Feds Skipping Infosec Industry's Biggest Conference This Year
11 93An anonymous reader shares a report: The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency won't attend the annual RSA Conference in March, an agency spokesperson confirmed to The Register. Sessions involving speakers from the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) have also disappeared from the agenda.
"Since the beginning of this administration, CISA has made significant progress in returning to our statutory, core mission and focusing on President Trump's policies for maximum security for all Americans," CISA spokesperson Marci McCarthy told us. "CISA has reviewed and determined that we will not participate in the RSA Conference since we regularly review all stakeholder engagements, to ensure maximum impact and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars."
McCarthy declined to comment on whether the decision had anything to do with former CISA director Jen Easterly being named chief executive of RSAC last week. Easterly, who was appointed to lead America's top cyber-defense agency under the Biden administration, joined her predecessor and CISA's first-ever director Chris Krebs in President Trump's line of fire back in July.
11 comments
Petty (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Turkinolith ( 7180598 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:37PM (#65965242)
"declined to comment on whether the decision had anything to do with former CISA director Jen Easterly being named chief executive of RSAC last week."
More than likely it is. So far this admin has made a point to hate on anything a democrat administration has done regardless if it was good for the country or not.
Re:Petty (Score: 5, Insightful)
by cusco ( 717999 ) on <brian DOT bixby AT gmail DOT com> on Monday February 02, 2026 @10:57PM (#65965680)
They're probably also trying to avoid getting laughed at.
attendance (Score: 5, Interesting)
by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:39PM (#65965246)
Apparently around 40,000 people attend RSA security conference [wikipedia.org]. I didn't realize so many people were interested in cryptography.
Re:attendance (Score: 5, Informative)
by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @06:16PM (#65965316)
It is a security conference, not a cryptography one. That is just one possible topic.
Re:Bunker Mentality (Score: 5, Insightful)
by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @06:06PM (#65965296)
So they are afraid to engage with the knowledgeable public.
They don't acknowledge that experts have expertise. They don't believe anything exists that cannot be seen by the naked eye. They don't accept that anything can be true with is not common sense.
The US medical system is devolving into witchcraft, so why wouldn't this administration shun RSA? Just get NordVPN and you'll be safe from all those brown-skinned trans-cyberian-orchestrators in enemy nation-states such as Canada, Themiddleeast, California and Norway (who won't set a Noblepiece Price to sell Greenland's rare-earth-AI datacenters).
They don't understand how ignorant they are.
Focused on what now? (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Frobnicator ( 565869 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:52PM (#65965266)
focusing on President Trump's policies for maximum security for all Americans
I'm sure for most participants, attending the conference is about staying current on the latest technology and proceedings. For the others, some will be attending for business networking, others for job hunting, but most experts go to the conferences to stay current on the latest things they may have missed.
The most likely reasoning here is petty: "I don't want anybody supporting someone who isn't fully loyal to the brand". It sure smells that way from the announcement and news articles. It isn't about "security for all Americans", but about Party Loyalty (tm), to the point of hatred and snubbing of anything that isn't part of the Party.
The most generous telling I can imagine is that the agency is focusing on the "statutory, core mission" part of the quote, and the "stewardship of taxpayer dollars" means "participants will have to pay for their own tickets". I don't think this is likely, but if I try hard, and I mean *really hard* to think of a way to twist the words that aren't about Party Loyalty, that's the only way I can twist and contort it to make it look like anything else.
I'm sure many professionals will still go to the conference, have already registered, and purchased their plane tickets and hotel room months ago. The question will be what happens after. Based on the past year, I'd wager Party Loyalists will give the long knife treatment to professionals who are doing their job at actual security, but we'll know in a few weeks.
Re:Focused on what now? (Score: 5, Insightful)
by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @11:44PM (#65965744)
This is the insanity that keeps frusturating me about how some of these administrations are being run.
You've got Attorney generals and DOJ heads constantly stressing that they see their job as to executute trumps agenda, and it just fucking isn't. An Attorney Generals job is to uphold the law. The DOJs job is to uphold the law. None of it is to be a team player with the president. After all, if one the president men commits a crime on trumps orders, how can we be sure the DOJ will arrest them for committing the crime? Apparently the DOJ is now VERY CLEAR that this is not how it works anymore.
When sane governance returns to washington, whoever is next really owes america a push to properly legislate the independence of the public service, like adult countries do. Because this is bullshit. No more political appointments. No more political judges. No more overriding the judicial and legislative branches. All that shit needs to burn down. and be replaced by something impartial and independent.
just embarrassment (Score: 5, Insightful)
by thegreatemu ( 1457577 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @05:54PM (#65965274)
Probably they just don't want to sit through a whole conference with people laughing at them after our cybersecurity chief uploaded sensitive documents to a public ChatGPT [csoonline.com].
Doesn't pass the smell test (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward ( None ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @06:10PM (#65965302)
"to ensure maximum impact and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars"
White house ball room *mic drop*
Re:Doesn't pass the smell test (Score: 5, Insightful)
by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @08:52PM (#65965572)
Lets ignore for a moment the fact that privately funding an addition to the White House invites all kinds of inappropriate opportunity for the sort of quid pro quo one would generally want to presumably not have ones government engaged in ...
The ballroom triples the square footage. Hosting gets more expensive, maintenance gets more expensive, heating gets, cleaning gets more expensive. Building a thing is not the only cost associated with that thing.
Secession hurts (Score: 5, Insightful)
by kaur ( 1948056 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2026 @04:39AM (#65966026)
I am in security since the '90es. The first ever paper that my boss told me to read was Ross Anderson's "Why Cryptosystems Fail", from 1993. This stated that security fails because of cooperation errors and human mistakes, not because technology.
Security needs community to share their experience. Tools and methods both for attack and defense. What works, what did not. Failures are not laughing matter but useful experience that someone else had and that you can now learn from, for free.
CISA and US feds in general are there to signal that they are part of the community. They build trust and build networks like every other agency or enterprise does. Now they go into secession to "save dollars". Guess who will lose from this - the community, or the feds?