RSA Report: Protecting Objective Truth in Cybersecurity

The sun is out over Union Square, making for great weather as tens of thousands of cybersecurity professionals pack the streets surrounding San Francisco’s Moscone Center. While most of the RSAC 2023 action doesn’t begin until tomorrow, in the hours leading up to Monday night’s Welcome Reception there were already several great sessions beginning — many of which dealt with challenges to things we depend on and know to be true.

One of the things our society has come to depend on most is our supply chain. Far removed from the days when one person created an item from start to finish, today goods are made all around the world — and as a result, the supply chain is more susceptible than ever to disruption.

In “The World in Crisis: Preparing for Extreme Events via Supply Chain Resilience,” the panelists discussed how catastrophes that were once considered “black swan events” are now a regular occurrence. These disruptions, which can range from natural disasters and geopolitical upheaval to global pandemics and cyberattacks, endanger our ability to safely and reliably obtain goods and services.

To combat this increasingly fragile and complex environment, organizations must shift to prioritizing resilience, moving from a position of considering what might happen if a catastrophe occurs, to what will happen when it does.

SonicWall has already made such resilience a corporate best practice. Back in 2020, sensing the coming disruption in the global supply chain, SonicWall’s operations department began working with suppliers, altering internal processes, and even re-engineering some products to deliver the same performance with more readily available components.

And this resiliency paid dividends: While other cybersecurity vendors reported lengthy wait times, SonicWall has been able to weather the supply chain crisis, consistently fulfilling 95% of orders within three days — even during a period of double-digit growth in both the number of new customers and in the number of new customer sales.

But while threats to the supply chain may put companies at risk, there are other, more existential threats that strike at the core of what it means to be human.

In “The Looming Identity Crisis,” RSA Security CEO Rohit Ghai discussed what it means to be human in a world where AI can now pass an AP biology test and the bar exam. In the age of AI, Ghai explained, traditional approaches to identity are dead — so cybersecurity professionals must evolve a new identity framework to secure identity in this new era.

However, identity tech has lived through two disruption waves before: the internet era and the mobile/cloud era, and in these cases, we’ve been able to harness the technology at hand to develop solutions that meet these new disruptions head on. And the era of AI will be no different.

Ghai cited the example of zero-trust, explaining that zero-trust has zero chance without AI, and that to continue effectively controlling access, zero-trust would need to incorporate AI going forward.

Fortunately, SonicWall — who is no stranger to zero-trust — is also no stranger to AI. Our award-winning secure mobile access solution, the SMA1000 Series, delivers a true zero-trust architecture. And our other solutions, such as Capture ATP with patented Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI™), incorporate machine learning and AI to both reduce the amount of human intervention needed as well as to continuously improve over time. The number of never before seen malware variants discovered by RTDMI has continued to increase every year, surpassing a total of one million in 2022.

When we weren’t enjoying great RSA presentations, we were busy in the SonicWall booth making last-minute preparations to welcome visitors Monday evening. Located at # 5585 in the Moscone North, the SonicWall booth will feature live demos on cloud-managed security and hybrid workforce security, along with a full slate of presentations (see the full schedule here.)

We look forward to bringing you even more coverage of RSA keynotes and events when the event is in full swing — so check back all this week for more!

Amber Wolff

Senior Digital Copywriter | SonicWall

Amber Wolff is the Senior Digital Copywriter for SonicWall. Prior to joining the SonicWall team, Amber was a cybersecurity blogger and content creator, covering a wide variety of products and topics surrounding enterprise security. She spent the earlier part of her career in advertising, where she wrote and edited for a number of national clients.