20th Annual RSAC Innovation Sandbox with Cecilia Marinier

Hi everyone. Welcome back here to Textron tv. You know, if you can't feel it in the air, it's RSA time almost.

Uh, by the time you guys watch this on Friday, well, I'll still be here, but almost on my way to San Francisco for RSA next week. RSAC. Actually, it's RSAC conference if we are gonna get It right.

I'm so proud of you, Alan. Thank you. You like that, Cecilia?

I thought I did a nice, nice job. Excellent. Um, let me introduce you to my friend Cecilia Marnier.

Cecilia is new title, vice President for Innovation and Scholars at RSAC. Now, RSAC is the company that puts on the RSA conference, so it's RSAC conference, and that's how we're gonna do it going forward. If you hear someone say it, it sounds new to you.

It's new, but it's old. It's the same RSA conference we've grown and loved for, I forget now, 30 years, maybe more. I'm going, I think I'm going 25 years.

So long time. It's also the 20th anniversary of the Innovation Sandbox, which kind of the granddaddy of, of these kind of, uh, innovation displays or exhibits and contests that we've seen become so popular. This is kind of the, the granddaddy of it, as I mentioned, but it has a new twist this year.

Cecilia, how long have you been running the Sandbox and everything? So I have ran, run the Innovation Sandbox Contest for the past 10 years. It's been, I think, so much fun.

I know, Alan, you get to see me every year. You're like, oh my gosh, she's back. But I have to say this year we're really excited because we are celebrating 20 years of, of giving a platform for these entrepreneurs to get out there in front of the most important people in the industry.

I mean, these are decision makers, whether it's from government policy or technology. We have that crowd coming. And, and that's why I think this contest has had such great resonance because we've allowed for the, the judges who are coming from industry and volunteering their time to adjudicate and select from a large number of submissions, 10 companies that you have to watch.

And this is, this year is gonna be even better. It's gonna be great. Well, actually every year is better.

It's always great, and I love all these different companies, so it's a really exciting year. I highly recommend everybody coming to the contest itself on Monday. We're gonna get to that in one second.

I want to just give a little history lesson and play professor here. Right. Okay.

So Sandbox the, the Innovation Sandbox, which as you mentioned is his 20th year is a, a competition for new companies, right? Right. For new, new companies in the cyberspace.

And there are only 10 finalists picked every year that get to compete and display and, and exhibit at the Innovation Sandbox at RSA conference, RSAC conference, but hundreds, well, dozens, if not hundreds of companies actually apply for the Innovation Sandbox. And just making, you know, it's a cliche, but just making the finalist makes you a winner. Right.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. It's like to get up on that stage and to be in front of like, there's gonna be 1500 of us in the audience this year, um, and then having it have a resonance afterwards because it sits on our website. I mean, this is a, a really important way for entrepreneurs and companies that startups to actually raise above the noise and, and show people what's happening in the space.

And Alan, we need innovation in the space. Cybersecurity is such an evolving field, and our adversaries are very nimble that we need to actually have a lot of different solutions that are coming out every year. And this is the only way to give those, those entrepreneurs a chance to actually like, demonstrate what they're doing to actually challenge the, the complex and, and solve the complex indu problems in our industry.

Absolutely. And again, just a little history, if you look at past winners, past finalists over the 20 years, it's a who's who of of giant you know of, of really, yeah. I mean, so many of the companies have have blasted off, which Will gets us to something else we talk about in a second.

But, but it's, I love the transition, but let's, yeah, Yeah, I agree with you. You mi you've probably heard of Imperva or Sentinel One, or Axons or Wiz or Hidden Layer, and all of those companies, big id, they have all come across the Innovation Sandbox stage early on in their, uh, in their trajectory of two launching off, like you said. Absolutely.

Now, this here though, man, we, we have broken the mold in that there's, you know, there's money there. I mean, it used to be just the prestige of winning itself kind of was a huge thing. But now there's, you know, I spoke about it with you, uh, probably two months ago already, but there's money involved now.

Tell us mm-hmm. You know, just for those, maybe you didn't catch our interview with you, uh, chairman of, of RSAC, Cecilia, tell us, you know, what, what's in it for our winners? So every one of the winners will receive a $5 million investment into their company and from Cross Born Capital, which is our parent company.

And this money can then be used immediately to help them take their company from now until they launch it to the next phase. So it gives 'em a chance not to have to go raise some funds. They'll have some funds in at hand to actually just take the, the platform that they're being given at RSAC and actually apply it.

Because what we've heard, and you can read blogs, and this is not me, like, I honestly just, I love using other people's anecdotes, but we had, uh, the person from Vol Check wrote a great blog about the experience he had for the one hour with our, with our audience that created a pipeline of business for those companies, uh, for, for Vol check right afterwards. And he was said, it was absolutely, I insane what they got out of this contest being there. So you get to have a awareness and a pipeline.

It's a great opportunity for companies to, to actually, um, be on the stage. And I wanna emphasize all 10 finalists get to $5 million each, all 10, $50 million total. It's freaked me out when I first heard it, Alan.

Not gonna lie, but I'm super excited about it. I think it's a great opportunity for these 10. I agree with you.

We're gonna come back and we'll talk about this year's 10 finalists, but I want to circle back to something else. Innovation is not the only Innovation and Scholars project that RSAC runs at RSAC conference. That's right.

Right. There's But wait, there's more Cecilia. Exactly.

Wait, there's more. Yes. So we have an entire area called the Early Stage Expo, and that has about 78 companies, 78 up startups that are there.

And it's open from Tuesday evening, Wednesday and Thursday. So definitely stop by there to check out what's hot and new. Uh, in addition, we have another contest, um, it's called launchpad.

And these are for companies that are coming out of stealth. They're really early on in their journey. Part of this is to kind of just test out with, with the audience as well as the judges.

And this time, the difference here is we are making this like a Shark tank, and we have three incredible judges with Barack Meda from Ballistic and Sarah Do, who's a rock star from Conviction. And Enrique Salem from Bain, all three of them have also selected down selected to three of these startups that they are interested in learning more about. And what we're providing the audience is just this opportunity to actually sit in the room and hear what is the VC asking these entrepreneurs and having the entrepreneurs share their story.

And then at the end of it, Hugh, as you mentioned, gets up there and says, Hey, Enrique, are you in? And what they're asking is like, would you take another meeting with this group? And they provide, each of the VCs provide a little bit of advice.

So it's kind of like you get into the boardroom of, of vc and instead of like, when you leave as an entrepreneur and you walk out the door and you have no idea did that work, you actually get to see what's behind the scenes and see what does the VC think? So it's a, it's a great fun fast. What A great Experience.

Yeah. Now Sandbox is Monday. When is Launchpad also Tuesday?

Tuesday, Tuesday at three 30. It's, yes. Tuesday at three 30.

And it's actually in the same Cool. It's in the same area. There's a different room, but it's the same area.

So That's, let's talk about areas for a second. You know, I, yeah, we had, uh, we had Linda, Linda Gray Martin and, and, um, Brita Bri Glad on a couple days ago. And they were talking about how actually RSAC conferencing has expanded this year.

Yeah. Into the, the, what do they call it? YBYA BRAINER Conference Area, or Center for the Art.

It's a Yuba Bueno Center for the Art. I knew it's a non-profit knew. Just bring, I know what It stands for.

You're working on the acronym. So look, I barely got RSAC conference back in my head. You want me to remember another one?

Uh, but anyway, so for those who are familiar with the, uh, Moscone Center, it's usually it the one on this side, it's to the right of it. Usually it's attached, right? But it was, it's Attached it, well, it, like, it's right in the same camp it campus.

Like if you are, it wasn't are looking, coming out of south and you're looking over at North, you're gonna see YBCA theaters right there. And then North is across the street. So they're like, north and YBCA are really adjacent to one another.

And the YBCA Center for the Arts is just slightly behind that theater area. And it has a lot of fun activities happening, and I'm happy to share some ideas for people to go see, um, and then take advantage of while they're at conference Tell, if you want me to, Well, if you tell, okay. Yes, go ahead.

Lemme tell. I'm gonna give you a couple of high levels. So we're bringing in eight villages from the, from Defcon, uh, to come to conference.

And they are AI sandbox, adversary Sandbox, AppSec cloud, uh, I-C-S-I-O-T-I-C-S, uh, escape Room, which I'm gonna talk about in a second. Uh, physical, physical Security Sandbox, and then Pico, CTF. So if you're familiar with David Brumley, uh, and Carnegie Mellon's, Pico, CTF, they're having a whole area where you can go and kind of play the game over there as well.

This is a place where you do hands-on activities and it's super fun and the Escape room goes every 20 minutes. You can just go upstairs. It's, it's a super fun area.

We also, it's a cool place to go and hang out too, because we have a coffee bar and there's like full seating and there's inside and outside, and it's really a relaxed and chill zone. But I think the highlight of the Buena, oh, there's also a screening room upstairs, so don't forget to look at the sessions that are upstairs in the screening room. Um, but the highlight of the area is actually a, an installation that, that DARPA is bringing.

It's their AI cyber city, and this thing is gonna be so cool and the hottest ticket at conference. I say that, but there's tons of hot tickets at conference. But this is gonna be a super fun one.

I definitely recommend going to see it, like, to get into the actual city. What they did is they're creating an environment where you can walk over and you can, can, uh, see like what's happening in water, a water plant or what's happening in a hospital. And we have guys in like lab coats and they're talking to you about the diagnostic of how AI is being used for, for the positive and the negative.

And this is all stemming from DARPA Challenge that they put out the $20 million challenge to help bring AI in safely into society. And that's their goal. It's a two year experiment for them.

We're about four months ahead of when they actually name the finalist. But if you go in there, you're gonna see, like, you're gonna be in a city. I, I can't tell you if you have to see it, but I'll tell you one small thing, in order to get to the city, you have to actually get on this like, train.

And it's like being in a train and it actually moves and you're like, kinda like looking around and they're, they're talking to you while you're walking into the train telling you what you're gonna go see. It's just such a great experience. Highly recommend.

I, I, I'm gonna, I, you got me. I'm going. Um, very cool.

Cecilia, if you don't mind, I want to return back to the Innovation Sandbox though. So I don't know if you have a list in front of you, of you or you just have 'em off the top of your head, but give us a preview. The 10 finalists that are presenting there.

You know, I've had the pleasure of over the last two days actually, or last week and a half or so of seeing their pitches, and it's really cool. Um, it's gonna be such a good experience. So there are, of course, there are a lot of companies that are working on ai, whether the safety of using AI or the, or, um, how to use AI safely or how to use AI to, for security.

Um, there's some that are in between. There are some that, there's one that's working on firmware. There's another one working on an open source solution to do red teaming.

It's just gonna be a really cool top 10. Um, and worth the worth the effort of coming and seeing because it's, it's really special. Oh, there's one that's also on, um, AppSec devices, which is very cool too, like taking a novel approach to a problem we've had in the industry for a really long time.

So I think it's worth your timely, I don't wanna go absolutely specific company by company because it's a little too much, but I would say that it's definitely worth it if you take a look, um, at either the press release, which has a very small, uh, specifics about each of the companies, or if you go into the website, um, where the Innovation sandbox is, you can actually click through, but, uh, you know, I can name them for you. Well now you've, you've opened that can, you've opened that Genie, uh, bottle. Yeah.

What is the website where we could see this press release and see more about this? com website and you go onto the events and you go into programs and you go into Innovation Sandbox, that's where you will see the top 10. Beautiful.

And, um, it's a, it's a really easy find. It's all over our website, in fact. Yeah, it's all of our website.

So go ahead. So people are gonna see this, this interview's gonna Air Friday. We've recorded it, you know, there's no secret here.

We're not hiding. We recorded this on Wednesday. It'll play Friday, still way before Monday so people can, you know, get their information.

Uh, uh, launchpad is Tuesday at three 30. What time is is the Monday program? So the Monday program doors open at nine 30.

We will start it at nine 40. It's a very tight well run program. Um, so don't be late though.

Like, it come, come around, uh, nine 20 for lining up and, uh, and we'll see in the room around nine 30. We'll get it started at nine 40. Excellent.

Um, and that is at the YBAC part? No, no, the innovation, uh, excuse me. I I thank you for making that, um, clarification.

The Innovation Sandbox is actually gonna be, and launchpad are both held in Moscone South. So we will be back in the same place we were last year is on the second floor. Uhhuh, you come in into room 2 0 4 and early stage expos also in Moscone South.

I mean, our problem is that we just have so much going on. We need all this extra space. So we, we grew everything this year and that's why we moved over to the YBCA, so we could have more companies inside of the early Stage expo and we could have a bigger room for Innovation Sandbox.

And, um, that's, that's what we're doing. So thank you for asking Celia. Only you would thank me for making a mistake.

Thank you. Um, just trying to think, did we, what about the Scholars program? You haven't mentioned that I haven't.

Um, so really excited about that one as well as, you know, I have such a passion around this, and every time I see all of my students pictures coming through, and I call my students, I shouldn't, this is the RSAC Security scholars. These students were identified by the directors of their school. So they're hand selected and they only get to have one student represent their school at conference.

And we create this curated experience for them where they get to meet some of the experts that are in the areas that they're studying in. They can obviously take advantage of all the 600 speakers that are at conference. Um, but what we're trying to do is build a cohort group so that they can, uh, can work with each other as they go through their career and have met each other at conference and make this a unique ex, uh, cohort to help build that community for scholars.

So that's why we create this. Additionally, we can't do it for everybody, so we have to do another thing, which we call College Day. And right now, I just looked at it and we just crossed our 700 registration mark on that one.

So Go College Day. It's doing really well. This is a, a full conference experience for any student.

It's free. All you have to do is sign up and, uh, and use your, your school's email address or send me a, a indication through a, you know, picture of your schedule. And that's all you need.

And we want you to come, we want you to see what's happening in this industry. It's a really important time to be in the industry. We need more, uh, a future pipeline of of people ready to go.

And this is a great opportunity for you to, you know, see the 600 ex exhibitors on the floor. Check out 50 sessions. It's one day.

It is only one day. It's on Thursday, May 1st, but I highly recommend another five star. Love it.

I give it another five star, Another one. Ceil. You like Ridge is five stars for you.

Five stars for you. That's how I roll, man. And it's, I hear it.

Hey, if we left anything out, Um, I don't think so. Oh, you know what, actually, yes, Alan, I wanna tell one more thing. As part of the commitment to innovation at conference, and it's specifically about in investors and entrepreneurs, we've created a whole new track that we call the Investor and entrepreneur track.

And we've added in seven extra sessions. We have about 13 sessions that are strictly for the, the space around innovation and entrepreneurs and investors. And it has some really high, like if you look at some of the caliber of speakers coming on that stage, what they're going to be do doing is talking to you about what's a trend for tomorrow and or how to start a company.

So it's like, it's a pretty broad spectrum, but it's all part of, like, if you, now, what we try to do is filled this like conference within a conference for that audience because we know how hot innovation is. There's a lot of contests around the conference. There's a lot of different opportunities where VCs are trying to connect their companies with different people, and we wanna help them.

We're trying to build that even more if we create this ecosystem and they will keep coming. So that's the goal. Thank you for I love, it's great.

Thank you for reminding me. No, it's okay. I mean, you know what, Cecilia, you mentioned it before you was talking about the ai.

I do believe we are at, we're at the beginning of a new era in cyber where we're going to use ai, but we also have to defend against ai. It's offense and defense. It's everything.

You need it on both sides. But you're going see kind of a Cambrian explosion, if you will, of, of different techniques, companies, methods and technology harnessing this, you know, wave that we're riding it, whether it's agents or generator or whatever. And it's an interesting, it's a great time to be involved.

It's just a great time to be involved, right? Absolutely. Absolutely.

All Right. Hey, I will pop up there and say hello to you. I'm, of course, I'm at Moscone West all week on Broadcast Alley, but Monday, you know, we do our DevSecOps event over in Moscone, so I'll be there most of the day, but I'll try to run, actually, I, we're on the second or the third floor if we're on, You're on the third floor for Dev, So I'm not above you.

In fact, I really, I'm gonna ask a favor, which is when you're up there, if you don't mind letting those DevSecOps people know about the villages over at the, in the sandbox. I think they are The perfect audience. You know, I'll, I think they're the perfect audience.

Uh, well, I go up, I introduce every speaker, so while I'm usually stretching, I'll, I promise you I'll mention it. Thank you all. Thank you.

Thank you. Alrighty, Cecilia, you do a great job. I know people tell you this, but I wanted to tell you anyway, you do a great job with this love.

You've made this innovation in scholars such a vital part of RSAC conference. So thank you for all you've done for 10 years and looking forward to the next tent. Thank You, Alan.

Good luck. Good. Next week.

I'm sure it's gonna rock. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, one last thing guys, you might be asking yourself, what is RS Why, why RSAC conference isn't C for conference? Well, C could be for conference, but C'S actually for community. So it's an important thing to remember.

We'll see you next week at RSA Cecilia. Thanks again. This is Alan Shimo.

Stay tuned. We've got more text on TV coming at you.