Art Coviellos, Executive Chairman of EMC, admitted that EMC’s security division, RSA, is currently the target of an advanced cyber attack. RSA emphasized the fact that the hackers have not managed to steal important corporate or government data, but valuable info on their security tool, namely SecurID,  that could be used for a mightier cyber attack.

“It’s not classified data, but more proprietary and personal data that’s at issue,” said one defense industry official familiar with the breach. Among powerful clients, there are Social Security Administration and the Defense Department and its service branches.

The attack goes under the name of ATP (Advanced Persistent Threat) and it is a growing trend among hackers. In the recent past, Google has had trouble with an ATP attack  and the Canadian government as well. Noteworthy are the infamous Operation Aurora attacks that targeted Adobe Systems, Juniper Networks, Rackspace, Yahoo, Symantec, Northrop Gruman and Dow Chemical.

What RSA fails to do is communicate more with media and clients. It’s been a few days since RSA announced the cyber attack against them, and until now have refused to offer any additional information, making SecurID clients doubtful of how trustworthy SecurID is and whether they should return their SecurID tokens (about 40 million tokens used in 30,000 worldwide organizations). Yet, EMC has reiterated that the company is totally committed to offer quality services and is doing all necessary efforts, including cooperating with other security vendors so as to overcome these malicious attacks.

“As appropriate, we will share our experiences from these attacks with our customers, partners, and the rest of the security vendor ecosystem and work in concert with these organizations to develop means to better protect all of us from these growing and ever more sophisticated forms of cyber security threat,” said Coviellos.

This ATP attack coupled with RSA’s mismanagement of communications, is putting a bad light on the company, urging RSA to move quickly and wisely for finding practical solutions, strengthening the position of EMC on the market. The ATP attack alone impacts security  vendors as well, creating entry opportunities for newcomers that will be able to create their own niche.