Saturday April 26th 2025 through to Friday May 2nd I attended RSAC and B-Sides San Francisco, and it was amazing! Let me tell you about my trip!
I arrived late on Saturday to B-Sides and had the warmest reception of all time, thanks to Clint Gibler‘s opening keynote (Sharing Vulnerabilities – trust me, you need to watch it) where he told everyone that I was a total badass. So that was a great start! The next day I then facilitated a birds of a feather event (pictures above, thanks to Millan Williams) where we discussed threats from AI and how to handle them. No, we did not solve that problem yet, unfortunately!
Sunday night a bunch of us content creators got together for Korean BBQ, and you better believe it, that was a fun time! With:
– Ashish Rajan 🤴🏾🧔🏾♂️ and Shilpi Bhattacharjee – Cloud Security Podcast
– Daniel Miessler ⚙️– Unsupervised Learning
– Clint Gibler – tl;dr sec
– Mike Privette – Return on Security
– Tanya Janca– She Hacks Purple Consulting Inc.
– Jack Rhysider – Darknet Diaries
– Matt Johansen – Vulnerable U
– Zack Allen – Detection Engineering Weekly
– Sean Sun – Miscreants
– Ayman Elsawah ☕👋🏼 – Last week as a vCISO
– 💻 Louis Nyffenegger – PentesterLab
Monday afternoon I headed over to the Purple Book Community event, and I got to spend time with some lovely Semgreppers (Sarah Nelson is in the photo with me but even more of the team was there) and a new friend Priya Balasubramaniam!
Then on Monday evening I got to dress up! I headed off to The Champions of Security Awards, where I was able to present an award for Mentoring to my dear friend Akira Brand. When asked her thoughts she said “It is a privilege to teach. I want to foster the open and free flow of information among colleagues and make teaching a joyful experience. Everyone has something to learn, and everyone has something to give.”. She stole the show in that outfit too! See below!
Tuesday morning I had the pleasure of attending a Forte Group meetup, with a zillion amazing and powerful women in cyber! It was, as usual, amazing.
Then I ran off and hosted my Birds of a Feather for RSAC about how to mature your AppSec program. WE DID solve some problems together, and that was amazing. Below are the notes I took.
Then I ran into some AMAZING friends throughout the day. Swathi Joshi, Heather Reed, FC, Bryson Bort, Stephanie and Martin! Of course we had to get some selfies!!!!
Later that day, and every day for the rest of the week, I did book signings for Alice and Bob Learn Secure Coding at the Semgrep Booth at RSAC. That was AMAZING! We’re going to do another one at OWASP Global AppSec in Barcelona later this month if you will be there. 😀
Then I went to a private dinner for security champion enthusiasts, and that was a blast!
Wednesday morning started with a coffee meetup where I ran into my friends Anmol Agarwal, Carolann Jacobs and several other amazing ladies! That was a total blast!
Then I had another book signing, then dropped by the “National Cybersecurity Alliance” Executive Luncheon. I thought it was for women only (it was last year) so I was surprised at how FULL it was. I couldn’t find a seat, so I took a super quick pic of Lisa Plaggemier and ran off. Her speech was great!
After that I ran off to my RSAC panel, Champions of Change: Successes and Setbacks of Cyber Ambassador Programs, with Dr. Jessica Barker, Heather Read and Marissa Fagan. These ladies were AMAZING! I had such a blast with them on stage.
I snuck off after with Marisa and interviewer her!
The shameless RSAC pictures!
Then I got to meetup with Chris Hughes, CEO @ Aquia, and we did an interview. WOW. I need to read more of his stuff!
Yes, we are still Wednesday (!). After that I went to an IANs event and made a new friend (hi Jesse!), and then went to the AppSec Dinner I planned. AppSec Dinners are something I started in 2022. I travel to a city. I invite a bunch of local AppSec folks to have dinner with me. I make new friends. So do all of them. We all pay our own way. Hilarity ensures. This time was no different, and I had a total blast! Unfortunately I forgot to ask for a photo until after half the people left, but you get the picture!
After dinner I dragged Dustin Lehr away for an interview!
Thursday morning I finally got to do my much awaited talk with legendary Adam Shostack. OBVIOUSLY we talked about threat modelling (AI). It was GREAT! It was so nice to see so many people there despite being the last official day of the conference. Sorry the photos aren’t so great, my spouse stayed at home this trip!
Then I did one more book signing, and spent the rest of the day doing interviews at Semgrep HQ, and then dinner with my favourite team member from Semgrep. She’s shy, so no photo.
Last, but certainly not least, I had coffee Friday morning with James Berthoty of Latio Tech. James is a great conversationalist, and he knows everything about every single product, so it was nice to quiz him. He’s so patient! He also picked the most delicious little coffee place for us, where they put real roses into my latte!
Two more things before I end this post. I had an absolutely wonderful time, and am so grateful to get to do what I do for a living. I feel very lucky to have the life, relationships, and work that I have. Secondly, I saw so many amazing things and below are just a few non-industry awesome things I saw on my trip. Thank you for reading!
