RSAC Conference 2025: The front line of cyber innovation

In the fast-changing world of cybersecurity, IT leaders have to keep up with evolving threats and new technologies to stay ahead of attackers.

With nation states lending a hand to threat groups with more pointed aims than ever before, alongside the double-edged sword of greater AI adoption in cybersecurity, there’s never been a more worrying – and exciting – time to specialize in the field.

This episode was recorded live at RSAC conference in San Francisco by Scott Becker, director of Webinar Programs at ActualTech Media and Alan Liska, threat intelligence analyst and ‘ransomware sommelier’ at Recorded Future.

Together, the pair discuss the future of the sector, how threats like ransomware compare to emerging concerns such as quantum decryption, and why AI is the topic on everyone’s agenda.

Highlights

“I do think one of the things that we're starting to see… is more interest in data governance, more interest in knowing and understanding where your data is, both inside your network and outside your network. And I've seen a lot of vendors talking about that now as they grapple with the reality that data theft is such a big part of ransomware attacks.”

“China has really talented hackers. They always have and they now have 30-plus years’ experience with not just how to carry out attacks, but how to build the tools and how to develop the software and so on. So you can never discount that 30-year experience, what you can bring in. Most of what happens behind the scenes in Chinese nation state attacks in particular, we don't have access to, we don't have insight into, because we just don't know.”

“So I don't know about good ways to go forward, but it does seem like a lot of what we're talking about now is putting more of the onus back on the state and local governments for defense. I actually think that's a bad idea. It's not that states aren't capable, it's not that local governments aren't capable, there are a lot of really dedicated employees who work in security for those organizations. But you're going up against nation states, you're going up against China, Russia, and really advanced, even cyber criminal threat actors. You need the intelligence that CISA can provide.”

“So if quantum computing is 10 years away, governments need to start figuring out their encryption strategy now so they can start getting that data encrypted, to have it encrypted in time. I mean, that's just the reality.”

Footnotes

• RSAC Conference Day One: Vibe Is 'All In' on AI for Security
• RSAC Conference day two: A focus on new hacking tactics
• RSAC Conference day three: using AI to do more with less and facing new attack techniques
• Five things we learned from the 2024 RSA Conference
• “Governance is an irreplaceable role”: Microsoft Security VP on why diversity and sector expertise will keep security workers relevant in the age of agentic AI
• "There needs to be an order of magnitude more effort": AI security experts call for focused evaluation of frontier models and agentic systems
• ‘China has almost doubled their aggression in cyber’: Kevin Mandia and Nicole Perlroth warn organizations aren’t waking up to growing APT threats
• RSAC Conference 2025 was a sobering reminder of the challenges facing cybersecurity professionals

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