My key takeaways from the biggest event in cybersecurity

‘You won’t see it all’ – that’s what I was told before I headed out to the RSA Conference for the first time! With so many great talks, side events, meetings, vendor showcases people will have very different impressions of this event. Here are mine.

🤖 Unsurprisingly, AI was a major topic. It’s shaping the future of tech policy, regulation and geopolitics. Innovation Sandbox, Launch Pad and Early Stage Expo showcased cyber startups the latest cutting-edge thinking in this space. It was also good to hear from security experts from OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Google on this topic. The highlight for me was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) challenge of applying AI for automated vulnerability detection and patching and also using AI to profile attackers in real-time.

☂️ Cybersecurity roles are evolving to include additional responsibilities such as data governance, privacy, AI governance, fraud and more. I enjoyed sharing my views on how to navigate this ‘Digital Governance’ trend in a roundtable discussion with my industry peers.

📜 Emphasis on legal and ethical challenges for CISOs. It was good to participate in the ongoing dialogue on ethics in cyber. Legal aspects were also covered, with a deep dive into the SEC cybersecurity disclosure requirements.

💰 Insights into the state of venture capital and private equity in cybersecurity. Beyond the funding landscape overview, I learned how to be a better startup advisor, informing product strategy of tech ventures. Also, working in a private equity-funded company myself, I particularly liked the discussion on PE portfolio company oversight and value preservation.

✅ Cyber strategy hands-on workshop on leveraging Cyber Defense Matrix (how come I never come across this tool before?!). I look forward to applying this and many more practical insights from the conference to my day-to-day work.

It was fantastic to catch-up with old friends and make new ones. The strength of the cybersecurity community is our biggest advantage in the fight against cyber threats. Reach out if I can help.