RSAC 2025: Why the AI agent era means more demand for CISOS

Whereas over 20 distributors introduced agentic AI-based safety brokers, apps and platforms at RSAC 2025, probably the most insightful information from the convention is a uncommon, encouraging pattern for safety leaders. For the primary time in three years, general cybersecurity effectiveness has improved.

Scale Venture Partners (SVP) just lately launched the 2025 Cybersecurity Perspectives Report, which shared that the common effectiveness of cybersecurity protections improved for the primary time in three years, rising to 61% efficacy this 12 months from 48% in 2023. In keeping with the report, “70% of safety leaders have been most protected in opposition to common phishing assaults, with solely 28% of corporations reporting compromise.”

SVP additionally discovered that 77% of CISOs imagine defending AI/ML fashions and knowledge pipelines is a precedence to enhance their safety posture by 2025, up from 55% final 12 months. Notably, given the inflow of latest agentic AI options introduced at RSAC, 75% of corporations expressed curiosity in leveraging AI to automate SOC investigations utilizing AI brokers to triage massive volumes of safety alerts to stop safety incidents.

SVP’s rise in efficacy numbers isn’t unintended; they outcome from CISOs and their groups adopting automation at scale whereas efficiently consolidating their platforms and decreasing gaps attackers had walked via previously.

“Should you don’t have full visibility, the attackers are going to undergo the cracks between merchandise,”  Etay Maor, senior director of safety technique at Cato Networks, advised VentureBeat throughout RSAC 2025. “We designed our platform to remove these blind spots—bringing safety and networking collectively so nothing escapes our eyes.”

Agentic AI is shifting quick past minimal viable product to platform DNA

Maor’s perspective explains why a brand new definition of what a minimal viable product is required for agentic AI in cybersecurity. RSAC 2025 revealed how mature agentic AI is turning into. There’s a bunch of distributors utilizing agentic AI as a code-based adhesive to unify code bases and apps collectively, after which there are those who’ve been at this for years, and agentic AI is core to their code base and structure.

Cybersecurity suppliers on this latter group, the place agentic AI is core to their platform and, in lots of instances, proceed to double-down their R&D spend on excelling at agentic AI. This contains Cato Networks’ SASE Cloud Platform, Cisco AI Defense, CrowdStrike’s Falcon single agent structure, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Loop, Elastic’s Elastic AI Assistant, Microsoft’s Security Copilot and Defender XDR Suite,  Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XSIAM, SentinelOne’s Singularity Platform and Vectra AI’s Cognito Platform.

Organizations which might be counting on built-in AI-driven detection with automated containment are decreasing dwell instances by over 40%. They’re additionally nearly twice as likely to neutralize phishing-based intrusions earlier than lateral motion happens. Distributors on the present flooring typically relied on identification and entry administration eventualities to showcase how their agentic AI workflows might assist trim workloads for safety operations middle (SOC) analysts.  

“Id goes to be a crucial factor of AI all through its life cycle. AI brokers are going to want identities. They’re going to want to know zero belief, and the way will we confirm them? Explicitly handle least privileged entry,” famous Microsoft’s Company Vice President for Safety, Vasu Jakkal, throughout her keynote. As Jakkal succinctly put it, “AI should first begin with safety. It’s crucial that we evolve our safety mechanisms as quickly as we evolve AI.”

A standard theme of each agentic AI demo throughout the present flooring was triangulating assault knowledge, rapidly gaining insights into the type of tradecraft getting used after which defining a containment technique all in actual time.  

CrowdStrike confirmed how agentic AI can pivot from detection to real-time motion via a stay investigation of a North Korean risk marketing campaign to put distant DevOps hires in strategic expertise firms within the U.S. and world wide. The stay demo adopted the tradecraft of the DPRK’s Famous Chollima because it impersonated a distant DevOps rent, slipped previous HR checks and leveraged reliable instruments, together with RMM software program and VS Code, to quietly exfiltrate knowledge. It was a pointy reminder that, whereas highly effective, agentic AI nonetheless depends on a human within the loop to identify adaptive threats and fine-tune fashions earlier than the sign will get misplaced within the noise.

The gen AI aim: discovering nation-state tradecraft and killing it

It’s the assaults that no particular person, firm, or nation sees coming which might be probably the most devastating and difficult to include and overcome. The considered threats so devastating that they may simply shut down an influence grid, cost, banking, or provide chain system dominates the minds of lots of the brightest and most modern applied sciences in cybersecurity. 

Cisco’s Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel emphasised the urgency of strengthening cybersecurity with AI in order that threats lurking which may be devastating as soon as triggered will be discovered now and neutralized. “AI is basically altering every little thing, and cybersecurity is on the coronary heart of it. We’re now not coping with human-scale threats; these assaults are occurring at machine scale,” Patel mentioned throughout his keynote.

Patel emphasised that AI-driven fashions are usually not deterministic: “They gained’t provide the identical reply each single time, introducing unprecedented dangers.”​

CISOs want to know in the present day’s complicated dangers and threats

“This isn’t one other AI discuss, I promise,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz joked as he opened his RSAC 2025 keynote. “I used to be requested to provide one, and I mentioned, ‘How about we discuss one thing that really issues proper now, like getting CISOs a seat on the board desk?’” That punchline delivered two issues directly: comedian aid and a pointy pivot to the defining situation of cybersecurity management in 2025.

In his keynote, “The CISO’s Information to Securing a Board Seat,” Kurtz issued a transparent name to behaveion: “Cybersecurity is now not a compliance suggestion. It’s a governance mandate. The SEC rules have materially modified the arc of the CISO’s profession.” Boards aren’t simply evolving; they’re being compelled to reckon with cyber danger as a main enterprise risk.

Kurtz backed his argument with exhausting numbers: 72% of boards say they’re actively in search of cybersecurity experience, however solely 29% even have it. “That’s not only a expertise hole,” Kurtz mentioned. “It’s a possibility should you’re able to step up,” he inspired the viewers.

His roadmap for CISOs to succeed in the boardroom was tactical and hands-on:

1. Stage up your enterprise fluency. “Perceive the place enterprise worth is created. Should you can’t converse margin, ARR, or authorized danger, you gained’t final lengthy on the desk.”
2. Converse the board’s language. “Each boardroom runs on three priorities: time, cash, and authorized danger. Should you can’t translate cyber into these, you’ll keep on the sidelines.”
3. Construct your model outdoors the safety bubble. “Board members are on a number of boards. The way in which in is thru belief and popularity, not simply technical excellence.”

Kurtz traced the trail from regulatory reform to boardroom affect by revisiting how Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002 reworked CFOs into stable boardroom contributors. He argued that the SEC’s 2024 breach reporting mandate does the identical for CISOs. “Threats drive regulation, and regulation drives board composition,” he mentioned. “That is our second.”

His recommendation wasn’t summary. He urged CISOs to review proxy statements, establish committee-level wants and community strategically with board members who’re “all the time seeking to fill roles.” He pointed to CrowdStrike CISO Adam Zoller, now on the board of AdventHealth, as a mannequin. Zoller, Kurtz says, is somebody who earned his seat by staying within the room, studying how the board operated and being seen as greater than a safety skilled.

Kurtz closed with a problem: “I hope to come back again in ten years, nonetheless with crimson hair, and see CISOs on 50% of boards, similar to CFOs. The boardroom’s not ready for permission. The one query is: will it’s you?”

“AI isn’t magic—It’s math”

Diana Kelley, CTO of Protect AI, drew one of the vital early crowds at RSAC 2025 with a blunt message: “AI isn’t magic—it’s math. And simply as we safe software program, we should rigorously safe the AI lifecycle.” Her keynote offered a sound background that sliced via gen AI hype, spotlighting the true dangers to AI fashions that each group must defend in opposition to earlier than starting any work on their fashions. Kelly offered in-depth insights into mannequin poisoning, immediate injections and hallucinations, calling for a full-stack strategy to AI safety.

She launched the OWASP Prime 10 for gen AI, emphasizing the necessity to safe AI from day zero, associate with CISOs early, threat-model aggressively and deal with prompts, outputs and agent chains as privileged assault surfaces.

Palo Alto Networks announced its intent to acquire Protect AI the identical day as Kelley’s presentation, one other issue driving so many conversations about her keynote.   

RSAC 2025 exhibits why it’s time for agentic AI to ship outcomes

RSAC 2025 made one factor clear: AI brokers are coming into safety workflows, however boards need proof they work. For CISOs beneath stress to justify spending and scale back danger, the main focus is shifting from innovation hype to operational affect. The actual wins, together with 40% decrease dwell time and phishing resilience reaching 70%, got here from platform consolidation and automating alert triage, that are all confirmed applied sciences and methods. Agentic AI’s second of reality is right here, particularly for distributors simply coming into the market.