Jen Easterly, a longtime public- and private-sector cybersecurity practitioner who led the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for greater than three years, has been appointed CEO of RSAC Convention, referred to as RSAC.
The group places on the distinguished annual gathering of cybersecurity consultants, distributors, and researchers that began in 1991 as a small cryptography occasion hosted by the company safety big RSA. RSAC is now a separate firm with occasions and initiatives all year long, however its convention in San Francisco continues to be its flagship providing with tens of 1000’s of attendees every spring.
“The convention is the crown jewel, however now we’re additionally a year-round world membership entity for cyber professionals,” Easterly tells WIRED. “We’re internationalizing extra deeply and I’m excited to increase the innovation sandbox, the early stage expo and startup ecosystem, and that’s actually about supporting the subsequent era of AI-driven cyber corporations and safe by design innovators to supply high-quality software program. In some ways we live by an inflection level.”
Easterly’s appointment as CEO actually comes at a second of nice transition for the cybersecurity business. AI tools are starting to reinforce the capabilities of both attackers and defenders, and safety consultants have an important position to play in securing AI platforms themselves together with the infrastructure supporting the companies. On the identical time, the Trump administration’s stark alterations to US foreign and domestic policy appear poised to change private-sector cybersecurity and public-private partnerships in North America and around the globe.
Easterly emphasizes that she is a lifelong impartial and that cybersecurity crosses all administrations and borders. She had a number of deployments within the US Military, labored for the Nationwide Safety Company, helped set up US Cyber Command throughout the Division of Protection, and spent practically 5 years in command of Morgan Stanley’s world cybersecurity, all earlier than becoming a member of CISA in 2021.
Belief constructing and collaboration have been a number of the most essential priorities of her profession. However the Trump administration did not ask her to stay on at CISA in the course of the transition on the finish of 2024, and President Donald Trump has extensively criticized the election integrity work CISA had been doing below her management and that of her predecessor, Chris Krebs. Individually, in July, the Military directed the Army Academy at West Level to rescind an employment supply it had made to Easterly to develop into the Robert F. McDermott Distinguished Chair of the academy’s Division of Social Sciences.
“I don’t method this management alternative at RSAC by the lens of worry and hypothesis, I method it with the identical relentless optimism and perception within the energy of neighborhood that’s been on the heart of my service, private and non-private,” Easterly says. “Cybersecurity will not be a political endeavor, RSAC is actually not a political group, and I’m not a political particular person. I’m a lifelong impartial.”
Easterly says that RSAC Convention will proceed to welcome insights and collaboration from officers of all governments as a part of its efforts to facilitate neighborhood constructing and collaboration in cybersecurity. And he or she says that there’s “magic” that may occur when the safety neighborhood has supportive boards to return collectively.
“Safety and resilience are points that have an effect on each nation, each business, each citizen,” she provides. “And RSAC’s energy is that it brings collectively operators and technologists and innovators and researchers and policymakers throughout administrations and throughout borders exactly as a result of it’s grounded in experience and mission, not in politics.”
Up to date 9 am ET, January 15, 2026: Clarified that RSA Convention LLC’s flagship occasion has now been rebranded as RSAC Convention.
