RSA Security Conference 2025 is coming and I’m sure there will be plenty of “RSA Conference Survival Kits” being published with lots of generic tips and information on handling the long days, longer badge lines and sessions you’ll never make it to. But not in this blog post.
Instead we will discuss a prominent CIO’s insightful and very entertaining LinkedIn post where he described the RSA exhibition floor as “a circus of thousands of cybersecurity vendors…..each swearing their shiny new gadget is the checkmate you’ve been dreaming of. Spoiler alert: they’re selling you a pipe dream wrapped in buzzwords.”
I don’t disagree with him. The vendor floor at RSA can feel like a cyber-themed amusement park run by buzzword barkers promising zero trust, AI-powered, quantum-ready magic dust, and maybe even eternal digital salvation.
But painting the entire cybersecurity industry as a circus misses the mark.
It’s true that no single, shiny gadget can save us all. But neither are we helpless clowns grasping at spaghetti swords to fight off our digital adversaries.
Reality? It’s somewhere in between. Progress is happening. It’s just not always clear-cut and straight-forward. It’s pretty messy, but as cyber professionals, we are used to creating order out of the chaos.
So here are some tips for making the most of your visit to the RSA exhibition floor.
Know what you’re looking for
Before you step onto the expo floor, get clear on your pain points. Are you looking to reduce alert fatigue in your SOC? Strengthen identity controls across hybrid infrastructure? Consolidate your endpoint stack? Whatever it is, write it down. Then use those needs as your lens.
You can do a little pre-game research on RSA’s exhibitor page and search for the vendors that fall under the parameters of what you need.
Once on the exhibit floor try and stick to your list but if something interesting comes up, it’s always good to learn more. But stay focused and if a vendor can’t clearly articulate how they solve your exact problem or address your needs, move on. RSA rewards focus, not wandering to booths with the coolest swag.
Don’t be so polite and ask the hard questions
Let the sales people give you their pitch. But then dig. Ask things like:
- What does or can your product replace in my stack?
- How long until I see value?
- How do you integrate with my existing tools—without a six-month project?
- What’s your false positive rate or how accurate is your solution?
- What’s your pricing model?
- Do you have customer references I can talk to?
If they cannot give you straight answers, that’s your signal to walk away.
Don’t watch every demo on the spot
It’s tempting to sit through every booth’s live demo, but you’ll walk away overloaded and exhausted, with nothing sticking. Instead, if a solution seems promising, schedule a proper demo after RSA and bring the right teams (on both sides) to the session. This saves your time and gives you a better chance of a proper evaluation.
Get social proof
Lots of booths claim to do everything. Most don’t. Look for social proof: case studies, practitioner references, or measurable ROI. Not just Gartner positioning or AI buzzwords. And when in doubt, ask your peers. Nothing cuts through hype like a real-world story from someone who’s already been there, done that, and survived the implementation.
Practice the above at Radiant’s booth – we are ready for you!
Even if your SOC team never misses a real threat and is not miserably drowning in endless alerts that they cannot possibly triage in ten lifetimes, swing by Radiant’s booth (258) and ask us all the hard questions.
Ask us all about our unique AI SOC platform that can handle ALL alert types without any pre-training required. Ask about our happy enterprise customers and how their MTTD and MTTR had gone from hours and days, to minutes and hours respectively. Ask about our unlimited integrations and how painless the process is. Just ask away.
I’ll be here with the Radiant team ready to answer it all.
