The RSA president sees the security industry finally moving from defending the perimeter of a network to actually locking down the data within, he said in an interview. It is a message he has been repeating for years at the RSA Conference, but this year, he expects to see evidence of a response.

Coviello's words matter. Not only because he's spotted a shift that's important in a world where data breaches make headlines almost every day. His company, taken over last year by storage giant EMC, also exemplifies the ongoing consolidation and maturation of the security industry.

But not all of Coviello's predictions come true. He used to hope for a mass market for devices like its key fobs, which generate one-time passwords. Coviello still believes such passwords will go mainstream, but not necessarily through tokens.