Through the Lens of ISMG: #ISMGStudio at #RSAC2025 | Edition 118
What happens when over 150 cybersecurity leaders, innovators and changemakers step into one studio at the world’s biggest cybersecurity conference? Ideas spark and the future of cybersecurity takes shape. That’s exactly what the ISMG Studio delivered at RSAC 2025 in San Francisco!
Over four packed days, our editorial team captured the pulse of the industry, one expert conversation at a time, highlighting where cybersecurity is headed and how the global community is rallying together to meet the moment.
From the rise of AI-powered defenses to deepfake-driven disinformation threats, from the evolving OT landscape to the venture capital funding crisis, the interviews and panels at ISMG Studio reflected the urgency, complexity and promise of today’s cyber environment. Across each day, key themes emerged, trust, resilience, collaboration and governance, bringing clarity to a rapidly shifting threat landscape.
As RSAC 2025 wraps up, this newsletter brings you exclusive highlights, insights and takeaways you may have missed!
Matt Cohen, CEO of CyberArk, explains how cloud-native applications have exponentially increased machine identities, with AI agents now creating an entirely new identity type requiring similar authentication and life cycle management approaches.
"Each application in a modern environment can have multiple machine identities … [this] increases complexity because we have multiple different types of machine identities within any given application,"
As enterprises rush to deploy AI across operations, Palo Alto Networks is securing models and agents through its platform approach and recent acquisitions. CEO Nikesh Arora predicts browser security will outpace EDR as a foundational requirement.
The cost of fragmentation is friction. Friction causes time delay, latency. Latency is the enemy of real-time cybersecurity,"
In uncertain times, CISOs must balance people and technology, says Kevin Mandia, general partner, Ballistic Ventures. Security budgets face less risk, but efficiency is crucial. AI adoption will accelerate, vendor consolidation will strengthen defenses and SMBs may benefit from outsourcing security.
"You're going to see two things happening: There's going to be an acceleration of AI adoption. Secondly, we may have to do more with less, but that's the promise of AI. A CISO has to think about the things he can function without, and how can they do things differently with the emerging technology of AI,"
Organizations face significant risks when employees use public AI tools without governance, but security platforms can provide visibility, policy controls and data protection to safeguard sensitive information from unauthorized exposure, said Jay Chaudhry, founder, chairman and CEO, Zscaler.
"When employees use public AI tools, this could be ChatGPT, this could be Gemini of the world. As soon as you submit your information, it belongs to them,"
"AI is the fastest adopted technology in the history, in the enterprise," said Ami Luttwak, co-founder and chief technology officer at Wiz, explaining how AI-enabled application development has outpaced the speed at which security personnel try to attain complete visibility over stored data.
"AI is the fastest adopted technology in the history, in the enterprise,"
Advances in scalable AI and agentic technologies are creating a long-awaited shift in the defender-offender dynamic. With autonomy and agentic capabilities entering production, CISOs may soon deploy 100,000 autonomous agents instead of hiring more staff, said Dave DeWalt, CEO of NightDragon.
"Vulnerabilities create exploits. Exploits create opportunities for attackers,"
AI, geopolitical instability and sophisticated cyberthreats are reshaping how organizations must think about risk, resilience and identity. RSA CEO Rohit Ghai discusses identity overhaul for enterprises, moving beyond passwords and an approach to AI-based threats.
"Passwordless, posture management and platformization," he said. These are the "three Ps of identity management."
AI is transforming cybersecurity from the ground up. Security teams battle skills shortages, alert fatigue and bloated technology stacks. Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, said AI can augment capacity and simplify defenses when applied thoughtfully.
"When DeepSeek came out, in the first 48 hours, we were able to go and have 100% attack success rate against DeepSeek with the top 50 categories identified in harm bench, which was a benchmark independent for AI models,"
Upcoming #ISMGSummits
ItaliaSec convenes information security experts to tackle key cybersecurity challenges and foster public-private collaboration. The event covers crucial topics including human factors, supply chain security, cloud security and compliance, aiming to bolster digital resilience across industries.
At the 2nd edition of the Dallas summit, security and IT leaders will converge to discuss emerging trends in the U.S. cybersecurity landscape. The event facilitates knowledge exchange on enterprise security, innovation and business development, providing a comprehensive view of current data security challenges.
Designed for active learning and collaboration, the Industrial Cyber Show features an action-packed agenda with deep-dive panel discussions, immersive workshops, and interactive networking sessions. This is your chance to forge strategic partnerships with top cybersecurity executives from industries like Manufacturing, Oil & Gas, Energy, Mining, Transportation, Maritime, Healthcare and Government. And to lead the discussions shaping the industrial cybersecurity landscape in 2025 and beyond.
That's all for today. We will be back next week.
Until then, stay current with the latest happenings in cybersecurity by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on @ismg_global on Instagram.
Have a nice day ahead.
- ISMG Social Media Desk
Masters in Computer Applications/data analytics
6dHighly recommended