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, often known as RSAC.
The group places on the outstanding 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 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 broaden 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 via an inflection level.”
Easterly’s appointment as CEO actually comes at a second of nice transition for the cybersecurity trade. 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 providers. On the similar 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 unbiased 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 inside the Division of Protection, and spent practically 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 a few of the most vital priorities of her profession. However the Trump administration did not ask her to stay on at CISA through the transition on the finish of 2024, and President Donald Trump has extensively criticized the election integrity work CISA had been doing beneath 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 provide it had made to Easterly to change into the Robert F. McDermott Distinguished Chair of the academy’s Division of Social Sciences.
“I don’t method this management alternative at RSAC via 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 just isn’t a political endeavor, RSAC is actually not a political group, and I’m not a political particular person. I’m a lifelong unbiased.”
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 come back collectively.
“Safety and resilience are points that have an effect on each nation, each trade, 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.
