The RSA Conference (RSAC) is, typically, the late-spring San Francisco gathering of the security industry’s greatest minds and biggest companies. But since 2021 is an even less typical year than 2020, RSAC is forgoing the physical gathering and fully embracing a virtual event. Here’s what we’re looking forward to for this unusual conference.
Fully Online
Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic (which started in the US around the same time as last year’s conference), RSAC is being held entirely online. But it’s hard for us to separate RSAC from its imposing physical footprint. In past years, the sessions at the conference were spread across multiple floors and buildings. The show floor, where vendors displayed their security wares in increasingly elaborate booths, usually occupied both sides of the cavernous Moscone Center. Simply getting on the escalator at the end of the day could be a Herculean task.
The loss of physical space also means there won’t be mid-hallway conversations, chance encounters with new ideas, or one-on-one interactions. That said, the people behind RSAC have promised virtual opportunities for networking with other attendees. We can also expect corporate parties to move online and a feature a lamentable lack of free hors d’oeuvre trays.
RSAC won’t be the only security conference to embrace maximum social distancing. Last year’s Black Hat and DefCon conferences relied entirely on pre-filmed video, text platforms, and video conferencing. It went better than we expected, so we have high hopes for a remote RSAC. Notably, both Black Hat and DefCon are planning hybrid 2021 events, with limited in-person experiences and strong online components. We’ll see if that holds up.
What We’ll Be Watching
When we cover RSAC, we have a pretty stark division of labor: Neil Rubenking typically spends the conference closeted in one-on-one meetings all day, every day, while Max Eddy runs between sessions and keynotes. This year, Neil noted that while he doesn’t recognize all the names on the speakers list, he’s pleased that the group isn’t as white and male as he expected.
In recent years, RSAC has been an opportunity for government officials to engage with the enormous cybersecurity industry and the researchers who make it run. Previous speakers have included former FBI Director James Comey, and the NSA has been known to send speakers to RSAC as well. 2021 has brought a new administration to Washington, and President Joe Biden has weighed in on the need for a federal push to better cybersecurity. He won’t be available to take questions at RSAC, but we expect to learn a lot from the keynote by Anne Neuberger, (deep breath) Deputy Assistant to the President, Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology. She’ll hopefully have the details that the president’s message teased.
Last year, RSAC was all about election security. This year has fewer sessions focused on protecting democracy from cyberattacks, but one session seeks to summarize what the industry and government have learned in preparation for the 2022 midterm elections. Hopefully the worst-case scenarios gamed out by the experts won’t come to pass.
While many things will be different about this year’s conference, we’re happy (and even relieved) that some things will stay the same, such as the annual Cryptographers’ Panel. How many fields are there where the founding members, the ones who started it all, are still present? The whole Public Key Infrastructure that we rely on for secure communication sprang in large part from the work of Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman. (That’s why we call it Diffie-Hellman key exchange.) And the RSA algorithm that spawned the name of this very conference when spelled out is Rivest-Shamir-Adelman. The cryptography panel keynote includes Diffie, Rivest, and Shamir, along with other luminaries. It is always eye-opening.
Speaking of cryptography OGs, Bruce Schneier wrote the book. Literally. He’s also been involved in the creation of numerous cryptographic algorithms, the well-known Blowfish among them. Schneier will speak on the next level of hacking, when AIs trained by machine learning double down to hack our social, economic, and political systems. Who’s to say it’s not happening already?
RSAC is also frequently shaped by the news that precedes it. Just a few months ago you couldn’t turn around without hearing about fallout from the SolarWinds supply chain attack. The aftershocks continue to roll in. Will we ever know exactly what happened? Quite possibly we will, if we attend the keynote from Sudhakar Ramakrishna, President and CEO of SolarWinds.
Everybody’s on Zoom all the time, taking meetings, having doctor visits, chatting with grandma. Is it secure? One way companies ensure security is by paying white-hat hackers to break it. Zoom’s Adam “rudd” Ruddermann will speak on the company’s Bug Bounty program.
As always, RSAC ends with a bang. Past guests at the end keynote have included Stephen Colbert, Bill Clinton, and the Mythbusters. This year’s con features a celebration of innovation with special guest Steve Wozniak, hosted by long-time RSAC Program Committee Chair Hugh Thompson. It’s billed as “backyard edition,” so we expect to see Hugh and Woz chilling in their respective gardens.
Once In a Lifetime…We Hope
The biggest question hanging over RSAC in 2021 isn’t whether the conference will be worth attending; we’re confident it will be as interesting as ever. Rather, we wonder what the future will hold for RSAC and other large-scale industry events. Perhaps this will be the death-knell of large, expensive conferences. Perhaps it’s the beginning of more accessible hybrid events that anyone can attend. Whatever happens, we’re sure there won’t be another RSAC quite like this one. Keep up with all the latest from RSAC 2021 at PCMag.com.
