RSA Security
RSA Security LLC, formerly RSA Security, Inc. and doing business as RSA, is an American computer and network security company with a focus on encryption and encryption standards. RSA was named after the initials of its co-founders, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, after whom the RSA public key cryptography algorithm was also named. Among its products is the SecurID authentication token. The BSAFE cryptography libraries were also initially owned by RSA. RSA is known for incorporating backdoors developed by the NSA in its products. It also organizes the annual RSA Conference, an information security conference. Founded as an independent company in 1982, RSA Security was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2006 for US2.1 billion, the same price when it was bought by EMC back in 2006. RSA is based in Bedford, Massachusetts, with regional headquarters in Bracknell (UK) and Singapore, and numerous international offices. Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, who developed the RSA encryption algorithm in 1977, founded RSA Data Security in 1982. The company acquired a "worldwide exclusive license" from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to a patent on the RSA cryptosystem technology granted in 1983. In 1994, RSA was against the Clipper chip during the Crypto War. In 1995, RSA sent a handful of people across the hall to found Digital Certificates International, better known as VeriSign. The company then called Security Dynamics acquired RSA Data Security in July 1996 and DynaSoft AB in 1997. In January 1997, it proposed the first of the DES Challenges which led to the first public breaking of a message based on the Data Encryption Standard.