The RSA Conference – the world’s grandest stage for cybersecurity and allied disciplines. For this iteration of the convention, over 35,000 professionals flocked to the Moscone Center in San Francisco to interact with each other, and over 600 exhibitors and speakers. The looming threat of the Novel Coronavirus put a bit of a damper on things, with prominent regulars like Verizon and IBM giving it a miss.
The Human Element
As is customary, the conference had a new theme this year: The Human Element. In hindsight, this makes a lot of sense, and applies to every single element of cybersecurity – from start to finish. Naturally, this includes players from multiple sides of the spectrum, from security pros, to ethical hackers and experts, to malicious actors. Among the multitude of topics for discussion, some that stood out were machine learning, AI, and blockchain technologies. The cryptographer’s panel featured an engaging conversation around those topics, where, notably, Cryptomathic’s Whitefield Diffie made use of the phrase ‘a cyber pearl harbour’ to drive home the point that cyber defense and end-to-end encryption are critical pieces of the security puzzle, now more than ever.
Other topics that created a buzz on the show floor were cloud security and intelligent security. This is important – with several vendors moving services to the cloud, or offering equally robust cloud-based services, most attendees seemed to be anxious about shielding that attack surface ASAP. While this is hardly as simple as it sounds (cloud-based platforms are complex catacombs, security wise, and require multiple disciplines of expertise to fully protect them), a large number of solutions on display demonstrated their excellent compatibility with cloud software, proving that vendors are more than prepared for the eventual paradigm shift.
Building Conversations around Enterprise Cybersecurity
Down at the AppViewX booth, we had quite the busy day. Not only was the booth abuzz with discussions around PKI, cryptography, and algorithms, we also equipped ourselves to cater to attendees who had requested prior meetings with our solution experts. On this track, we had our hands full with meeting people, understanding their PKI automation needs, and talking about how AppViewX was capable of providing assistance. While this happened backstage, we had something exciting planned out front.
Over the course of two days, we arranged for some of our partners to drop by our booth and deliver bite-sized thought leadership sessions on topics they possessed expertise on. The morning sessions included Thales’ presentation on quantum-safe cryptography, and nCipher/Entrust Datacard’s discussion on network security for emerging technologies such as IoT and the cloud. We’d put the word out prior to the conference, and the metaphorical (and actual) seats were fully occupied with attendees who had questions of their own – resulting in a thoroughly interactive session. Post-lunch, the afternoon slots featured speakers from Quintessence Labs, who talked about building security resilience in a world where quantum computing might become reality, and PrimeKey, who discussed the critical PKI concept of code-signing for enterprises.
A session in progress.
Note: Presentations from each session will be available on request.
Naturally, RSA wouldn’t have been quite the same without our exclusive dinner. This year, we held an invite-only fireside chat at the W, San Francisco for several of our customers and prospects, hosted by AppViewX’s Gregory Webb (CEO). Two of our customers spoke to the gathering at large, going into detail about their firms, backgrounds, and experiences with our products. The discussions between business leaders and security experts on PKI and cryptography were exciting to be a part of – overall, a welcome break from the field day we had on the show floor.
Final Thoughts
Thanks to the entire AppViewX team for making the event a resounding success. The energy at the conference was electric, and we loved how enthusiastic the attendees were about exploring the new concepts and buzzwords that were being thrown around. It sure is a great year for cybersecurity – new tech is springing up around every corner, and driving digital transformation across every vertical. Of course, this means more work for us, the security folk! We think conferences like RSA are fantastic junctions of knowledge, where insight can be shared and absorbed – we’re looking forward to next year already, and we hope we’ll see you there! Follow us on social media to know which event we’re dropping by next, or contact us to see how AppViewX can help you manage and automate your PKI.
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About the Author
Prabhakar Manickam
Chief Customer Officer
Prabhakar heads Customer Success and Marketing for AppViewX and is responsible for overall customer satisfaction leading to long term relationships.
