RSAC 2024: Advice For CISOs From Akamai, Proofpoint, SentinelOne & Splunk 

RSAC 2024 is in full swing, with thousands of top cybersecurity leaders, policy makers and CISOs here in San Francisco setting the global cybersecurity agenda. 

Key themes of the show so far have been generative AI, both on the offensive and defensive side of the security coin, data loss protection, CISO burnout, and increasing sophistication of threat actors. Another major talking point is consolidating and simplifying the CISO tool set, with a focus on improving alerts and prioritizing real risks.

Expert Insights are at the show to learn from leading cybersecurity experts. On the second day of the show, we spoke with leaders from Splunk, SentinelOne, Akamai and Proofpoint, and we asked each of them for their advice for the CISOs attending the show this year.

Splunk

Splunk is the market leader of SIEM and SOAR solutions, protecting more than 14,000 customers globally. In March 2024, Splunk was acquired by Cisco in a $28 billion USD deal. We spoke Patrick Coughlin, SVP Global Technical Sales, Splunk to get his thoughts on the future of the SIEM and SOAR space, the Splunk platform post CISCO acquisition.

Patrick’s advice for CISOs attending RSA:

“Use [RSAC] as an opportunity to build relationships with partners and with vendors that you are going to rely on in the future. Because at the end of the day, the average CISO has 70,80,90 tools, but there’s a subset of those you are going to really rely on[…]Trust them enough that you can bring them your challenges[…]say look, this is what I’m really worried about[…]and then push them to bring you answers in a way that doesn’t always maybe involve selling you more software, but can really help deepen that relationship.”

SentinelOne

SentinelOne is a market leading provider of autonomous endpoint, cloud and identity security solutions, supporting over 13,000 customers. We spoke to Ely Kahn VP, Product Management, Cloud Security, AI/ML, and Core Platform, about SentinelOne’s announcements at the show, including their Purple AI solution.

Ely’s advice for CISOs attending RSA:

“Get some sleep! RSAC is a marathon. Just like the life of a CISOs a marathon. And there’s more parties, drinks and free food than you should humanly consume. So, pace yourself.”

Proofpoint

Proofpoint provide leading email, web, cloud, compliance, identity and social media protection solutions with more than 500,000 global customers. We spoke with Tim Choi, VP of Product at Proofpoint, to discuss their ‘complete and continuous’ email security platform, identity threat detection and response, and Proofpoint’s new DLP Transform package for consolidating endpoint and cloud DLP.

Tim’s advice for CISOs attending RSA:

“Make sure you take the time to reconnect with old friends. Spend time with them. That community is so important. Yes, we’ve got great technology, Zoom, and Teams allow us to connect. But nothing beats being in person and just catching up, talking about old times, or sharing learnings and figuring out what to do next, and work on whatever next projects that may be. There’s the human element that is so valuable, since we’re all here.”

Akamai

Akamai support billions of users every day with secure cloud computing and content delivery services. Expert insights spoke with Steve Winterfeld, Akamai’s Advisory CISO, to discuss how cybersecurity issues can be material events, how threat actors are evolving their tactics, implementation of Zero Trust and Akamai’s work to simplify security solutions for their customers.

Steve’s advice for CISOs attending RSA:

“This is a technology show, but don’t forget the processes. I’m having a lot of discussions about things like materiality or zero trust. A lot of that comes back to making sure you have the right processes, and the right playbooks and the right partners.”

Looking For More RSA Coverage?

You can see more of Expert Insights’ coverage at RSA here: RSAC 2024

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