What Stood Out to Me at RSA”
Spent time at RSA this past week, including ESAF, Cyber Council, and a number of side conversations. A lot of great discussion, but a few themes stayed with me.
Agentic AI is moving fast. The conversation is no longer about what it can do, but how we control it. Identity, access, and logging kept coming up repeatedly. Not as enhancements, but as foundational requirements.
At the same time, many organizations are still working through identity basics like service accounts, access control, and visibility. I would argue we are not where we need to be yet. Now we are layering autonomous systems on top of that reality.
Resiliency also felt different this year. Less theoretical, more operational. The conversations were grounded in questions like what are we doing today that would help if the worst were to happen next week.
There was also a noticeable shift in how organizations are thinking about data exposure in AI deployments. Controlling what gets indexed, what is accessible, and how prompts are logged is becoming a real concern as enterprise copilots scale.
And quietly, post quantum encryption is getting closer. The algorithms are ready and being used in some cases today. The real question is how quickly organizations begin to adopt and prepare.
What stood out most to me is where this is all heading.
We have spent years interacting with technology through screens, email, and search. That model is starting to shift. Instead of navigating systems ourselves, we will increasingly rely on systems to act on our behalf. That changes everything.
Identity, access, and accountability are no longer tied just to people. They extend to systems making decisions and taking action in real time.
The common thread across all of this was clear. We are moving faster than our controls. That gap is where risk is forming. Lastly the timeline from vulnerability identification to active exploit is shrinking.
Noticeably not on the “disruption” list from new Ai startups…firewalls. Just thought that was interesting.
Curious what stood out to others who were there, what did I miss?. Share your perspective.
#Cybersecurity #AI #Leadership