Our top 3 takeaways from RSA Conference 2023

RSA Conference 2023 has just concluded, with an estimated 40,000 people descending upon the Moscone Center in San Francisco. This year’s theme, Stronger Together, highlights the importance of collaboration in cybersecurity. While Stronger Together is indeed a mantra, it’s also a requirement across the security landscape. As the threat (and vendor) landscape continues to increase, cybersecurity vendors must focus on innovation to deliver better outcomes for customers. As we reflect on this year’s conference, vendor announcements, and our own representation, we’d like to share a few of the themes we noticed.

Theme 1: Attack path analysis graphs are here, there, and everywhere 

To investigate threats faster and ensure complete protection, it’s critical to understand how attackers could compromise your cloud environment. Last year, almost every security vendor introduced some sort of graph-based visualization to demonstrate the steps that could (or already have) led to a breach. This year, we saw even more of these features, with most vendors demonstrating these visualizations in their platform. While most vendors focus solely on risk or the potential of being breached through these attack path analysis visualizations, the Lacework® Exposure Polygraph® goes a step beyond by combining risk factors such as internet exposure, vulnerabilities, and secrets detection, but also delivers visualizations as added context to runtime alerts. The Exposure Polygraph gives security teams a view into their cloud resources and relationships to one another, so they can quickly see the cause of security issues and understand the potential impact of an attack.

Theme 2: Alert prioritization is the real hero to doing more with less 

Prioritization is key to navigating the compounding data and alerts that security professionals encounter. Last year, we saw many vendors highlight how their product would support operational outcomes, helping customers to do more with less. This year, prioritization (and the application of AI) seems to be a common theme, as vendors seemingly recognize that automation is key.

 

 

Many vendors say they can help customers address vulnerabilities—however, Lacework goes beyond just helping. Our platform accelerates your vulnerability management, so you can identify, understand, and resolve vulnerabilities faster. Just last week, Lacework announced our custom risk-based vulnerability scoring, a significantly differentiated capability to help customers prioritize vulnerabilities and focus on the ones that matter most. With this innovation, we combine active vulnerability detection, attack path analysis, and commercially curated exploit feeds so customers can safely reduce 90% of vulnerability noise. 

Theme 3: Partnerships are multiplying, but are they adding true value for customers?  

We see lots of partnerships being announced between industry vendors, but does this always benefit the end customer? Customers who want to reduce complexity need to use partnerships wisely. Partnerships can be great for supporting consolidation, especially when customers can easily connect a product or service into their existing operational or security ecosystems.

 

 

However, relying on a partner integration to provide critical functionalities (which are ideally provided by the original vendor) can create complications and confusion when customers need to use multiple tools to access the data they need. At Lacework, we provide a single platform, delivering continuous security and an integrated experience across clouds. No added confusion or complexity — just the visibility and context you need. 

Innovation is top of mind at Lacework

Overall, it was great to see such a strong turnout at RSAC this year, and we loved spending time with customers. We were surprised that across the competitive landscape, announcements were fairly light this year. At Lacework, innovation is top of mind for us as we continue to support our customers through their cloud security journey.

If you missed us at RSAC 2023 and want to hear more about recent Lacework innovation, including our active vulnerability detection and custom risk score, please drop us a line. We’d love to chat.