Harnessing Control Theory and AI for Smarter Cybersecurity: Insights from RSAC 2025
San Francisco: The 34th annual RSA Conference (RSAC) 2025 concluded today in San Francisco, CA, at the Moscone Center, after convening cybersecurity professionals from April 28 to May 1. This influential event featured keynotes from figures like Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, UK AI Security Institute CTO Jade Leung, and NSC Senior Director for Cyber Alexei Bulazel, alongside numerous cybersecurity experts.
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A central theme of RSAC 2025 was the critical importance of identity security. The conference emphasized foundational practices such as strong, unique passwords (at least 16 characters), enterprise password management, and multi-factor authentication. Organizations were urged to implement regular privileged account audits and promptly remove unused credentials.
Beyond prevention, RSAC 2025 highlighted the necessity of a layered security approach. Integrating zero trust, least-privilege access, and robust Privileged Access Management (PAM) was underscored to limit lateral movement. Complementary defenses, including endpoint protection, employee education, and strong data encryption, are also crucial. The key takeaway from the conference is that a strong mastery of cybersecurity fundamentals remains the most effective defense against evolving threats.
RSAC™ Conference is where the cybersecurity community convenes and contributes to critical conversations to help create a safer society. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn new skills and brush up on the latest trends while experiencing unique perspectives and inspiring real-life stories. Similar to previous years, the Conference will support two keynote stages, with the West Stage featuring sponsor keynotes, panels, and esteemed guest speakers in Moscone West, and the newly located Yerba Buena Center of the Arts (YBCA) Keynotes, presenting highly coveted sessions from industry experts. Keynote stages open on Monday, April 28, and run through Thursday, May 1.
Two-time NBA Half of Famer, Entrepreneur, and Philanthropist Earvin “Magic” Johnson along with Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker Ron Howard and his daughter, actor and director Bryce Dallas Howard, are slated to bring their life experiences to the West Stage. For the closing celebration, DJ Irie and Jazz Mafia will help to entertain attendees and set the stage for Award-Winning Actor, Singer & Comedian Jamie Foxx to close out the week, in conversation with Hugh Thompson, RSAC’s Executive Chairman.
“Many voices, One community is the theme for this year’s Conference and it couldn’t be more fitting based on our amazing lineup of keynote speakers from all walks of life,” said Linda Gray Martin, Senior Vice President, RSAC ™ Conference. “We’re excited to bring our attendees a new keynote venue, as we expand our campus into the beautiful Yerba Buena Center of the Arts that will allow for more content and programming throughout the week.”
To accommodate those who would like to view and engage with content online, RSAC™ Conference offers an On Demand Pass, which provides individuals access to West Stage Keynote live streaming plus session content from the traditional tracks within four hours of a session running live at the Conference. For more information, please review the passes and rates page.
Current keynote speakers at RSAC™ 2025 Conference include:
● Dmitri Alperovitch, Executive Chairman, Silverado Policy Accelerator
● Dr. Edward Amoroso, Founder & CEO and Research Professor, TAG and NYU ·
● Charles Blauner, President, Cyber Aegis LLC ·
● Alexei Bulazel, Special Assistant to the President and NSC Senior Director for Cyber ·
● Cryptographers’ Panel: Whitfield Diffie, Honorary Fellow, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; Ed Felten, Co-founder and Chief Scientist, Offchain Labs; Raluca Ada Popa, Associate Professor, UC Berkeley; Adi Shamir, Borman Professor of Computer Science, The Weizmann Institute, Israel; Vinod Vaikuntanathan, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Tal Rabin, Senior Principal Applied Scientist and Professor, AWS, UPenn (Moderator) ·
● Kirsten Davies, Founder & 3x Fortune 500 CISO, Institute for Cyber ·
● Jen Easterly, Former Director, Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ·
● John Fokker, Head of Threat Intelligence, Trellix ·
● Jamie Foxx, Award-Winning Actor, Singer & Comedian ·
● Tom Gillis, SVP & GM, Security, Data Center, Internet & Cloud Infrastructure Group, Cisco ·
● Ken Gonzalez, Managing Director, NightDragon ·
● Mike Horn, SVP & GM, Security Products, Splunk, a Cisco Company ·
● Bryce Dallas Howard, Actor and Director ·
● Ron Howard, Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker ·
● Chris Inglis, Former US National Cyber Director, MITRE Trustee ·
● Nadir Izrael, CTO & Co-Founder, Armis ·
● Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Security ·
● Earvin “Magic” Johnson, 2x NBA Hall of Famer, Entrepreneur, and Philanthropist ·
● Rob Joyce, Venture Partner, DataTribe ·
● Sandra Joyce, VP, Google Threat Intelligence, Google Cloud ·
● Arik Kleinstein, Managing Director, Glilot Capital Partners ·
● Chris Krebs, Chief Intelligence and Public Policy Officer, SentinelOne ·
● George Kurtz, CEO & Founder, CrowdStrike ·
● Robert M. Lee, CEO & Founder, Dragos, Inc. ·
● Jade Leung, CTO, UK AI Security Institute ·
● Kevin Mandia, Founder & General Partner, Ballistic Ventures ·
● Craig Newmark, Founder & CSR, Craig Newmark Philanthropies (Craigslist Founder) ·
● Jeetu Patel, EVP & Chief Product Officer, Cisco ·
● Nicole Perlroth, Cybersecurity Author, Investor & Advisor, Silver Buckshot Ventures ·
● Matt Radolec, Vice President, Incident Response & Cloud Operations, Varonis ·
● Daniel Rohrer, VP, Software Product Security, Architecture and Research, NVIDIA ·
● Jim Routh, Chief Trust Officer, Saviynt ·
● Vivian Schiller, Vice President & Executive Director, Aspen Digital, Aspen Institute ·
● Michael S. Schmidt, Reporter, New York Times and Co-Creator & Executive Producer, Zero Day ·
● Bruce Schneier, Security Technologist, Researcher, and Lecturer, Inrupt, Inc. ·
● Michael Sentonas, President, CrowdStrike ·
● Ram Shankar Siva Kumar, Data Cowboy, Microsoft; Harvard ·
● Jon Swartz, Senior Reporter, Techstrong Group ·
● The SANS Institute Panel: Heather Barnhart, DFIR Curriculum Lead, SANS Institute and Senior Director, Cellebrite; Tim Conway, ICS Curriculum Lead, SANS Institute; Rob T. Lee, Chief of Research & Head of Faculty, SANS Institute; Joshua Wright, Faculty Fellow and Senior Technical Director, SANS Institute and Counter Hack Innovations; and Ed Skoudis, President, SANS Technology Institute College (Moderator) ·
● Dr. Hugh Thompson, Executive Chairman & RSAC Conference Program Committee Chair, RSAC ·
● Mark Thurmond, Chief Operating Officer & Co-CEO, Tenable ·
● Kiersten Todt, President, Wondros ·
● Chenxi Wang, General Partner, Rain Capital ·
● Tomer Weingarten, CEO, Co-Founder, SentinelOne
