RSA hackers exploit Adobe flaw

Whilst RSA received praised for the speed at which it informed customers of the breach and offered remedial guidelines, not all were so impressed by the company's handling of the situation.

Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, noted how RSA did not use the methodology it sold to customers in house.

If it did, the security arm of EMC would have performed better in coping with the attack, Litan suggested.

"RSA sells its own fraud detection systems based on user and account profiling ... to spot abnormal behavior and intervene in real time to re-authenticate users and verify the authenticity of suspect access, behaviour, or transactions," she said in a blog post.

"They should have applied these techniques to their own internal systems. They need to stay innovative and apply the lessons learned from serving their clients to their own internal enterprise systems."