch a new version of its document control product at the event. Workshare 6.0 features full disk encryption and a completely remodelled incident workflow based on Windows Workflow Foundation, said chief executive Joe Fantuzzi.

The update will also feature new content fingerprinting technology designed to analyse at word, rather than character, level. This means the system will be able to detect when chunks of text are cut and pasted from sensitive documents, explained Fantuzzi.

Workshare has also expanded the product’s coverage to include webmail, public instant messaging, ftp and BlackBerry traffic.

Another security vendor making a major product announcement this week is Marshal, which is launching its web filtering and internet management tool, WebMarshal 6.0.
The product is designed with improved scalability in mind, enabling IT managers to look after multiple sites and larger numbers of users, according to Marshal’s technical consultant, Ed Rowley.

“We’ve taken the node array technology from MailMarshal and ported it over to WebMarshal, where it will form the platform for future releases,” Rowley explained. “We’ve also added support for Active Directory, and in future releases we’ll add https scanning for content, LDAP integration and application control.”