RSAC 2022 Recap — The Year of “Transformation” and Lots of Reunions

June 2022 marks a memorable year for the security industry’s biggest conference, RSA. Not only was it the first time in two years that the industry came back together due to the pandemic, but it took place in June instead of the decades-old February tradition. Despite the changes and long time apart, San Francisco was buzzing with security vendors, creatively wrapped buses, bright-colored RSA badges and jam-packed happy hour venues across town. 

As George Hulme noted, this year’s event was also a moment of reflection for those that the security industry lost in the past few years—it’s important to honor them and carry on the mission of those who had such a profound impact on the industry. 

In-person events are back

I can’t count the number of times that I sat down for a meeting and heard “it’s so good to be back.” There was a positivity in the air as teams, clients and partners reunited and enjoyed in-person conversations and relationship-building once again. On behalf of the Inkhouse security practice, I helped host two media events—a breakfast and a lunch—with nine clients of ours. It was clear from client and reporter interest alike that the appetite for in-person events has definitely returned. The events created intimate environments for reporters to access multiple executives in one room during the busy week, which we’d like to do again. 

We talked at length over the past two years about creative ways to break through virtual event noise, and remain relevant, and the same can be said for live events. It was exciting to see creative ways that brands tried to stand out at this year’s RSAC - I saw everything from a free ice cream truck to Simone Biles at a booth talking about how to control complexity, both for security and our personal lives. Creativity is still king.

Making the conference time meaningful

As my colleague highlighted in a recent interview with the RSA’s head of content and curation Britta Glade, this year’s event was all about being “purposeful.” With a short amount of time in the three-day conference, it was critical to ensure conference attendees got to see the highly anticipated keynotes, attend the right networking events, and make the most of time onsite. I noticed that my interactions on and off the show floor felt purposeful, thoughtful, and well worth the time spent in San Francisco for the week. While I’m thankful for the flexibility that remote working provides, it’s hard to replace the value of in-person interactions. 

A spotlight on transformation

Themes from this year’s conference revolved around continuing cybersecurity challenges that resulted from the pandemic and remote working environment, supply chain concerns, rising threats around elections, nation-state threats and more. The conference’s theme was “transform” - a telling sign of the past two years as security leaders and businesses have been put to the test. One key topic that stood out to me from a keynote with Cisco was ways to improve the “Cybersecurity Poverty Line.” It’s often the local districts, schools, small hospitals and SMBs who don’t have security budgets to protect their organizations, and therefore end up disproportionately impacted by ransomware attacks. There was a major theme this year calling the public and private sectors to come together and work better to improve these so-called poverty lines and other industry discrepancies. The only way to protect our democracy and institutions is to do it together and ensure everyone is protected, not just the biggest companies or government entities. 

Learn more about Inkhouse’s security practice, subscribe to our weekly newsletter by completing the form to the right or email us at workwithus@inkhouse.com.