With the RSA Conference 2024 in full swing, it’s clear that anybody in security who’s anybody is in attendance. The event even included a keynote speech from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The event has been very well attended, reaching pre-COVID levels. But what may be missing is more emphasis around collaboration, according to Erik Bradley (pictured), chief strategist and research director at Enterprise Technology Research.

“You’ve got some of the greatest minds in security here, and it’s like, we know the bad actors are collaborating,” he said. “But I really wish we could see a little bit more on that. I know that’s not an easy thing to do. These guys are competing with each other. But that’s one thing I’d love to see happen in future shows.”

Erik Bradley, chief strategist and research director at Enterprise Technology Research, discussed what’s on his mind during this year’s RSA Conference with theCUBE’s Dave Vellante.

Bradley joined Dave Vellante, chief analyst at theCUBE Research, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, at the RSA Conference. They discussed soaring security costs and the level of activity being seen on the show floor.  (* Disclosure below.) 

Security spending soars

Before the RSA Conference, theCUBE collaborated with ETR on a new security survey, which presented some key findings, including that the vast majority surveyed, 87%, are increasing spend on security, with 70% expecting an increase of 5% or more. The results suggested that organizations are putting real dollars into generative AI.

“You made the point … I think the number is higher than 5%. This is the SecOps segment of the marketplace,” Vellante said. “Just anecdotally, talking to people around here, talking to CISOs and budget holders, I would say the number is high single digits to low double digits in terms of the SecOps security budgets, so double or triple the average.”

There are a bunch of reasons for that, according to Bradley. Gen AI is one of them, as is multicloud, he noted.

“Hybrid cloud being the one that’s really, really driving it in all the infrastructure that you have to put in place and secure,” Bradley said. “The other thing I thought was interesting in our survey was about 15% of those people said their budgets for security is going up more than 15%. Now, we didn’t get granular on that. We don’t know if that’s a 100 or 50 or 30. We just know it’s more than 15.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the RSA Conference:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the RSA Conference. Neither RSA Conference, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE