Jen Easterly, a longtime public- and private-sector cybersecurity practitioner who led the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company for greater than three years, has been appointed CEO of RSAC Convention, generally known as RSAC.
The group places on the outstanding annual gathering of cybersecurity specialists, distributors, and researchers that began in 1991 as a small cryptography occasion hosted by the company safety large RSA. RSAC is now a separate firm with occasions and initiatives all year long, however its convention in San Francisco remains to be its flagship providing with tens of hundreds of attendees every spring.
“The convention is the crown jewel, however now we’re additionally a year-round international membership entity for cyber professionals,” Easterly tells WIRED. “We’re internationalizing extra deeply and I’m excited to develop 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 way of an inflection level.”
Easterly’s appointment as CEO actually comes at a second of nice transition for the cybersecurity business. AI instruments are starting to reinforce the capabilities of each attackers and defenders, and safety specialists have an important position to play in securing AI platforms themselves together with the infrastructure supporting the providers. On the identical time, the Trump administration’s stark alterations to US international and home coverage appear poised to change private-sector cybersecurity and public-private partnerships in North America and all over the world.
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 almost 5 years in control of Morgan Stanley’s international cybersecurity, all earlier than becoming a member of CISA in 2021.
Belief constructing and collaboration have been among the most necessary priorities of her profession. However the Trump administration didn’t ask her to remain on at CISA throughout the transition on the finish of 2024, and President Donald Trump has extensively criticized the election integrity work CISA had been doing underneath her management and that of her predecessor, Chris Krebs. Individually, in July, the Military directed the Navy Academy at West Level to rescind an employment supply it had made to Easterly to turn 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 way of the lens of concern and hypothesis, I method it with the identical relentless optimism and perception within the energy of group that’s been on the middle of my service, private and non-private,” Easterly says. “Cybersecurity just isn’t a political endeavor, RSAC is actually not a political group, and I’m not a political individual. 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 group constructing and collaboration in cybersecurity. And she or he says that there’s “magic” that may occur when the safety group 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.
