Welcome back to the Decipher Podcast.
I'm Dennis Fisher and Lindsay O'Donnell Welch is here with me
today. And Linds, we're going to talk
about RSA Conference, which is next week as we're recording
this, one of our favorite and least favorite times of the
year. It's coming up quick.
Yep, it. Is it jumps out at you,
especially for you who has been on maternity leave for several
months and completely disconnected from all of this
nonsense? I know, yeah, I'm definitely
going to be catching up on some of the sessions.
And I feel like it's going to be just jumping straight into the
straight into things just, you know, after a couple months of
being fully, you know, in the loop with just a baby, so.
Yeah, you're not actually going. I'm going.
And I was trying to think of, like, how jarring it would be
for you if you ended your maternity leave on Friday and,
like, got on a plane Monday morning and just went to San
Francisco for RSA. I feel like you might have some
sort of mild, you know, disassociative episode or
something. I think it would be very
shocking. It would.
Very shocking. Yeah, it's shocking anyway, just
like even for people like us, because like as soon as you get
off the plane at SFO, it's just like billboards for random
security companies you've never heard of.
And it's just like in your face all the time.
Like even if you try to avoid it and go outside of like the
Moscone area, there's just like way MO's and billboards and you
know, random walking around St. performers, they're trying to
get you to go to some booth. Yeah, I know.
I was thinking the other day like the first time I went to
RSA, which was, you know, many years ago.
Not as many as you know when you first went, but ranking.
For that, yeah. It was just like completely eye
opening because I, I had just started in the cybersecurity
world and so going to San Francisco and seeing, you know,
walking in the exhibition booth area, it's like, what is going
on? Yeah.
Was that the first big security conference that you went to or
did you go to blackout before? That was the first Big 1 I
actually like. Within my first month I went to
Security analyst Summit SAS, which was also very much being
thrown into things, but. Yeah.
So that was nice to go to that one first and then go to RSA
after. Which one?
Which SAS was that? What was it?
I think the one in Mexico was in Cancun I think.
Oh, in Cancun like 2018? Yeah, 20/18/2017.
Oh, that's, yeah, 'cause that's right.
When we launched Decipher and Famita and I were both there.
Yeah. It was like, I think it was the
week we launched Decipher or the week after.
That is so funny. Yeah, that's wild.
That's I can't believe that's your first security conference.
You're like, this is great. I love cybersecurity.
Let's go to Cancun. Yeah.
I was like, I don't know what is going on, but I'm I love it.
That must have been so jarring. I can only imagine because SAS
itself is like relatively small, but and by design it was
relatively small. And it was almost everyone knew
every like we all knew each other for a very long time.
So you must have been like, oh, shit, like the kid walking into
the cafeteria in high school. You're like, I don't know these
people it. Was exactly like that, yeah.
And like it was, you know, if anyone's gone, they know this.
But like, it's a very much like everyone sticks together like
you get on buses to go to like. So it was really, I mean, I
thought it was awesome to be able to, you know, it was like
forced, like, like socialization and like getting into things.
And also the sessions were pretty technical as well.
So, you know, that was definitely something that was
jarring to, you know, first get into my, like, first or second
week on the job. Yeah.
It's so technical. I just remember like the years
when I worked at Threat Poster Kaspersky and was like one of
the like doing session hosting duties and like introducing, you
know, cost in or Jags or somebody giving some insane talk
or like marked out or somebody. And I'm just like, all right,
here comes the smart guy. I'll see you guys later.
I'm going to go to the back of the room.
You're just yeah, it's yeah, it was deep.
Yeah, but I like that conference because like you could go up to
the researchers and just talk to them and be like, hey, I don't
really like what do you, what do you mean about this or whatever?
Whereas at RSA or Black Hat, like, you know, it's a little
more like people will finish up their sessions or their keynotes
and then there's just a line of people wanting to talk to them.
So. But yeah, anyways, I'll be
missing RSA this year but. But I wouldn't say I'm missing
it, Bob. Yeah, Yeah, I know what you
mean. It's the, I've said it before on
this podcast, but the first time I went was 2001 and I had just
started covering security, which back then didn't really even
register on like the tech press radar at all.
And if for people that have been to RSA recently, you know, it's
like 3 parts, it's all of Moscone.
Like they literally built another part of Moscone for
large conferences like RSA and Salesforce or whatever.
But the first few times that I went O1, it was 1/2 of Moscone.
It, you know, and it there weren't nearly enough exhibitors
to take up even that exhibition hall because it was like it was
pre 911. So there wasn't like that huge
like uptick in security, you know, stuff and there just
wasn't, there weren't that many security companies there like
RSA, the company was maybe the biggest one.
It probably was the biggest one at the time, you know, and they
were selling like encryption software and they probably had
their hardware tokens at that point, but maybe even didn't
have those. And there was like, I don't
know, 100 other security companies if that.
It was crazy. What, so, you know, back then,
what kind of things were they, what were like the main topics
of discussion that were being discussed?
And like, you know, you look at the, you know, some of the
keynotes and sessions for this year in the past few years and
I'd imagine it's completely different.
It was very much a cryptography conference then, like crypto in
the cryptography sense. It was very much that like, I
don't, I honestly don't think it's there this year.
The cryptographers panel, which I think this is, I didn't see it
unless I miss it, it's not on there.
Maybe it's just a normal session instead of a keynote.
But the last, you know, 20 years or whatever, the cryptographers
panel was, you know, some combination of like Wit, Diffie,
Addy Shamir, Bruce Schneider, you know, a few, you know, Paul
Kocher, other people like that, pioneers, you know, pioneering
cryptographers. And it was always really cool.
I would go to that. You went sometimes like we kind
of look at each other, like I don't really know what they're
talking about, but this is cool seeing like the guys that
invented this shit up there. But yeah, those first few that I
went to were extremely cryptography focused and it was
all about like there was a lot of digital rights management
stuff back then. Like how are we going to protect
like video and audio content, which obviously nobody ever
figured out. And but a lot of it was just
like it was still not that long after like the first crypto wars
between, you know, like about weakening encryption by default
for government use and that sort of stuff.
So there was a lot of that kind of thing going on and it was
just a very small like clubby group.
You know, I can, I can vividly remember that the the first time
I went going to pick up my badge and Bruce Schneider was standing
just happened to be at the registration desk.
And I interviewed him a few times over the phone and I
introduced myself. And, you know, he was like, oh,
it's great to meet you. You know, I'm doing a book
signing or something like tomorrow you should come.
That was 25 years ago. Literally it was 2001.
So yeah, very crazy. And then the next year, which
was 2002, like very soon after 911, they had it in San Jose and
it was really, really small, like I think fewer than 2000
people there. Like really, really small.
Like now there's 2000 people at like the West Bar on like
Tuesday afternoon. You.
Know yeah was the like I feel like part of the shift that I've
noticed over the years too is like there's a lot more
executives and a lot more discussion around kind of you
know like strategy and risk and things like that.
Like what was more of the, what was kind of like the the base of
people that were going back then?
Like was it? It was, yeah.
I'd imagine or. There was a very technical
crowd, like the mathematician cryptography crowd that I just
described. Like that's that wasn't then and
it's still not now a very big group of people.
You know, you could sort of identify all of them and like
throw a blanket over them. You know, there might be like 30
of them total, those folks. And then there were the other
sort of like engineers and developers that were building
products. Like those people would go,
which there's not that many of these days.
You know, these days it's much more like practitioners who pay
$4000 to go or whatever. So many marketers and execs and
product managers and those kind of people.
It's much more of, you know, of a sales carnival than it is and
acts, there's still a lot of technical content there, but
it's you have to sort of go out of your way to go and find it.
And those sessions get, you know, sold out pretty or not
sold out, but full quickly. And a lot of times it's really
hard to get into them. They used to hold seats for
media in those in a lot of those sessions.
They don't. They don't even do that anymore,
even at keynotes. It's hard.
For us to get in there, yeah, it's weird.
I know, I'd imagine looking at so if you look at the agenda for
this year, and this is also what I've seen in previous years, but
you can they show you can basically break it down by
different types of topics and the amount of topics is just
insane and really goes to show how much, you know, cyber
security, just how how big it's become over the years.
I mean, they have like everything from critical
infrastructure to IoT to obviously AI and identity and
you know, risk management and you know, CSO track and
everything. So it's just crazy how you know,
I'd imagine for you like seeing it go from this kind of smaller
cryptography focus conference to just the breath now that it
covers is is wild. It is, yeah.
I mean, it used to be small enough that there was one track
called hackers and threats like that.
That was just a track, you know, and it and it that was the one
that all the like researchers that we know would, that's where
they would submit if they were speaking at or trying to speak
at RSA. And those would always be like
really good technical talks about like, you know, some
breakthrough in, you know, crypt analysis or things like that, or
sometimes even bug releases, you know, vulnerability disclosures
and things like that. But now it's like, I mean, I, I
wouldn't didn't count it, but there must be 30 or 40 separate
things. And now, you know, the keynotes
are essentially marketing presentations.
You know, it happened for many years.
Like, although maybe I don't know if Bill, yeah, Bill Gates
did a couple RSA keynotes when security was a big thing for
Microsoft or one of the times it was becoming a big thing for
Microsoft. I, I think I'm remembering that
right. But lots of Microsoft execs and
IBM execs and you know, Cisco execs.
Our friend Wendy did one a few years ago, which was very cool,
of course, because she's Wendy. But yeah, most of them now are.
They're just handed to the diamond level sponsors or
whatever the top level sponsorship is.
You get a keynote and that's the way it works, which is, you
know, that's how commerce works. And some of them are decent.
They'll have some decent stuff in them, but most of them are
just kind of like rah rah. Yeah, well, and one other just
before we look at the tracks and topics, but one other thing
that's interesting too, I've noticed over the years is, you
know, you mentioned that, you know, a lot of times there would
be some sort of breakthrough. I really haven't seen, you know,
the past few years any sort of like actual news or like major
vulnerabilities coming out of this conference just from the,
the media perspective, It's it's been very different.
I remember back in like 2017 or 2018 or where like you could get
some good, good, you know some good research coming out of this
conference. But it's definitely more in my
opinion focused on kind of the networking and the sales and
that aspect of. Things and there's you're
exactly right about that there. I can remember at least two
different cryptographers panels where Addy Shamir specifically
like he used to come and on that panel, like he doesn't speak
publicly ever aside from this basically.
And he would come and be like, OK, here's my year in review of
cryptographic breakthroughs. And like at least two or three
times there was he would just like drop information about some
new cryptographic breakthrough, like somebody had broken an
algorithm or a cipher or something on that panel.
And you know, I would always like go and talk to those guys
afterwards and be like, did you say what I think you said here?
Like, Oh yeah, yes, you know, we figured this out or whatever
because it's math. It's like 40 millennia beyond my
understanding. You're just like, I just want to
make sure I have this correct. But aside from that, now it's
more like, you know, which we do by default anyway, go and set up
those one-on-one interviews with people we think are interesting.
And hopefully, you know, whether it's hard news or just like an
interesting story that, you know, you get from somebody that
you know, is doing cool stuff or has interesting thoughts on the
direction that, you know, say AI is going, which is 99% of
everything that I've gotten this year in terms of pitches.
And you know, a lot of it is hand WAVY crap, as you would
expect, but some of it is actually kind of interesting.
You know, there's people using AI for different things, but a
lot of it is like we're debuting the first AI enabled like SIM
console. And I'm like, no, you're not
because I've gotten 42 emails that say that exact same thing.
So you guys need to talk to each other.
I don't know what. I don't know who told you you
were debuting anything, but you're not the first ones.
Yeah, and AAI enabled AI powered AI first.
Yep, seeing a lot of terms. So much of that, which is, you
know, that's just the way these things go.
It's cyclical. You know, it was, that's, that's
just what it is. But there's also like so many,
this has turned into like the South by Southwest situation
where there's a bunch of smaller satellite events around it.
Like besides SF and a bunch of VCs have conferences during RSA
week. I got an invitation yesterday.
The European Union is having an invite only event during RSA
week to talk about like regulations like and stuff.
I can't go to it. But I was like, I was really
surprised. It was like, this is OK, Yeah,
cool. Like a whole bunch of EU
delegates are coming to do this thing that's.
Really interesting, yeah. Yeah, it's quite not something
you normally see, you know, during this this week.
Yeah, well, what's interesting about that too is, you know, I I
noticed that there were a lot of there were some speakers from
other governments, like the UK government has a a ton of a
couple people, handful I thought I saw like United Arab Emirates
or something like maybe someone from there as well, just random.
So, you know, I feel like it is and I know like so they have
something in Europe that's similar to RSA.
I know they have. Infosec, Yeah.
Yeah, so. London, right?
I went to that once, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I've gone to that
once as well. So I don't know like you know
the logistics of meeting up at RSA in the US versus there, but
like I thought that was that's interesting as well.
It is. And there's, we were talking
about this before we started recording.
There's not that I saw. I may have missed it.
I didn't read every session description or every speaker
name. I don't recall seeing any U.S.
government speakers this year, which is a sharp contrast from
the past few years where either, you know, Jenny Easterly when
she was at SISA, spoke several years in a row.
Other SISA officials have Chris Krebs, you know, a few times.
And just other, you know, government officials, whether
they were from DoD or other parts of DHS or Energy or
whatever it happened to be, people from Cyber Command have
spoken. I just, I didn't see any this
year. And I think there's probably a
few reasons for that, but it's an interesting kind of data
point that they're not there. I'm sure they're there, but
they're not speaking. Not publicly speaking, yeah,
yeah, I think I saw like a couple like former like Cyber
Command types of role, you know, people.
But like, yeah, like you're saying, no one who actually
currently works that I that I could see, at least for the US
government. And the US government also has a
interesting past, I think more so with Black Hat, but with our
conferences as well. So, so I always look, I always
kind of look for those types of sessions too, because it's, it's
funny how it works out. Yeah, there used to be and and
maybe there still is. Again, I didn't read every
session description. There were very often you would
see mathematicians or cryptographers from NSA speak at
this conference to talk about, you know, either research that
they've been doing or things are collaborating on with the
private sector or just like where they see like post quantum
cryptography going, you know, big bigger picture things.
I didn't see any of that this year either.
So I don't know if there was just sort of a we're not
approving travel to to RSA or I don't know what the the case
was. Yeah, I, I looking at the
topics, like, was there anything that stuck out to you that, you
know, you were excited to go see this year?
Like I saw a couple of interesting things, but a lot of
it was kind of standard and par for the course.
Yeah. Let me hear the ones that kind
of that drew your interest. There's there's a few that I'm
that I have on my calendar that are pretty interesting to me.
Yeah, I think, well, so obviously we're talking about
Wendy earlier. Obviously when I saw that Wendy
and Bob Lord are talking, they're doing something about
learning from near misses and cybersecurity, which, you know,
I think that's going to be really interesting just because,
you know, both of those people obviously have been in the
industry and know what they're talking about.
But then also just the topic itself is something that's not
really discussed a fair amount. Kind of the idea of near misses
I thought was interesting. Very true.
Yeah, that looks very cool to me.
I was talking to her about that yesterday.
We recorded a different podcast on the movie The Martian, that
it's up now. Actually, you guys should go
listen to that. But I think I'm going to a
different session while she's doing that one.
But yeah, that sounds great. I mean, Wendy is one of the
smartest and like most experienced people in this
industry. And Bob Lord is for people that
don't know, is that Mozilla? He was at a bunch of different
places, the DNC, and is like one of the most no nonsense, like no
BS people about security that you know, he will be more than
happy to poke holes in your favorite, like, myth or, you
know, whatever it had theory or whatever it is.
Yeah, that should be really good.
A couple that I've got on my calendar, there's one on Tuesday
morning that is on commercial spyware on iOS and the speaker
is I apologize in advance for mispronouncing his name.
Matthias Friedlingsdorf. I think I got close.
He's one of the Co founders of I Verify, which, you know, is a,
you know, no free ads, but it's a very cool little tool kit for
iOS that essentially looks at your phone on a continuous basis
and says like, are you up to date on iOS?
You know, do you have this enabled?
Do you have that enabled? It's great.
There's a free version. In any case, they do a lot of
research on, you know, the mercenary spyware space.
And actually in the last two weeks, they've been part of the
publication of those iOS exploit kits that have come out, one
called Koruna. And there was another one they
just put out today. I haven't actually read it yet,
but another one that leaked that looks like it's linked to some
Russian, Russian threat actor as well.
So, you know, along with Citizen Lab and a couple of other
entities, they're one of the the groups that does this commercial
spyware research, which again is like the grossest subcategory of
our of our industry. Yeah.
Yeah, but that's, that's going to be a fascinating especially
because and we wrote about this last week or the week before,
but the fact that spy Ware vendors are so prolific now and
that I think it was Google came out with a report that said that
they are using 0 days that they attract more than you know at
this point state sponsored surveillance vendors.
So that's great. It's, it's really interesting
how how much those types of companies have moved forward and
that's definitely a good session to keep an eye on.
Yeah, that should be interesting.
You don't. I'm sure it'll be kind of
depressing too, like in the geopolitical sense, but what
isn't these days? Yes, I know.
Different. This one's a little, you know,
kind of related a little bit, but another one that was
interesting to me was the hack back one hack back session, it's
called hack back is a distraction scaling active cyber
defense. And that's essentially a session
that brings together a couple of different people, including Joe
Levy, CEO of SOFOS and Susanna say more who's with coalition
and a couple of other people talking about the, you know,
kind of how hack backs work, but then also what they kind of mean
in terms of legal implications, operational implications.
You know, this is it's obviously a really controversial type of
topic in the cybersecurity space.
So I'm, I'm always kind of drawn to those types of conversations
because I do think that it warrants a conversation.
So. Yeah, yeah.
And there's been a bunch of, because the White House
cybersecurity strategy that just came out a couple weeks ago has
some predictably vague language about doing that kind of thing
and enabling private sector operators to, you know, run
offensive operations. That's a conversation that's
happened for a very long time in this industry.
And it, yeah, it's a very heated discussion all the time.
But I've always kind of come down on the side of like that if
we're going to start enabling private sector operators to do
this kind of thing, you're opening a pretty large can of
worms that could lead to a really large pile of unintended
consequences. You know, our adversaries
already do this, whether it's explicitly or just hands off.
We we're not going to bother you if you're doing it.
If we start doing that and they, you know, other countries are
like, oh, OK, really, then, you know, we could have all kinds of
problems. Yeah, I can.
I'm I'm sure there's some sort of like trickle down effect as
well. And yeah, it's kind of a hairy
situation. I I hadn't seen that.
Well, I had heard about the White House new kind of
statement about cybersecurity. Kind of is the right yeah
modifier there. I hadn't looked into it too much
being on leave, but that's really interesting that, you
know, kind of the vague terminology around hack back in
that and I wonder if they'll talk about, you know, that as
well. Oh, I think so.
I mean, this is just the kind of, yeah, it's the very broad
outline thing. It's not the detailed strategy.
And it's exactly what you would expect, you know, from any other
White House cybersecurity strategy you've read from any
administration. Honestly, it's, you know, public
private partnerships, protect critical infrastructure, enable
the new generation of cybersecurity leaders, all of
that. The classic White House
cybersecurity statement Bingo card 100.
Percent. You could have written it, you
know, at any point. So could I.
It's there's, there's nothing original in there.
It's just, you know, kind of lather, rinse, repeat.
But yeah, yeah, so another one that I was, I'm not sure that
I'll actually go to this, but it's interesting.
We mentioned Jenny Easterly earlier.
She's doing one of the keynotes. She's not the main speaker.
I guess she in this case is sort of the interviewer and the her
guest has like 9 titles. The former Prime Minister of New
Zealand, if I'm reading this right, the right Honorable Dame
Jacinda Ardern. I hope I got that right,
Jacinda. But it's a, the session is on
empathetic leadership, which sounds interesting to me.
You know, obviously not a very technical topic, but it's sort
of to me fits in with a lot of the things that Jen used to talk
about when she was at Sisa is sort of, you know, she would
talk a lot about technical things, but she would also talk
about more, you know, non-technical topics like that,
that I think it could be really interesting.
Oh, there we go. Sorry.
Oh, come on, This is what this is what I've been waiting for.
So yeah, I'll, I'll check that out.
It's not like a newsy session, obviously, but you know, Jen's
smart and I assume this her her guest is smart as well.
So it could be entertaining. Yeah, yeah, I it's always good
to hear from from her as well. And you know, there I noticed
there were there were actually, I mean, this is interesting to
me and probably you as well, just as people writing about,
you know, more technical things. But there there was another type
of session that was talking about kind of communication with
non-technical professionals. And that one was by, let's see,
Rebecca Grapsey with Ford and Kevin O'Connor with Anibal.
So those, those always stick out to me as well because I think
that's a really difficult part that our of our industry that a
lot of people deal with is trying to get that gap close the
gap between kind of the more technical types of information.
And then how do you translate that for people across the other
parts of the business org or even just consumers, honestly?
Yeah. I mean, that's essentially what
we've spent our careers trying to do.
Yeah, you know. It's hard.
I mean, yeah, it's. Really hard, especially for
people like us who are, you know, not trained engineers.
We're, you know, English majors. So we're just kind of like
trying to take it as, you know, talk to smart people and then
translate what they tell us. Yeah, exactly.
It's. Fine.
Yeah, it's fun times. But one other one that I also
thought was interesting too is Inside the Hunt for China's
Typhoons. I don't know.
Yeah, just with everything going on with the Salt Typhoon and old
typhoon and all the typhoons over the over the years and
just, you know, obviously on the heels of last year, but I think
it was 2020, end of 2024, the whole salt typhoon revelations
about how they basically been in our critical infrastructure for
many, many months, if not. As long as they wanted to be,
yeah. Yeah.
So that one that's. Good.
It does. Yeah.
That whole part of the the world is fascinating to me.
And I don't mean geographically, I mean like the critical
infrastructure and those threat groups that are specifically
tasked with, you know, pre positioning themselves in the
critical infrastructure of whatever the adversary nation
is. We have those groups too.
And hopefully they're doing their job.
But we know that the typhoons are doing their job
unfortunately. And given the current
geopolitical climate, I would assume that Iranian actors or
doing the same thing. Yeah, definitely, for sure,
although a little different from the Typhoon side of their
strategy and operations. But yeah, that's something I
didn't see too much about, kind of that the current events and
Iran and whatnot. No, I think it was a little too
late. You know, the, the RSA
Commission, the talks emission is months and months ago.
I don't remember what the deadline is, but you know, it
was certainly last year. So yeah, I think that it's a
little too soon. But I, I imagine this summer at
Blackhat and DEFCON there will be a whole bunch of that stuff
with like here's what we found, you know, in this operation or
that kind of thing, right? You know, I would, I would
anticipate a bunch of that so. Yeah, yeah.
And then the only other thing I just wanted to mention too that
I that I saw was, I think you mentioned this as well earlier
in the podcast, but I mean, obviously there was a lot of AI.
But what I've I've noticed just looking over and you know,
looking over the different sessions and whatnot, it seems
like there is a little bit of like moving from like looking at
tools to actually how AI is being implemented in the cyber
specific. Workforce.
So like red teaming, how can AI be utilized and what are the
barriers? I think there's a little bit of
a practical approach to, you know, how it's actually being
implemented as opposed to kind of the hype.
There is. And you know, the sock and
everything else. So anyways, I thought that was
that was something that stuck out to me as well when I was
looking at through the agenda for.
This there's a yeah, you're right, there's a bunch of, you
know, AI red teaming, whether it's using AI as part of a pen
test or red teaming against AI models and things like that.
There's, you know, there's so many different portions of this
thing. But yeah, you're right, there is
some of that implementation and how are we actually using these
tools rather than AI is here to save the world?
There's still plenty of that, but there's there's some actual
practical content too. Right.
Yeah, that makes sense. All right, I know you're you got
to go, but before I let you go, I I just sprung this on you.
Before we started recording, I had this idea of reading some
names to you and you would decide guess whether it's a
prescription drug or an RSA exhibitor.
Which I love. This just came to me while I was
watching some baseball game over the weekend probably.
So we'll just do a few before you have to go do things.
I'll I'll start with maybe some easy ones.
So is this an RSA exhibitor or a prescription drug?
Skyrizi. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to.
I I feel like I've heard of that.
So I'm gonna have to go with prescription drug in my OK,
cool. I watch a lot of ads.
I know. That's the whole problem.
These are so ingrained in our brains now, yeah, that you just
can't. Like, it's really hard to
separate our, our work world from, like, the silly
prescription drug names. Yeah.
But if you think about it, Skyrizi definitely could be
like, I don't know, some sort of like.
Cloud security company. Oh, absolutely yeah, that's the
whole point. Like there's just, there's so
many of these. It's like, I mean, this is a
dumb I dumb game, but it's also just kind of shows you like
we've run out of names. Yeah, OK, here's one.
Just see where we can go here. Prescription drug name or RSA
exhibitor in case. Ace.
In case ENENQASE. That one's tough in case I feel
like that could be a prescription drug.
Could be, but it's a security company.
Oh my. Gosh, it's a full stack quantum
safe security platform. Of course it's quantum.
Right, Yep. If you saw it like spelled out
with a capital Qi, think you would have gotten it.
You would have been like, Oh yeah, I got it.
I got. It you have to look it up after.
This Yeah, yeah. Listen, we're, we're learning
together on this, on this program.
OK, another one. How about Vraylar?
Oh, Oh my gosh, this is really hard.
OK, I'm gonna go with a vendor this time.
It's a it's a drug. It's unfortunately, it's a drug.
The Google description is a drug for schizophrenia.
That sounds like an alien planet.
Oh my. God, it does.
It does. It literally does.
It sure does. Yes, that would actually be a
really good cybersecurity company name, honestly.
I mean, you couldn't go wrong. Yeah, OK.
I'm. Enjoying.
It let's do a couple more before you have to go let's see let me
just grab a random 10 that's too easy Oh here we go kindo.
Kindo like KINDO. That's correct.
I is it a vendor? It is, yes.
I got. One.
Yep. What do they do?
Kindo delivers self managed AI automation with a full tool
chain and broad model support. I don't know anymore now than I
did before I read that. There's a whole lot of words
there. I probably know less actually.
Yeah. I know.
OK, one more How about Abilify? Oh man, this could really be
either or. I'm going to go with
prescription drug. Nailed it.
You got it. Yes, it really could be either
or because any like 90% of tech companies just or it's not so
much recently, but would just add if I on to the end of like a
noun to make yes, you know, like Securify or whatever encryptify
and you know there then you have a company name, but.
Honestly, you should double check that that's also not
available. It could.
Be. Oh my gosh, it very much could
be. Yeah.
OK, wait, I have one more. I think this is going to break
your brain. You're going to have a really
hard time with this mind flow. Oh my, I don't know, mind flow.
OK, I'm going to go with. Fender.
Yes. Oh wow.
I know it sounds like like a melatonin type drug or something
is. That like social engineering,
that's the only thing I. Could think of I know it's an AI
thing. Yeah I know but yeah, so that
was our our silly game for RSA. I thought it would be fun and we
we could literally do this all day with the exhibitor list and
prescription drugs. It one thing I discovered is if
you Google like crazy prescription drug names, you
will get a whole lot of results. And you know, some of some of
them are just completely insane. And there's all these explainers
of like, why do drug names sound like this?
And there's there's actual like government regulation is about
like what has to be in the name and that kind of stuff.
But really, yeah, I didn't dive too deep into it, but there
there's reasons for it. It's not just random like word
salad, that there is some sort of logic.
Unlike naming companies, you can just say whatever you want.
That market like I mean, there are some really cool cyber
security vendor names in my opinion too, like Mandy and like
you, I don't know, I obviously like I don't know.
So I feel like it's funny how how different it's become the
past few years, like. Definitely.
Of these new companies in the debut.
Yeah, very much so, yeah. In the early days that I was
describing, you know, before about like the at the pre
history of the security industry, it was, it would just
be like someone's name or it would just be some pun, not pun,
but like version of key or crypto or security and some
combination of those. And that was kind of it like
Dave's, you know, key management company just like, OK, I guess.
Yeah, exactly. I and I love that, you know.
We got to go back. It was a simpler time.
Yeah. All right, Linds, I know you got
things to do. You have a baby to take care of.
So it was, it was great seeing you.
Thanks for doing this and premature welcome back from
maternity leave. Yeah, thank you.
Starting next week, I'll be back.
So I'm very excited and yeah, enjoy our essay, some lots of
pictures or tweet them and maybe go in the exhibit hall and take
some pictures of some of these prescription drugs slash vendor.
That's exactly what I'm going to do.
I'm just going to send you an endless series of photos of
booths. Yeah, that's exactly what's
gonna happen. All right.
Good to see you. Take care.
Thanks. While you were happy planet, I
was trying to decide for one inland, even if I couldn't.
Understand it.