Inside RSAC 2026 Innovation: How the Sandbox Is Shaping Cybersecurity’s Next $18 Billion

Hey everyone. Welcome back here to Tech Trunk tv. You know, it's starting to sound a lot like RSAC season.

Oh, not s Christmas was last or the month before already. Wow. Time is flying and RSA is almost here.

So if RSA is almost here, you know, we're gonna be talking to my friend Cecilia Marinier. Cecilia is the Vice President of Innovation and Scholars for RSAC, the people behind the RSAC conference. We have some branding I wanna reinforce there with y'all.

Um, behind the title though, and all the fancy names and acronyms, Cecilia's, the lady who's been running the RSAC, uh, innovation Sandbox Contest, the, uh, sandbox Village, I think it's called, and Innovation Villages, and so much more. It's really grown up over the years, but Cecilia's kind of the, the driving force behind it. Cecilia, it's great to have you on again.

How are you? I am great. Thank you, Alan.

I appreciate always coming on. Really excited to touch base with you and the audience right before our conference starts. Such a great time.

Thank you. Absolutely. We're about a month out and, um, I know, was it last week you announced the 10 finalists for this year's, uh, innovation Sandbox?

Yes. Yes, it is. They just announced it.

I have to tell you, like, that part right beforehand is so unnerving, but it's so fun. And all of the top 10 are so excited about being recognized by the industry leaders, by those five judges as, uh, as who's should be on our stage. So, such a great time.

Absolutely. And it's more than just the recognition. There's a fair bit of cash involved too.

There is this year, and as in last year, as in what we see in the foreseeable future, each of the top 10 are gonna have a $5 million investment from Crosspoint. So they are not only getting the leg up of a platform to amplify their message, but then they're also getting the funding to actually support that so that they can really use that amplification and, uh, and go to market with their products. Excellent.

Cecilia, I feel like we jumped out ahead though, without laying the right foundation. Okay. Let's go Back.

There might be people out here who maybe are not familiar with Innovation Sandbox, they're not familiar with all of the great activities that you and your team, you know, put forth. Not, I mean, the culmination of it is RSAC conference week, but it's, it's almost like a year round chore at this point, you know, running these and yeah, selecting them and organizing and doing it for people who aren't familiar with the whole program, Cecilia, educate them a little bit. What, what's involved here.

So thank you for giving me this chance. So, sacs innovation programming is very broad, and the whole goal is to kind of offer, uh, and a platform for a lot of startups to come out and meet with the industry leaders, the decision makers, and kind of showcase what are the kind of, uh, solutions that they're taking on to, uh, to solve for the vex problems our industry faces. And so what we've done is created beyond the Innovation Sandbox Contest, which is 21 years old, uh, and has labeled, has named big names that came from nowhere.

And now you have them in your vernacular, such as, you know, big idea Axons Wiz, all of those companies have now, you know, been part of the Innovation Sandbox first and then has, has grown to that. Um, we created another contest called launchpad, where we ask venture capitalists to actually identify three startups. And guess what today is, it's the day we announce our three startups for that as well.

So go for the launchpad. Really awesome to see the caliber of companies coming in for that, but we don't stop there because it's not enough. There's so much happening in this industry, and we wanna be able to give more companies a platform.

So we've also started this area called Early Stage Expo. We've expanded it from 50 companies now it's up to 78 companies. And that runs on Tuesday through Thursday.

We have a whole track aimed at investors and entrepreneurs where we have nine other sessions that we'll be talking about trends in the industry, what are the venture capitalists looking at how to get money, how to get funded, all of these kind of, um, content pieces that also have a amplification. And then finally what we've done is we've created another thing that we're doing this year, which is private, but super fun trying it out. It's called the CISO Entrepreneur Breakfast, where we're connecting CISOs that are coming from our, um, closed door programming to startups out in the industry.

So 15 of them are gonna go and meet with these CISOs and, and see about becoming design partners. So that's what happened at conference. Additionally, we also created something that was year round, which we call Innovation Showcase, where we also identify, um, some startups that we can give a platform to.

So that's just on the innovation suite. And I, you talked about villages earlier. I'm happy to talk about sandbox slash villages whenever you want.

Well, you already did the cat's out of the bag, my friend. We've gotta finish that thought. You know, don't tease people.

What, what are we talking about here? So, you know, if you think about how the industry has developed, there's a lot of people who are working on the entry level, and that for me is like my heart. My heart goes out to those people, those are by security scholars.

They're the college day, but then as they start to move up the chain, they become into the decision makers, right? Well, one of the areas that we've tried to like combine these two forces, the early entry, mid stage career and decision makers, is this area called the Villages. It was previously called Sandbox.

And don't get confused because it's not Innovation Sandbox. And that's the whole reason we made a decision to go. Let's go back to the villages.

So the villages are areas where it's hands-on activities. It has volunteers who are sitting there ready to have a conversation with you. If you're interested in I OT or you're interested in ai, you can go talk to those village representatives.

And it's really super fun to be part of that. Also, then there's a new place that's called Connection Hub, but I'm gonna leave that one. Alan, this is my cliffhanger.

I'm leaving that for Britta and, and Linda. Excellent. You know what, I think I have Britta and Linda next week sometime.

Okay, awesome. Um, so I'll I'll be sure we, I, I quiz them on that and, and ask them about that, but that'll be fun as well since there, Cecilia, that is a great overview. But as I mentioned, we did announce the 10th finalist.

Yep. It was last week, right? It was, It was, yes.

Last Tuesday the 10th. So it was a week already. Um, well, let's, first of all this, for people who want to get more information on this year's 10 finalist, it's at the RSAC site, Right?

So what you can do is when you go to the innovation, uh, excuse me, when you go to the RSAC conference website for this event this year, and you go into programs, you'll see Innovation Sandbox, you'll see Launchpad, you'll see all these others, and that's how you can get to the top 10. You can also see at the banner at the top for the next week or so where they say, you know, come check out the top 10 winners and you can go learn more about who they are and, uh, what they do. And as you mentioned, every one of them is guaranteed a $5 million investment from, uh, Crosspoint.

But, um, Cecilia, not to put you on the spot, but let's see how, how deep you are into the Innovation Sandbox this year. Can you give us maybe the top 10 lists and a little bit about what you know about them or what you might wanna say or, Okay, I'm Gonna, that might be a bit Much, you're gonna have to cut out a little bit here 'cause I gotta go pick up my, uh, my little cheat sheet here. And Do That's You would've A cheat sheet.

Cheat sheet. You would, you would, I, I have very high regard for you, Cecilia, but if you were able to do all 10 off the top of your head, I think I'd fall outta my chair. But go ahead.

Alright, so here's what I'll say in general, I mean, there are 10 really interesting companies and of course this year is highly focused on artificial, on ai. I mean, I think all of them have AI as part of the solution, whether it's to improve productivity, whether it's to protect against ai, you're going to see, you know, AI leakage or something. You're going to see AI as center stage, but the companies range, um, they're really, I like them a lot.

I'm very excited. So we have charm security, clearly AI crash, override fig security, Jordy AI Glide identity, uh, token security, uh, realm Labs and Zero Path. How'd I do, did I get that?

I think you were almost in alphabetical order there as well. That's pretty darn impressive. Oh, You know what, I didn't, I did not humanics goodness gracious.

So sorry about that. Yeah, You left that We did not. And then there's humanics.

Okay, There's 10. That's To give to give folks an idea really just how special it is to be one of the 10 finalists. I, I think there's two, two things that we need to look at.

First of all, you know, your mileage may vary. Past performance should not be your guide. You know, that's when you're buying cars, electric cars or gas mileage, right?

But when it comes to the RSAC, innovation, sandbox, past performance does matter. You mentioned some of the companies that over the years, and, and this is, I forget now, is this the 21st year? 21st year, right.

1 billion in investment for the top 10 over the 20 years. Over 21 years. Really impressive numbers additionally over.

So if you think about the fact that we've only had maximum of 200 companies, 'cause one year we only had seven. Just I know that sounds crazy, but that was in the, a strange year in 2007. So there was only seven of them, but a over a hundred of these companies have been acquired.

So it is telling that, you know, we've had several that have gone IPO several that have, uh, most of them have been acquired or they're just doing extremely well. Like if you think of Nia for example, is doing exceptionally well. Big ideas, big names.

Um, more recently, so like talent security was acquired by Palo Alto Networks. Yes. And, um, Oliver's latest company, Penia was just acquired by CrowdStrike.

So again, like the, the track record on this particular contest is strong. Uh, so if you get on this stage, it's, it's, you know what it is, Alan, it's helping these companies rise above the noise because they have five industry leaders as judges who are actually identifying important companies that really will likely make it because they're all working from different perspectives. You've got, you know, Dave Chen coming from Morgan Stanley who's doing the banking side of it.

You've got Larry Fine Smith coming from JP Morgan Chase, who's doing the global overall, like JP Morgan Chase is one of the largest banks in the world. But more importantly, it's also like one of the companies that does help and partner with startups. You have NASM, who is the CISO at Verizon, you have Nilu how, who a newly Rousey who is at, um, who currently is in a venture capital group situation, but she actually has a lot of background in national security.

And so her whole perspective is like, you know, what is the government thinking? And then your final one is Paul Kocher, who is an incredibly deep researcher, has technical knowledge that is testing all these companies out. But more importantly, he also sold this company so he knows exactly what it takes for an entrepreneur to go from bootstrap to sale.

So those guys are our industry leaders. They're choosing the companies who will be on that stage. So by going into and seeing the Innovation Sandbox contest, you're actually already having like this, this group of people who are really invested into what's happening in the marketplace overall, identify companies that are really strong, you should pay attention to.

Absolutely. Cecilia. So we looked back, let's look forward into the present.

I don't know if you have these numbers and if you're allowed to mention share them, share, but how many companies apply to or are considered to get to the 10 finalists? That's a great question. We don't actually put, put that number out there.

Um, but we, I can tell you that the Down select is, you know, there's over a hundred, there's hundreds of companies that have applied in this year. That's what I'll say. How's that?

I would Imagine, well, not for nothing, but every day it seems my inbox is inundated with new cyber companies coming outta stealth and raising ridiculous amounts of seed money or round days, like bigger than I've ever seen. So I, I'm not surprised to to hear that as well. You know what we didn't mentioned for people who are gonna be out at RSA in San Francisco at the Moscone Center.

Yeah. When is Innovation Sandbox being held And where? So innovation.

Oh, okay. So, um, innovation Sandbox and all of the innovation activities will actually be on the second level of Moscone South. We start on early morning, March 23rd, all the way through, um, that Thursday the 26th.

So in order to get into any of the innovation events, you have to have an Expo Plus or L Access badge. But if you wanna just go to early Stage Expo, you can get in there with just a expo only match, but you don't miss all the contests. And this year, Alan, you have to come because I am doing something super fun.

We're doing something super fun. I'm not gonna tell you another cliff. I All right, well I Gotta be in the room on Monday.

I'm one level B above you. I'm up on the third floor. I think you're right below us.

That's Right. That's right. But I'll, I'll try to run down there and look for you.

If, if give me, well we, no one watching Right there. It starts nine 40. It starts at nine 40.

If you can sneak away from Lunch. All right. I could probably sneak out there 'cause ours starts early and I just gotta say hello to everyone warming up and then I'm actually the doorman scanning people.

But uh, look, you know, this is what happens when you're on your own thing. Your chief cook and bottle washer. Right.

But I'll try to get someone else to do the scanning. I'll run downstairs to see you. I would love it and would love it.

And, and don't think that we who are working at conference are any different, my friend. We're like, we're jack of all trades, man. You see us out there, you see, gotta do whatever out To get done.

Exactly. We're all in it together. It's so fun.

Absolutely. I'm really excited to see everybody this year. Please, if you see me come up and say hello, I'd love it.

A absolutely nine 40 and then I'll make it back up. 'cause I think we have David Brynn going off at 10 or 10 30, you know, and this is a year where sci-fi is becoming real. We live in a world of sci-fi where Asimov's laws of robotics and Philip k Dick's, you know, electric Daydreams of Androids, they're like real, it's really happening.

Who thought it would happen in our lifetime? Cecilia, if no one tells you, let me tell you, you do a great job, a great job running this Innovation and Scholars program every year grows and gets a better and better. It's like, you know, it gets better with age.

And me too. I'm hoping I'll have to ask my husband. I wasn't going to say it because, you know, I'm, I'm married and I know better than to, I know where not to go.

I get trouble. They do that. I, I Wanna make one small plug for my security scholars who on Wednesday Go ahead.

Will be go ahead. 22 of them this year. So that's over a third are showing off their posters on Wednesday in the North lobby.

So I would also love for any of your colleagues, friends, whatever, check out their posters. They're on the website. You go to Security Scholars, you check on the posters.

Are you gonna actually look under agenda for the poster session? They'll have a link to it. These guys are working on some really important topics and areas of focus.

So we should give 'em some love, love to see. Absolutely. And there, you know, what was it about two years ago or just last year you started Scholars?

Oh no, I've been doing the Security Scholars since 2016. Ooh. But we took a couple years off and that was kind of, we lost a little momentum because of COVID COVID.

But now, right. That, that's why I, that's what it is. It was a Reset.

We're, but we're, we're back. We're back stronger than ever. Good to hear it.

Cecilia, thank you so much for coming on here. Absolutely. I dropped my AirPod, but, um, thank you.

Keep up the great work. I can't wait. We're going to reach out to some of these finalist companies and see if we get 'em here on Tech Drunk tv, uh, between now and, and the end of next month.

Well, you know, between now and the conference. But sounds like he got another bumper crop. It's gonna be a great event.

And it, and it's not just the Innovation Sandbox, it's the entire innovation and Skylar's program. So do check it out, Cecile. We'll talk to you again soon and we'll hopefully see you in person in March in San Francisco.

Absolutely. I'll see you there. All righty.

We're gonna take a break on Text Trunk tv. We'll be back here in a minute.