It’s my first RSAC ! I’m here in beautiful San Francisco to meet, greet, and take a seat.
Impressions
It was a quiet start; people were still completing registration and picking up badges this evening. Sessions in the morning were lightly attended, with more packed rooms later in the day.
It’s all AI, AI, AI, but let me get past the broad opinions about AI. I attended two panels this morning from which I will boil down three key points:
- It’s all about the agents. A year ago, all my AI conversations were around securing either the AI itself (against jailbreaking, prompt injections, etc) or the data it used (control what goes in the model and who can see the results). Now it’s about managing agents, with the same kind of sprawl and security concerns as, say, Sharepoint sites, mobile devices, and Saas applications. Organizations need a way to discover, register, and manage AI agents.
- People are important. There have been a number of offhand remarks from various corporate leaders about being able to reduce staff by using AI, but this is short-sighted. While there will be disruption, human beings will still be required to use and monitor AI; AI is a multiplier to make humans more productive, not displace them entirely.
- AI is not going away. No one here wants to avoid it or skip it; everyone wants to be prepared for it. The vision of what AI will be useful for varies across customer and industries; for some it’s just something to help write emails, for others it’s a tool that will fundamentally change business processes. For most, probably a bit in between. One thing’s for sure: security and data security will be part of AI adoption.
Agents, people, and AI is here to stay. You’ll know which vendors to trust by asking if they stay within those boundaries.