DevOps Chats: RSAC Innovation 2020, With Cecilia Marinier

Transcript

Alan Shimel: Hey, everyone. It’s Alan Shimel and you’re listening to another DevOps Chats. Today’s chat has a decidedly security focus to it and that’s because we’re joined by our friend, Cecilia Marinier. Cecilia, of course, runs a lot of the innovation programs for the RSA Conference folks. And a lot of you out there say, “Oh, yes, RSA Conference, that’s in San Francisco in February and it is this year.”

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But the fact is RSA Conference is a year-long,  year-round organization that’s putting events on around the world. We go. We cover the single par RSAAPA, RSACAPJ event every year as well. Usually in July. And Cecilia can tell us about some of the other events and activities that RSAC is promoting now. Cecilia, welcome.

Cecilia Marinier:  Thank you!

Shimel: It’s my pleasure. It’s a pleasure to have you back on. Of course, we – the last time we spoke on a podcast, Cecilia was last year before RSACUS and it was about the – you guys had just kicked off … I think it was innovation launchpad, right?

Marinier:  Exactly. RSAC Launchpad. Exactly.

Shimel: Yep.

Marinier:  It was –

Shimel: And then, of course, the sandbox is … was it the 12^th year?

Marinier:  Last year was the 14^th. This is our 15^th year. Can you imagine?

Shimel: Wow.

Marinier:  I know.

Shimel: Yes, I can because it’s hard that I don’t get old but these things keep getting – have more and more anniversaries. But 15 years, my goodness. My goodness. That is. And of course, the alumni of past winners in honorable mention of the sandbox, really, is kind of a who’s who of security these days. So you guys have done a great job of picking out who the – who the powerful security vendors are going forward. So all good.

Cecilia –

Marinier:  That’s our goal.

Shimel: Yeah? Let’s not talk Sandbox right now. Let’s talk a little bit about what you guys got going on for RCACUS in San Francisco, which is the week of February 24^th, I should mention.

Marinier:  Yes.

Shimel: And RSAC, I think, is running some great promos right now for registration, if anyone’s interested.

Marinier:  And you got four days to save $1,100.00.

Shimel: Yeah.

Marinier:  And one of the most important pieces of actually signing up right now and registering right now is the fact that you can get hotel rooms. So you need to be able to register in order to get a link to the hotel room. And so I suggest that everyone register now. You get the best deal and you get a hotel room. It’s great.

Shimel: Uh-huh and hotel rooms are not cheap if you don’t wait. I confess, the last couple of years, because we come out, Cecilia, with our whole team. So I’m bringing eight or nine people because between DevSecOps event that we do on Monday, Mosconi, and our broadcast alley booth all week, I need eight or nine people. So I’ve gone the Airbnb route in San Francisco.

But if you are coming out in a small group and you need hotel rooms, you really need to register now if you wanna – because those rooms sell out real quick.

Marinier:  They do.

Shimel: Anyway, though, but let’s talk about some of the innovation programs you’ve got going on, Cecilia.

Marinier:  Absolutely. So one of the things that’s been great, I’ve been working for the RSA conference now for five years and I have witnessed how much attention and support RSA conference is giving to the innovation pieces, to just innovation in the industry. We know that our nefarious actors on the other side are very innovative but what I really love is the fact that industry steps up and we see how many entrepreneurs and innovators are coming up and really trying to be – to fight the good fight.

And one of the things that RSA conference wants to make sure that we do is to give them the platform to share what they’re doing and how their solution might actually be helping us fight that fight. So we’ve done several large changes in the program in order to expand it. Do you mind if I chat about a couple of them?

Shimel: No. Feel free. That’s what you’re here for.

Marinier:  All right. So as you know, you were mentioning innovation sandbox contests. It is 15 years old and it has just always been a very fun, exciting experience where we can highlight ten companies coming up. Many different industries. You can come and look at that on Monday. But what we did to _____ is we realized that a lot of those companies who were getting onto our main stage were later stage startups and we wanted to make sure we had a place where we could launch new companies.

And so your earlier stage companies, really just looking for that Mason idea and that’s where launchpad comes in. This year, we’re having a launchpad. We’re hosting launchpad in RSAC sandbox on Wednesday at 4:00 PM, 4:15 PM. Excuse me. And we’re hoping a lot of people sign up for that. This is a perfect opportunity. If you are a company and you are just starting off and you have this great idea and you wanna test it and share it with the RSA conference attendees, this is the place to go.

And so the signups for both innovation sandbox contests and launchpad, the submission period is open through December 4^th so I highly encourage you to put your company in there and see if you can’t get on our stage. We had three amazing finalists last year. They hailed from all over the globe and I think this is another opportunity for companies that are outside the United States to actually come to our very international conference and be able to expose what they’re doing to a very broad audience.

Twenty-five percent of the people that come to RSA conference are actually from outside the US. So it’s a great opportunity to showcase your –

Shimel: Wow.

Marinier:  Yeah, to showcase your company and your solution.

Shimel: That’s a pretty amazing number, Cecilia, because I – we are in San Francisco covering events, every other month, at least, and the fact is usually 90% of the people who come to San Francisco events are from within 100 miles. And the fact that you would get that high a number from outside of the country, let alone outside of San Francisco and Northern California, let’s say, is just phenomenal. That’s a crazy number. Wow.

Marinier:  It is crazy. And I will have a caveat. That’s actually for our full conference but even when you include the –

Shimel: I get it.

Marinier:  _____ at the larger stage where we do have a lot of people that come from California over there, it’s still a really high number. So I am very impressed by it as well. That’s why I share it.

[Laughter]

Shimel: It’s an impressive number. Alright. Keep going.

Marinier:  Alright. And the other things that we have, we still have a couple of kiosks open. So if you’re a startup and you want to actually get in front of this audience, then you should look at early stage expo. It’s a great entry point. You get a full term kiosk that you can come in and just expose your company for two days in front of our audience. It’s really fun.

One of the other pieces that I did wanna make sure people are aware of is we have changed our badge types and in order to get into any of our innovation activities, you do need to have the expo plus badge, which again, similar to you’re saving $1,100.00 if you want a full conference badge today or in the next four days, the expo plus badge will also go up. So definitely try and sign up and register today for either one of those. But that won’t get you access to RSAC Sandbox, which I’ll talk about in a minute.

But all of these are the pieces that are really highlighting some of the innovators. One other piece that we did this year or we’ve been doing for the past couple years is a seminar on Monday morning called how to for innovators and entrepreneurs and this year is really fun. I’ve been building out the agenda for this with my four venture capitalists that always help us identify what should we be teaching people who are interested in becoming innovators.

And so of course, we’re gonna do one that’s on how to find the money and one is how to get in from of a busy system. And one, I think is gonna be super interesting, is with a group from Silon, which is an accelerator group out of London and they’re gonna share 1000 lessons learned from startups. And I think this is because they have been across the globe, trying to help young early stage cybersecurity companies get going and they’ve been giving a lot of advice on how to build a company and how to get in front of the Siso.

And so they’re gonna share also with our audience in an hour’s long time just a glimpse of some of the learnings that they’ve had from their experience over the last three years. So that should be fun as well. So those are what we’re doing for all of the cybersecurity startups. Additionally, we have another – in the same area, we’re building out the RSAC Sandbox and I’m super ecstatic about that this year as well.

I actually went – I shared with you the floor plan, Alan, because it is gonna be so cool. What we’re doing this year is we’re building out 12 different areas where the hands-on activities. We’ve invited, I think, eight villages from DefCon. We have the IOT village, the ICS village, biohacking, medical hacking village, the aviation village, voting village. So if you’re curious about any of these activities, in addition, they’re gonna have a _____ net wars and gonna have a cool red _____ CTF.

This place is gonna be so much fun so I – yeah. I’d like to invite everybody to come to that as well.

Shimel: Absolutely. And Cecilia, I don’t mean to go too far down in the weeds but the difference between an expo only pass and an expo plus pass is with the expo plus, you do get to go to a lot of the innovation events.

Marinier:  Mm-hmm.

Shimel: And what else comes with that expo plus pass?

Marinier:  So the expo plus pass, so expo pass is something that gets you just onto the floor basically _____ exhibition. So the expo plus gets you on the floor and to any of these activities, as I mentioned, and to get to south stage keynotes.

Shimel: Got it. Got it. So it does get you keynotes as well.

Marinier:  And then keynotes, West Keynotes after – yeah. West Keynotes after Wednesday. So that area – and then if you go to the full conference, we’re doing some really fun things that for a full conference badge as well this year. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to talk to anybody else about it but we’re creating this whole new networking experience for people and I’m really excited for that as well. If you’re trying to build your network in cybersecurity, I highly recommend to look at our full conference badge this year. It’s gonna definitely be worth it with all the activities we’re building out for you.

Shimel: Very cool. Very cool. We may have to follow up on that on another event. Cecilia, I wanted to talk a little bit about … innovation and kinda let’s move beyond even San Francisco or include San Francisco. But as part of the larger picture, if you can, share with our listeners a little bit of what the last year has seen as part of your innovation innovations.

[Laughter]

And –

Marinier:  Yeah. Our suites. Exactly. Well, so what we have realized is that the world is – of course, the U.S. is still a very, very important and strong market and it will remain there. But what’s really amazing is just to watch how other parts of the globe are really starting to step up and to become more innovative in solving even local problems for themselves.

We just did an RSAC launchpad in Sydney and I had one company that came through there that was focused on sovereign wealth funds and tried to solve their specific problem. I’m like, “Yes. That’s a local problem that needs securities and support that might not be addressed in the larger scale for a global reason. Some of their products could then definitely be – could definitely go global but for this specific case study, he was looking just as sovereign wealth funds.”

And I think what has been fun watching is just to see how much attention around the globe, aside from all the breaches that have happened, there’s also been this whole movement across the globe where’s there’s a lot more innovation happening. And so what RSA conference is trying to do, we’ve been looking at APJ as we see this a nascent building market, a burgeoning market. And so we built out the RSAC launchpad that would, at our conference and APJ.

We also had the early stage expo area at that conference as well and both of them were very successful. We had a lot of fun putting on that contest and these were definitely ways for us to touch base with the local regional areas. Going forward, we’re hoping to do something similar. We’re trying to think through how do we support innovation around the globe. We’re very open to suggestions, ideas, and partners to help us do that. So look it up.

Look out for that in 2020 but in the meantime, we’d love to see a lot of international players at – submit for this year to either launchpad or innovation sandbox contest because I think this is – we’re just starting to see the changeover and I do believe this is gonna be a very big year for international players on our main stage.

Shimel: Cool. You know what, Cecilia? We see it too, whether it be for DevOps.com or Security Boulevard. Increasingly – well, DevOps.com has always been international. Right? 36, 37% US, 30%, 31% Europe, and then the rest of the world. At Security Boulevard, it used to be 60, 65% U.S. and U.S. is now under half. Right? Under 50%.

Marinier:  Wow. Wow.

Shimel: Even in 40s and rest of world, in the 60s. And but it also bears out this summer or this year, I’ve traveled to Asia extensively. I’ve been in Europe multiple times and startup, venture-backed starts – and when you go to Israel, I was in Israel a month or two ago –

Marinier:  Amazing. Yes.

Shimel: So it’s like a cyber startup nation.

Marinier:  It is [laughs].

Shimel: Yeah. So it’s not surprising. But I’ll tell you what I do … not get a kick out of but it really does my heart good and that is we’re not seeing a lot of the same old, same old. Security, it’s kind of a copycat kinda industry where whatever the hot thing is, right. So for instance, at RSA last year, how many times did you hear the word, zero trust at RSA conference?

Marinier:  Yeah. Buzzwords. You definitely hear some buzzwords.

Shimel: Yeah. It’s buzzword bingo. And a lot of my friends in the security industry who have been around it as long as I have, they complain about a real lack of innovation about, hey, we’re not gonna change the game or the equations doing the same old same old. We need to change it.

And when I look at things that go on in launchpad and I look at the things in sandbox and I look at some of the other programs you’re running, it’s not just that there’s a whole fresh crop of new players out there and they’re attracting venture capital and everything. It’s that they also are bringing some real innovation to the game. Right? To the security industry. And new ways of looking at stuff.

And as technology’s changing, security is changing with it. So it’s important and I can’t see how anyone interested in cyber, in security, in this industry can avoid or cannot take part in the innovation activities that you guys are doing because this is where you see it. This is where you see it happening.

Marinier:  I love that. I love that and I agree with you. I think it’s a really … a quick way to actually see what’s happening on a large scale. The nice thing is we have five amazing judges for the innovation sandbox contest that wheel down to ten amazing companies and we coach them. This is what – when you come in there, you get to have that fresh look at the hottest – a new trend or a new idea and I think that’s a great way to do it. So thank you for supporting this and I agree.

Even coming to the early stage expo, I have been looking at the companies that are – that have _____ thus far and we probably sold … it’s about two-thirds of the kiosks in that space. We have about 50 kiosks and we’ve sold about two thirds of them in a week and a half. It’s been crazy [laughs]. But really, it’s just fascinating to watch the kinds of solutions that are coming across. Some of them are similar. I’ve seen quite a few in cloud security but some of them are completely different.

We had a company that came through that’s doing a whole new look at QR codes and they’re gonna totally get rid of all of these old ways of doing something with a whole new system. Yeah, that’s so fascinating. So I definitely think it’s worth stopping by and checking out what’s being showcased at the conference.

Shimel: Absolutely. Absolutely. Cecilia, we’re about out of time and we probably [laughs] – we probably went over time but I wanna end it with this. For people who wanna find out more, where can they go?

Marinier:  So I would tell you go directly to the RSA conference website. Look under innovation programs. You’ll see everything out there and it will give you all the clues and links to what you need to – how to actually submit your company, how to apply for a kiosk at Early Stage Expo, when how to seminar’s happening, all the good information’s on that main innovation programs web page on the conference site.

Shimel: Fantastic. Hey, Cecilia, thank you so much for joining us.

Marinier:  Oh, my God.

Shimel: I know you –

Marinier:  Thank you for hosting me again. Alan, you’re such a sweetheart. Thank you so much.

Shimel: That’s why – no, it’s my pleasure, honestly, and I think it’s always a pleasure to hear from you what’s going on. I know your head’s down between now and February but I can’t wait to see what you guys have in store and keep up the great work. We’ll be in touch.

Marinier:  Thank you.

Shimel: All right. Cecilia Marinier, Mary – Marinier. I hope I didn’t mess it up too bad. The lady who makes innovation happen at RSA conference. Cecilia, have a great day. Thank you.

Marinier:  Thank you very much, Alan.

Shimel: You’re welcome. This is Alan Shimel for DevOps.com. You’ve just listened to another DevOps Chats. Have a great day everyone.

— Alan Shimel

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