It’s hard to imagine the wide range of emotions companies must be feeling as they prepare to take the floor at RSA Conference 2020 Early Stage Expo (ESE) on Tuesday, February 25. Undoubtedly, many of these folks are busy with last-minute preparations before their exhibition debut. They’re excited. We’re excited. And we want to get you all excited about this year’s industry up-and-comers, who are eager to showcase their talent and innovation.
“We are preparing to make our presence in the Early Stage Expo at RSAC 2020 as informative, engaging and fun as possible, with new demo content, collateral and booth giveaways. Our goal is to connect with as many fellow cybersecurity leaders and peers as we can to share the story of Cyware and how our products can help them improve their defenses by automating threat intelligence workflows,” said Joe Aurilia, Jr., VP of Operations.
These forward-thinking exhibitors have so much to do in advance of Conference, which is why RSAC tries to make preparing the actual booth space as seamless as possible. “One of the nice things about the Early Stage Expo is that there isn't much for us to prepare when it comes to booth design, setup and logistics,” said Ethan Landau, Strategy & Operations, NuID.
With booth logistics pretty much taken care of, the exhibitors can focus on preparing to demo their products and solutions either at their kiosks or at the RSAC Early State Expo Briefing Center. Not all of these 51 promising newcomers are new to RSAC Innovation Programs, though. In 2019, NuID participated in the first RSAC Launch Pad, which gives them the chance to share their progress with the community. “As an early stage company, RSAC is a great opportunity for us to share our vision and message with members of the security industry and receive valuable feedback. It is also a great venue for exploring other vendors in the space for potential partnerships,” Landau said.
Eclyspium, another finalist at last year’s RSAC Innovation Sandbox, plans to take a deep dive into the “Anatomy of a Firmware Attack” at this year’s ESE. From their 2019 experience, they found that many CISOs and security leaders make a point of visiting the Early Stage Expo to see where innovation is happening in the industry. At RSAC 2020, they will be using their enterprise firmware protection platform to show how hackers use firmware implants and backdoors to compromise enterprise security with attacks that are stealthy and persistent.
“We'll debut a new version of our platform that provides a comprehensive approach to firmware risk, compliance, analysis and actionability. And, we'll share new research uncovering hidden vulnerabilities in enterprise devices,” said Suzanne Balter, Senior Director of Marketing at Eclypsium, Inc.
Though some companies are returning for a second year, there are several newbies, such as Intello, that are looking forward to their big moment in the spotlight. Kelsie Skinner, Head of Marketing, said, “We can't wait to spend these couple days meeting new folks and seeing some familiar faces. This event is key to showcasing how Intello is helping modern IT teams in SaaS-forward environments wrangle shadow IT, and helping them manage the security and compliance of their SaaS apps … even all those free apps with sneaky third-party permissions that they may not already know about!”
Several other ESE companies are also busy refining their demo environment with some exciting new features they’ve either recently released or plan to release in the next few months. “We can't wait to show the RSAC world how AI can transform cumbersome but critical vulnerability management operations,” said Jeff Hill, VP of Marketing at Delve.
His company is on a mission to automate vulnerability management using AI, and Hill said participating in ESE is critical to their success in 2020. “As the innovative "new guy" in a space that has been dominated by large companies that have been around for nearly two decades, getting our message to the cybersecurity world is our most pressing challenge,” Hill said.
Sure, they are confident they've built a better mousetrap in vulnerability management, but as Hill explained, “Now our job is to shout it from the RSAC mountaintop, and we couldn't be more excited to do so. ESE gives us that opportunity.”
Stay tuned for more insight into what other ESE participants are doing to prepare for Conference in the second part of this two-part blog series.