Another successful day of RSA Conference 2021, a virtual experience, concludes on a high note with thousands of attendees tuning in to expand their cybersecurity horizons! Day 3 was headlined by one of the most anticipated keynote sessions of the Conference as well as the crowning of the 2021 Innovation Sandbox Winner. If you were unable to attend either session, let’s recap what you missed and give a preview of our exciting sessions tomorrow!
SolarWinds: What Really Happened?
This morning, SolarWinds President and CEO, Sudhakar Ramakrishna, shared his unique perspective of the most sophisticated supply chain attack in history. Some key takeaways from his session include:
- After assessing hundreds of terabytes of data, SolarWinds found that attackers may have been in their environment as early as January 2019. With the backing of a nation state and the time investment put into this hacking effort, it became very difficult for SolarWinds to uncover their presence.
- Security vulnerabilities, unfortunately, are commonplace. Companies need to be humble enough to accept that vulnerabilities can happen to anyone while still remaining vigilant. This sort of mindset drives transparency which is vital in times like this. It is very important to communicate, project, take ownership and continue to update all who are involved on the progress throughout an experience.
- When asked about the failure and potential blame for the companies’ CISO, Mr. Ramakrishna reinforced the notion that firing people does not do justice to the person or the job. While accountability matters, he noted that some CISOs get discredited in situations gone wrong.
- Be sure to join us on June 17th for our next conversation with SolarWinds. Register for an informative webcast entitled “The Detailed Account of the Incident Response”.
When asked about how SolarWinds is supporting customers now and how they plan to continue supporting them in the future, Ramakrishna said, “Continue to, is the operative word...We recognize that not all of our customers might have the internal resources to upgrade, rebuild, or project into the future. So, we worked with our partners to extend support to our customers and essentially provided another pair of hands in some cases, technology commitments in other cases, and in many cases, we worked side by side with them as they completed their upgrades. This we did at our cost, we felt it was our responsibility to help the customers get to stable and secure environment.”
RSA Conference Announces 2021 Innovation Sandbox Winner - Congratulations to Apiiro, which was named RSAC’s “Most Innovative Startup” this morning. In the sixteenth annual Sandbox Contest, 10 well-qualified companies competed in our first virtual version of this event by presenting a three-minute pitch of their game-changing technologies to a panel of esteemed judges and then partook in a question-and-answer segment.
Apiiro stood out in their presentation for the Code Risk Platform™, which provides a 360° view of security and compliance risks across applications, infrastructure and open-source code, developer experience, and business impact. Apiiro addresses the problem that the cybersecurity industry has been facing for years: the amount of code that organizations are producing is continuing to grow and there is a true need to be able to identify critical information across the repositories where the code is stored.
Since the start of this event, the top ten finalists each year have seen over 50 acquisitions and received 50 acquisitions and over $8.2 billion in funding. Thank you to all of our participants and congratulations again to Apiiro for being selected as the winner!
Today we also launched RSAC Marketplace, a single source for cybersecurity professionals to search for products, solutions and services based on their particular needs. With rich filtering features, and an intuitive interface, professionals can quickly find and evaluate the right solutions. Be sure to check out RSAC Marketplace!
Thursday: A Preview Snapshot
Thursday is our final day of this year’s Conference but do not fret as we have more great content lined up. Keynote sessions include:
- The Five Most Dangerous New Attack Techniques – SANS provides the authoritative briefing on the most dangerous new attack techniques in use today, what’s coming next, and what organizations can do to prepare.
- Global Threat Brief: Hacks and Adversaries Unveiled – We unveil some of the most novel attacks in the current global threat landscape, diving into specific, real-time examples of threat actor activity from both nation states and criminal groups, and will offer strategic advice for countering them
- The Hugh Thompson Show: Backyard Edition – Beloved inventor Steve Wozniak sits down with our very own Hugh Thompson to close out RSAC 2021 and discuss how this year’s theme of resilience offers us a chance of innovation and reinvention.
Don’t forget to visit the Digital Expo and the Early Stage Expo. Schedule demos and chat with vendors, watch Sponsor Briefings and attend sessions in the Sponsor Special Track.
Be sure to check out the IAPP Seminar, Privacy Metrics: Measuring Privacy Programs, which will take a look at the key metrics and deliverables, dashboards, and reports that demonstrate the functionality and success of your organization’s privacy program.
In addition, join us tomorrow for our annual College Day! Recent estimates show that there are millions of unfilled cybersecurity jobs across the world and the frequency of attacks is only increasing. As the world’s largest cybersecurity event, we take great pride in connecting college students and recent graduates with some of the most accomplished innovators and experts in the industry to discuss career opportunities as well as talk about their experiences in the field.
We look forward for you all to join us for another great day of content and sessions tomorrow!
PS - More from SolarWinds – be sure to Register now for the June 17 webcast entitled SolarWinds: The Detailed Account of the Incident Response.