Inside RSAC 2025 – Shimmy Says EP11

Hey everyone, it's Alan Shimel here for another episodes of Shimmy. Says, you know, it's a stack time of year again, where the security world anyway is getting ready to gather in San Francisco at the Moscone Center and the environs around it for another RSA conference. I've been going to the RSA conference since 2002, so about 23 years or something like that now, and over those years, I'm far and away, it's my favorite CON conference to go to.

Um, you know, I know there, I have friends in security who will not go to RSA. They say too much fluff, too much chatter, chatter, not enough real learning and for whatever reason. But I will tell you, by and large, if you're in the cyber world, you belong in San Francisco for the RSA conference this year.

You know, a lot's been going on. If you look at the history of the RSA conference, it was originally started by the company RSA, hence the name RSA. And for those who aren't familiar with the company, RSA, these were bought by EMC and Dell and long history.

But these are the folks who really kind of invented cryp, not invented, but popularized cryptography and encryption. Those little key fobs we use and the encryption in our digital certificates, they're all kind of pioneered by RSA and they started the conference as an encryption conference probably 30 years ago, something like that. But over time, it morphed from being a conference just about encryption to being about security.

And now of course, we call it cybersecurity in general, and it's gotten bigger and bigger. Originally, it used to alternate between San Jose and San Francisco, but it's been in San Francisco, I think steadily now since 2004, I think. So I think maybe 2002 or 2003 was the last one in San Jose, and it's gotten steadily bigger.

Um, I think this year expectations are probably more than 40,000 people will gather for RSA next week. Um, if you've never been to RSA, I'll try to give you some newbie tips. If you have been, you know what to expect, but I wanted to call out some highlights for me anyway for you on what to do while you're at RSA number one.

I wanna mention that for the 10th year in a row, uh, we're lucky enough here to be partnering with RSA in putting on our DevSecOps Connect Man over those 10 years. I think back to the original one where we had Gene Kim and Josh Corman and Jez Humble and other folks, and we were really trying to introduce the DevOps tribe to the cyber community. Over the course of the 10 years, DevSecOps has become a accepted part of both DevOps and security, and does my heart good.

Uh, this year our theme for DevSecOps Connect is AI and AppSec for app dev, because that's kind of where DevSecOps is, is today, right? It, it's, it's part of your AppSec and of course everything is AI and it's about the app dev. So Monday, we're gonna kick things off, I believe, at eight 30 in the morning.

I know it's an ungodly hour, but if you're there already, come on in. We have an amazing lineup, an amazing lineup of speakers. My friend Mark Miller helps with the speaker selection and we just, he's put together an amazing lineup.

We've got security, uh, executives from the major AI companies like Open AI and Anthropic and, and Meta and, and ET and more. We have, oh, just many, many speakers. You could check it out.

com and click through to the RSA event, you can see it there. Um, you need at least an expo, at least an expo only pass, and you could get that free. We have a code to get it for you for free on the site.

If you look there, and really, there's no reason you can't come up Monday and, and hang with us. It'll be a great day. We, we've got all kinds of things planned.

In addition to that, Textron will be at RSA all week where we're gonna be on Broadcast Alley in Moscone West Monday through Thursday broadcasting live. So if you're not at RSA, you want to watch what we're doing, log in to Techstrong TV or any of our sites. But if you are at RSA stop by, stop by Broadcast Ali, come say hello.

Of course, there's so much more going on than just what Techstrong is doing, though. I should mention that my good friend Mitchell Ashley who text drug CTO, but now futur Analyst is gonna be doing a panel on Thursday along with our friends at Sonatype on open source security and, uh, and so forth. So that, that's a great one.

I I'm gonna recommend to you. But there's other things to I want you to catch. This is the 20th year for what we call the Innovation Sandbox.

RSAC has been putting on, um, the Innovation Sandbox recognizes up and coming new companies. I think you gotta be less than three years old. And if you look at over the course of the 20 years companies that have made the finalist over for that event, it reads like a who's who in the security community.

Some really great companies came through RSA innovation sandbox. This year's no different. They've got 10 great finalists, but what is different is this year everyone in the finalists gets $5 million in, in VC money, which is fantastic.

And, uh, it should be a great, great competition. That is on Monday. I think it's one floor below where our ops thing, uh, event is you can fly back, you can go up the escalator back and forth all day on that if you want.

Uh, in addition to the Innovation Sandbox, there's also the Launch Pad. This is for the Innovation Launchpad. These are for companies coming out of stealth.

And again, um, just a tremendous way to see what's coming down the pike. What's new in innovation in security. I know so many of my friends say, what's, what's the innovation in cyber?

Well go to launchpad. That's on Tuesday afternoon, and you can see for yourself what's coming there. I should mention that the whole Innovation program, innovation and Scholars program, a lot of what they're gonna be doing though is also gonna be at the new edition of RSA, which is the YBAC, the inner Urinary Buena, I think activity center.

But I forgot what AC stands for. Anyway, it's, it's next to, uh, Moscone North. A lot of the, IT has the theater there, so a lot of the big keynotes are gonna be there.

There's gonna be a lot of activities there. If you've been to RSA before, but RSAC before and you didn't go over to, uh, you, well, it wasn't open, so you wouldn't have gone over to it. But do check that out.

Also, just a few other, um, a few other, uh, sessions that I think you should catch. Number one, um, there's a session with Splunk and, uh, uh, Cisco on the future of threat detection. It's a keynote.

I know it's a sponsored keynote, but it promises to be a really great session. Historically, Cisco does great stuff there. There's also shaping the future of security with agentic AI by a woman from Microsoft.

And, you know, look, agentic AI is going to be the big theme this year at RSA. I'm sure that won't be the only session, that's not the only session on it. It may not be the only session you would attend, but I would definitely, definitely talk, you know, go to that session.

Um, other things that I want, you know, there, there's over 600 sessions, so there's something there for everyone. There's a whole track this year for the first time dedicated to security entrepreneurs and VCs. So if that's your thing, check out that track as well.

I I think it's gonna be great. Um, couple of other things that you may not get on your average RSA, uh, preview. Number one, the expo floor.

The expo floor takes over the entire lower floor of Moscone, south and north. It's huge. I always tell people, and it could be overwhelming, it's not the kind of thing you're gonna go in and get out of in an hour or something.

I always tell people to approach the expo floor at RSA. Like you're in Star Wars in the, in the, in the a galaxy far, far away at the heart of the galaxy where they have that giant black hole. You're gonna have the giant boots.

These are the 40 by 40 boots that people, you know, companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for. And it's companies like Microsoft and Cisco, Splunk and Palo Alto, and, you know, the big, big giants of our cyber industry. And they have great booths with great presentations, and you can learn stuff there.

But if you're one of the people looking for innovation, go to what I call the one of the outer spiral arms of the galaxy, right? Those are the outer areas of the, of the expo floor where you see new companies who really can only afford maybe the 10 by 10 booths. Booths aren't cheap at RSA.

Doing RSA is not cheap. Um, but you can, you know, go to the outer spiral alarms there in the uncharted territory. And there you will see companies that are innovating, that have new products out that are interesting as heck.

Go check those out. Don't just get sucked into the black hole in the middle. Go to those outer spiral alarms and check 'em out the expo floor.

You, you need to set aside three to four hours, honestly, to do the floor. Well parties, they start the weekend before and they'll go right through past the end. There are so many great parties at RSA when I was younger, parties were free drinks, free food, and it was all good.

But the real players at RSA don't really go to the parties for the free drinks or even free food, and you won't see them reveling on the dance floor or something business gets done at those parties. You gotta approach those parties as business events. You go there, make sure people have some sort of contact info.

I know no one has business cards anymore. Maybe a QR code though, that's a security hazard. But you gotta have some way of connecting with people and being able to follow up with them.

I know drinks are free and everyone loves free drinks, but fat drunk and stupid's, no way to go through RSA been there and done that. Um, so don't drink. Go there.

You're there for business, you're there to network, you're there to meet more cybersecurity people. So go do that. And then finally, uh, it ends.

It used to, we used to have codebreakers both Thursday night and Friday. RSA ends, now it ends at the end of the day. Thursday last year they had an amazing end of, uh, conference with Alicia Keys.

This year they've got Jamie Fox. Jamie's gonna be there with some dj and there's some other, I think, jazz musicians playing. But usually that end, uh, end keynote, you know, celebration is a great celebration.

If you stick around for it, it's worth your time to go to. Also, they are Ron. Hi, Ron Howard, Richie Cunningham.

He's better known today as a director. He'll always be Richie Cunningham for me though, if not Opie, but Ron Howard is speaking at a keynote. I checked that out as well.

One final thing, it's now called RSAC conference. The c and RSA doesn't necessarily stand for conference, though. It can, but the real C really stands for community and RSAC will not stop at the end of the conference this year.

It's going to continue on their website as they seek to build out this community. So it's now officially known as RSAC conference. Be there.

I'll be there. Come say hello. If you are, enjoy it.

It's a great conference. See you in San Francisco. This is shimmy.

I'm out.