Two people who attended last month’s RSA cybersecurity show in San Francisco have now come down with the coronavirus.
The two attendees recently tested positive for COVID-19, the RSA conference posted on Tuesday as Bloomberg reports that both cases concern employees who work for the cybersecurity firm Exabeam.
It remains unclear how the two people contracted the illness. But the fear is that both may have spread the disease to others at this year’s show, which attracted 36,000 people from across the globe.
“Currently, there is not a known direct link or official governing body communicating back to RSA Conference that these individuals had symptoms at Conference or attended during the incubation period,” the show’s organizers said in the posting.
According to Bloomberg, one of the cases involves a 45-year-old engineer who began experiencing symptoms when traveling from California back home to Connecticut on Feb. 28. He was hospitalized on March 6, and has now been placed in a medically-induced coma.
Exabeam is based in Foster City, California. The company told PCMag: "We recently learned and are saddened to share that two of our employees have tested positive for Coronavirus (COVID-19). These two employees attended a cybersecurity conference in San Francisco last month, and while we cannot confirm whether they contracted COVID-19 prior to, at or after the conference, if you came into contact with our staff, please be vigilant in monitoring yourself for symptoms."
RSA was one of the few technology trade events that refrained from canceling, despite the growing fears around the coronavirus outbreak. At the time, RSA organizers pointed out that most of its attendees, at 82 percent, came from the US. Six of the nine Chinese companies slated to exhibit at the show also withdrew, while the remaining three sent only US-based staff.
RSA plans on issuing updates if it receives more information on the coronavirus cases. Executives from the biggest cybersecurity firms, along with US officials from the federal government, all made appearances at the event.
In the meantime, many other upcoming technology trade shows have already been canceled on fears the illness could spread through a show venue.
Further Reading
- Microsoft Cripples Necurs Botnet by Predicting Its Communication Patterns
- Market Research Firm Uses Free VPN Apps to Harvest Data From Consumers
- It's Now (a Bit) Harder to Register a .Gov Domain
- Hacking Tools Are Being Infected With Malware
- More in Security