ESG Blogs

There was quite a bit of banter about boardroom cybersecurity actions at RSA Conference 2019. No surprise here, as business executives understand what’s at stake and are asking CISOs to provide more cyber risk data and metrics so they can work with them on intelligent risk mitigation strategies.

Like many other cybersecurity professionals, I spent last week at RSA Conference 2019 in rainy San Francisco. Here are a few of my impressions:

I’ve attended the RSA Conference for the past 15 years, and things have changed quite a bit. The event has gone from a few thousand to around 50,000 attendees, leading to a confluence of humanity and traffic around the Moscone Center. Hotel room prices exceed $500 per night, even at some of the “boutique” (i.e., flea bag) hotels in and around Union Square. The RSA event has become the nexus where cybersecurity meets high-end capitalism.

In this video blog, ESG’s new principal analyst, Christina Richmond, and I preview what we expect to see at RSA Conference 2019. The scope and scale of RSA Conference continues to grow with adjunct events held by industry organizations such as the Cloud Security Alliance, vendors, and ESG with our own breakfast event. A few of the topics we expect to be front and center at this year’s RSA Conference include:

My esteemed colleague, Doug Cahill, did a great job at the RSA Conference with a killer presentation on hybrid cloud security. Unfortunately, Doug’s presentation occurred on Thursday afternoon, when many conference attendees were catching flights home, packing up their booths, or recovering at a bar somewhere else in San Francisco. Despite the timing, about 150 souls showed up, but I’m guessing that Doug’s conference room would have been overflowing if his presentation was on Tuesday rather than Thursday.

This year’s RSA Conference in San Francisco was held under the theme of “Now Matters.” To play off those semantics, one could clearly see the continuing shift in this industry from it being (in the past) all about matters of IT security, to (now) a world where IT security really matters. That’s not just playing with words - it’s impossible to over-state the importance of the endeavor that this event reflects and represents; but equally the burgeoning user needs and vibrant vendor competition creates a giddy atmosphere, in all senses of the word.

In this video, ESG analysts Mark Bowker and Jon Oltsik run through some of the top topics they will be tuning into at RSA Conference 2018. Mark and Jon home in on how identity has become the control plane and how the software-defined perimeter is impacting the CISO's decision making process and future investments. 

I couldn’t attend the RSA Conference this year but many cybersecurity professionals and my ESG colleagues told me that incident response automation and orchestration was one of the hottest topics in the halls of the Moscone Center, through the bar at the W hotel, and even at the teahouse on the garden at Yerba Buena.