On this episode of Inside the Media Minds, our co-hosts Christine Blake and Madison Farabaugh sat down with Greg Otto, Editor-in-Chief at CyberScoop, to hear what’s top-of-mind for him and his team this RSA Conference season. During the conversation, they discussed how Greg is approaching the conference, from logistical planning to pitch reviews, as well as the key themes he’s paying attention to this year.
Greg starts planning for RSA about six weeks in advance. When it comes to fielding PR emails about on-site meet ups or potential news or research to cover, he prefers menu-style pitches that list who the PR person represents that will be attending RSA, and what they can speak to.
In terms of what he’s looking forward to the most, Greg is excited for the 2025 RSA program of speakers. “The agenda looks really, really interesting. I normally had gone out there to really just talk to people,” he adds. “This year, I find myself looking to cover more of what is actually going on in the program.”
In particular, Greg looks forward to investigating who the real players are in the AI security space and attending panels led by federal experts, such as those from the FBI and NSA. “Anything to do with what the federal government is doing and the message they are bringing to RSA will probably warrant coverage in my publication.”
Cyber-adjacent, but front and center
Since his return to CyberScoop, Greg has had a newfound interest in cyber-adjacent trends, beyond the technical aspects of cybersecurity. This includes topics such as how companies are taking out cyber insurance policies, how lawyers are handling ransomware attacks and, ultimately, how cyber is becoming fully integrated into business operations.
“You’re starting to see a lot more cyber insurers realize that they need to play at RSA if they are going to spread the word about what their policies can do for companies,” Greg explains. “Whether it’s the SEC disclosure policy or different things that they have to do, you know, post, God forbid, a ransomware attack, there are a bunch of lawyers that I know that are going to be holding sessions to talk about what they’re doing there. I think that that is important for our readership as well when it comes to leadership inside a company.”
If you’re interested in hearing more about Greg’s plans for RSA and his advice on breaking through the noise (before and during the conference), tune in to the full episode or read the transcript below!
Timestamps
0:39 – Greg’s Journey to CyberScoop (x2)
3:59 – Industry Lessons-Learned, Applied to Editorial
4:56 – What Keeps Greg Engaged in Journalism
8:19 – A Day in the Life of Editor-in-Chief
11:53 – Greg’s History of Attending RSA
13:14 – RSA Topics of Interest
15:05 – What We’re Not Looking Forward To…
17:10 – Workback Plan for RSA Scheduling
19:09 – Preference on Pitches and CyberScoop Coverage
25:07 – Greg’s Opinion on Networking Events
27:48 – Standing Out on the Show Floor
30:09 – The Perfect Time to Publish Research
32:33 – Under the Radar Themes
Want more from Inside the Media Minds? Find all of our past episodes here!
Transcript
Christine Blake (CB): Welcome to Inside the Media Minds. This is your host, Christine Blake. This show features in depth interviews with tech reporters who share everything from their biggest pet peeves to their favorite stories. From our studio at W2 Communications, let’s go inside the media minds. Hi everyone. This is Christine Blake, one of the co-hosts of Inside the Media Minds, and I’m here with my co-host.
Madison Farabaugh (MF): This is Madison Farabaugh.
CB: Thanks for joining us everyone who’s listening today. We have Greg Otto, the editor-in-chief of CyberScoop, joining us to talk about all things RSA Conference. Thanks for coming on the podcast,Greg.
Greg Otto (GO): Happy to be here.
CB: Great. So at CyberScoop, I know you are the editor-in-chief. You have a long history of background in this space. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your journey to CyberScoop initially, and then your journey back, if you want to start there.
GO: Yeah, yeah. This is my second stint working with CyberScoop. My first one, I helped stand up the publication in 2016, helped launch it, and we covered all things cybersecurity. It was a good time. I can remember the first day that we launched was a day that Yahoo announced a breach of 500 million user accounts and a NSA analyst was arrested for allegedly sharing secrets that he shouldn’t have. So that time kind of set the tone. I’ve never been bored since then.
So did that for years, did that up until 2020, and then I actually went out into the cybersecurity industry myself. I’ve worked for a threat intelligence firm, I’ve worked for an application security auditing firm, I’ve worked for a cyber insurance firm that was also standing up their own security solutions that they were giving to small and medium businesses. And then that was, I put like, I guess, a good way to say that it’s like an internship.
CB: Okay.
GO: Like to learn what was really going on in industry and learn how some of the practical stuff I’ve been writing about really was applied to just, you know, the daily business of running a company. And then around July of last year, my CEO, Goldy Kamali, well, we had always been in contact, had a great relationship, but at every turn she said, “You know, I would love to have you back running the helm.” And then I finally realized, you know, I miss doing this, and journalism is my calling. So, here I am doing doing everything again and once again, I am not a bored individual.
CB: I love that.
GO: Back covering all the, every cyber security story that you could imagine under the sun right now. I’ve probably spent time helping reporters cover it or covering it myself.
CB: And that’s so cool that you have different perspectives now from going out into the cyber world, working in house at some of these, these companies, so that that’s really interesting. And then it’s cool too, that you started the publication, and then now you’re at the helm of it, right? So that’s a really cool experience.
GO: Yeah, it’s, it’s been a whirlwind. It’s always been fun. And yes, working out in the industry, it really kind of set a path and really separated, like the wheat from the chaff in terms of, like, what really matters and what companies care about and what organizations care about. Because one of the big things that I learned is that a huge enterprise company or government agency does not have the same sort of concerns when it comes to a small and medium business and their cyber security program, but at the same time, there are a lot of similarities that you wouldn’t think would would be there. So it was just interesting to learn. You know what really does matter, what resonates and what gets the job done when it comes to cybersecurity inside organizations.
CB: I guess on that point, I was gonna ask what your takeaway was. But on that point, are there any like things that you’ve taken into the your editor in chief role at cybersecurity, that you learned at in the industry?
GO: So that I’ve taken in is necessarily like it has more been like a coalescing of certain like sub topics in cyber security. I know what companies are experts more than others when it comes to certain things, whether that’s, you know, identity management or application security, or like, who has good telemetry for email security, or just knowing what companies really specialize in and how they fit into the marketplace, was something that once you’re in the industry, it just coalesced more than ever did when I was actually on the journalism side of things.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense.
MF: And you mentioned a bit ago how journalism is kind of the passion, the calling for you. So what kind of initially brought you into this industry and what keeps you engaged today that’s your favorite part?
GO: So, I would say I went to college for journalism, but I wanted to be a broadcast journalist. I was a kid that grew up in the late 90s, early 2000s watching Sports Center every morning. So I wanted to be an ESPN anchor and actually started out of college doing more sports journalism. But sports journalism, in terms of like, salaries, it’s, you get paid, like, very, very little money, and then it goes, like a hockey stick that if you manage to survive long enough in the industry and really separate yourself. Then you make, you know, the millions of dollars and get an agent and do all of that stuff. But on the lower end, it’s, really was like, it reminded me of jobs that I worked in high school, in terms of in terms of payment.
And so while I loved doing it, I finally said to myself, you know, okay, this is a career. Like I have bills. I’m an adult now, and all of the things that adult life as I would like to be able to sustain. So I started looking at different topic areas to cover, and I bounced around doing a bunch of different stuff. I covered some political stuff. I did some radio work, but then I got interested in technology. And this is around like 2011, 2012. This was like the boom days for like Web 2.0, and Twitter was so new, and Facebook was so new, and all of the startup, startup ecosystem that was having, that was coming online, started covering all of that. But then, the NSA leaks happened with Edward Snowden, and I was like, “Well, what is this about?” I had no idea that that that, I had no idea what the entire like cybersecurity industry had to offer learning about. Like, and I mean that like, from a programmatic standpoint, like the surveillance industry and what the NSA actually did. And after I got dropped into that world, I was like, “Whoa, there’s a lot going on here.” And I was just so happened to be in D.C., and this is, I feel like, outside of, like, the technical aspect of Silicon Valley and everything that comes with that.
I would argue that cybersecurity Silicon Valley is actually right here in the D.C. area, the DMV, as some know it, with the NSA. The NSA is such an anchor point for cybersecurity, and a lot of the companies that we see and that I cover have all been rooted in what the NSA is doing. So as I dove into cybersecurity and covering it, I found that with location and my background and my curiosity, this was all very, very interesting for me. So I sort of dove head in and been covering it ever since.
MF: That’s awesome to see that journey too, and just how everything kind of worked out that way. So bringing it kind of full circle to your current role as editor-in-chief, what does your day to day normally look like in terms of what you prioritize, maybe the different assignments that you might be working on or overseeing?
GO: So I work, it’s me and three other reporters, Tim Starks, Derek Johnson and Matt Kapko. I would say on the day-to-day, I’m trying to prioritize stories that I know that they’re going to cover on all of their particular beats. Tim is more rooted in like the policy and the high level cybersecurity happenings, what goes on at the White House, and what’s going on in Congress, and really what levers are being pulled on a policy angle. Derek does that to some degree too, but Derek also covers a myriad of different stuff, like, like the IT, OT, ICS realm, privacy, AI, security, and that Matt Kapko does a lot of cybercrime coverage and a lot of vulnerability coverage.
So, I’ll look at what’s going on in the world, whether it’s a report that’s being released by a top flight security company that might fit into one of those buckets and sort of be a traffic cop, where it’s like, “Okay, Tim, you’re covering this. Matt, you’re covering this. Derek, you got this.” And then I will do that, set them off, and then work on our newsletter. We have a daily newsletter that goes out to 120,000 subscribers, that hits upon the coverage that we have, and sometimes upon the cyber-adjacent coverage that we might have in one of our sister publications, like FedScoop or DefenseScoop.
And then throughout that, I am planning that newsletter. That newsletter gets out, sent out daily. I write that every day. And then I would say throughout the afternoon, I’m also tuning in to stories that I know that I want to cover, whether it’s from a topic that may be set out for a little bit more deeper enterprise coverage, may focus on that, or I get focused for my own podcast, Safe Mode, where I’m talking to cybersecurity people, whether that’s in the industry policy side, CISOs, setting up interviews for that. That’s a weekly podcast that we tape, and I’m usually taping interviews for that.
And then I’m helping run the company as well. So Scoop News Group does a bunch of events as well, and we’re planning a bunch of our festival weeks, like AI Week, Cyber Week, and while we have an awards or a what I think is an awards-winning events team. They obviously need help making sure that they get all of the top flight cybersecurity minds, whether that’s in the industry, whether that’s on the policy side, to participate in our events. And I will do outreach in that regard, too. So that is just like, what’s on, I would say, like, the resume stuff. If I get pulled into other things at times, I will gladly do that. I try to be a team player as much as I can. But like I said, I’m never bored. I’m always I’m always pulled into something.
MF: No shortage of hats that you’re wearing, that’s for sure.
CB: I was gonna say we’re big Cyber Week fans. So good job to your team on that one. We love Cyber Week. Speaking of events, there’s my Madison-style segue, we would love to talk to you about the RSA conference. We’re about a month away, huge industry event that everyone gets very spun up about every single year. I was recalling, I think even like 2019 I think I set up several meetings with you, Greg. We always ran into each other at those events, pre-COVID. So how many years have you been attending?
GO: I have been attending, I would say, I think maybe 2016 or 2017 like ever since I’ve been Editor-in-Chief of CyberScoop, I probably been at RSA. I was not, this will be my first RSA in a couple years since, actually, pre-pandemic. The last RSA I was at was when San Francisco sent out their first like state of emergency that things were about to shutdown. So some, yes, some time has passed. Happy to be back, but yeah, I’ve been covering it for years, and I’m really excited to get back because I’ve been looking through the agenda.
I’ve obviously been planning to go out there, and this is the first year, I don’t know whether it’s just because, like, I I’m, like, newly reintroduced to it, but I was looking through the agenda. The agenda looks look really, really interesting. I normally had gone out there to really just talk to people like, have face-to-faces, and really didn’t gravitate toward the actual program itself. This year, I find myself covering and looking to cover more of what is actually going on in the program. Some really, really interesting stuff going on.
CB: That’s cool. We’ve actually heard that more and more lately that reporters are attending more of the sessions and really trying to understand some of the program. Any specific topics that caught your eye?
GO: I am really interested to see how everybody is talking about AI. Obviously, AI is a big discussion point in technology overall, but especially in security. I think it’s really interesting because the security industry isn’t new to AI, like they’re new to generative AI and everything that comes with that. But I feel like a lot of what AI has driven in security has been on the automation side, and I think we’re starting to see a lot of that work, like the fruits of that labor come to bear. And you’re starting to see it in the in the programs in RSA.
So, I’m really interested to see how the these companies consider themselves players in the AI security space, despite the fact that we have this generative AI boom. That wasn’t around the first time that I was covering RSA, so I’m going to be spending a lot of time in these sessions, listening to what they’re saying about AI, trying to separate what is sort of just noise and what is actually like good programs. Because I talk to a lot of these companies that are like, “Oh, we’re an AI security company now,.” And it’s like, okay, are you though? Let’s, let’s spend some time actually looking at what the products are and how they are being implemented into organizations. That’s something that I’m really going to be concentrating on when I’m out there.
MF: That’s awesome. And you had mentioned how, you know, this year, the program is something that is more appealing to you. Is there anything maybe that you’re not as much looking forward to going back to RSA this year, maybe from past experience, or just going into it fresh again?
GO: It’s just, I would say, just being exhausted, like being exhausted by the end of it, I will say. By Thursday or Friday, I am dragging, I’m ready to go home, I am exhausted. I will probably feel the same way this time around. I’m just saying, I don’t, I don’t miss that feeling. It’s impending, like I can see it coming. But as long as it’s well worth it, and we get a lot of good content for CyberScoop, whether that’s written articles, podcast interviews and and some some further work on the weeks that I have been talking about, I think it’ll be a worthwhile endeavor. And I always do like going out there.
It’s a bit ironic, but it’s truthful in that a lot of the people that attend RSA, I feel like live in a 40-mile radius of the D.C. area, and it’s like the entire area just picks up and heads West. And I have more conversations with people that I’ve been trying to get in front of that live within and operate within, like, a half an hour of our headquarters, and I can get all the meetings that I’ve been trying to get right there in San Francisco. So it feels a little bit backwards, and everybody has to go 3000 miles on the opposite coast to get in front of one another, but hey, this is the life that we let, or life that we pick, right?
CB: We’re on the same flights too. That’s the best part. You’re looking around the flight, you’re like, “Oh, hey!”
MF: Yeah, that was funny. Last year was my first time attending RSA, and Christine and I were both on the same flight as one of our clients that was based in Virginia. So very interesting.
GO: I’ve done that before. I’ve actually, some of the best conversations that I’ve had related to RSA have been on the flights back. Like it’s just just happenstance, just happened to sit down next to somebody that I have been meaning to talk to for months and never expected it. But hey, here I am. We’re not going anywhere for a couple hours. So let’s, let’s chat.
MF: That’s awesome. So how far in advance would you say you start planning your on site schedule for RSA?
GO: I would say six weeks. Like, what are we, about a month out now? I’ve been fielding emails now for about the past week, week and a half, yeah, just really ramping up trying to make sure that I don’t get, I don’t set myself up for like a deluge in that. I want to make sure that all of the conference programming I have a chance to attend that, take that in, see if there’s stories there, but also meet up with people outside of the conference, whether that’s a podcast interview, whether that’s just a coffee. Like a lot of these, a lot of the business that gets done at RSA never sees the actual conference, like we all know this.
A lot of these companies set up at a hotel suite, probably within a five to 15 minute walk around RSA, and they don’t leave those, those suites. They do all their business. They hang out at the suite. You might see them at a party at night, and that’s, that’s that you’re like, “Oh, wait, I thought you were going to be there.” And it’s like, well, yeah, I was posted up for 72 hours inside the St Regis or the Ritz or whatever, that that happens. So it’s all just making sure that I have the balance to be able to catch the actual programming, but run off to go meet an executive or a government official somewhere outside of the conference, make sure that the timing all works. And I’m not, you know, running around San Francisco, just having too much to do.
CB: Yeah, and I’d love to chat a bit about, like, the pitches that you’ve been receiving, that your team has been receiving, and how and what sets them apart, and any advice you’d give to people pitching companies trying to get in front of you. Like, do you like research? Do you want to just have catch up conversations? Tell me a little bit about your thoughts there.
GO: So, I would say the best things, I would say that this is a total personal preference on my regard. I wouldn’t say, I don’t know that, I would necessarily make this a trend for all reporters because each reporter might be different. That being said, I do like the emails where it’s like, “Hey, this is who I represent. These are my companies. They’re all going to be at RSA, take a pick.” That, they’ve been helpful. The singular one-off companies that a lot of the times that like, like, look, I know a lot about the cybersecurity industry, but I don’t know every company that’s out there. So when I get an email from some company that I’ve never heard of that says, “Oh, we are the market leader in x, or whatever.” I mean, are you really like, you’re going out there? That’s fine for marketing and for business and all of that, but at the same time, it’s like, well, I’ve never heard of you, like.
CB: And you know, yeah.
GO: So I don’t like, I’m not I’m not as attuned to really respond to that pitch, and the best pitches that I have, or the shortest, from the standpoint of people that I’ve worked with all year, like, because I know, like we’ve said, everybody goes out there. And, of course, I’m not just talking to a lot of PR folks just in the lead up to RSA. So if I know your people are going to be out there, and I’ve worked with you on stories before, if you want to just, “Hey, do you want to catch up?” Or, “Hey, we got this cool thing going on.” Or, “Hey, now would be a good time to sit down with these people that I know that you’ve been trying to reach out to for the past couple weeks. Let’s set something up at RSA.” That is always helpful. Like, if I see a name that I recognize, and I know that I’ve been working with them on stories for the past couple months, just say, “Hey, we’re going to be at RSA, do you want to do X?” Yep, let’s, let’s do it.
The the, almost the worst ones that I would say are just the random cold emails from one company that I know I’ve never heard of or I have no relationship with. They’re the ones that I’m like, okay, I’m not really gonna respond to this.
CB: No, that makes sense. That’s good insight. And I’m just curious too, is there any sort of expectation of coverage coming out of CyberScoop at RSA? Like does there, are we thinking like coverage on different sessions, keynotes? Obviously, there may be some breaking news, or is there, like, some sort of number, like, oh, you want to five stories a day kind of thing.
GO: I don’t really think t’s the number. I just think it’s if something is newsworthy, like, obviously we’re going to do content. We’ll pick our spots. Excuse me. I would say there are a number of panels in the program that have federal experts on them. Those are ones that I will definitely be paying attention to, and the ones that will probably get coverage. Like, I know the FBI is going out there to talk about cybercrime. There’s a really interesting panel I forget the day, but like the chief of the AI Safety Center for the NSA is going to be talking. That’s going to be a really interesting panel that I will probably end up writing something on, anything to do with what the federal government is doing and the message they are bringing to RSA will probably warrant coverage in my publication.
Outside of that, it really is, I mean, we’re looking over what is going on in terms of the program, and, yeah, like I said, the AI stuff is looks to be really plentiful. So there’ll probably be a bunch of coverage on that. We cover zero trust a lot. We cover cyber crime a lot. I also want to cover some of the like cyber, what I call cyber-adjacent stuff. Like so much of what cybersecurity coverage is about is, like the technical aspects of cybersecurity. And what I’ve been really concentrating on since being back at CyberScoop is a lot of like the, what I call the cyber-adjacent stuff. And what I mean by that is like the insurance side of things, like companies are taking out cyber insurance policies, and you’re starting to see a lot more cyber insurers realize that they need to play at RSA if they are going to spread the word about what their policies can do for companies and organizations.
Also cyber lawyers, which is not a tech that’s not a legal term, that’s just what I call them. I know there are a lot of lawyers talking about the different policies, whether it’s the SEC disclosure policy or different things that they have to do, you know, post, God forbid, a ransomware attack. There are a bunch of lawyers that I know that are going to be holding sessions to talk about what they’re doing there. I think that that is important for our readership as well when it comes to like, leadership inside a company, because it is just not about having the right EDR or the right password manager or making sure your cloud instance is secure. It’s that, okay if we are breached, what do we need to do? And not just from a technical perspective, but like a business operations perspective, what’s it going to cost me? What do I need to protect? Who do I need to call? Who do I need to bring in? So things like that is really what I am looking for when I go out there and will probably be featured in coverage from the conference.
CB: Okay, great to know.
MF: Yeah, that’s super helpful. So you’ve mentioned kind of you’re going to be focusing on different sessions, paying attention to the program that RSA has put out. So what is your take on kind of those networking events as well? Because I know you’ll also probably be doing a lot of one-on-ones with companies or folks, people. So in terms of networking events, where do you see the value in those, is that something that you prioritize while you’re at the show?
GO: I do try. I don’t know prioritize is the right way to go about it. I just like, I will absolutely attend them and just to see if I can catch up on a conversation with somebody that I know is going to be there, or if I run into somebody at the conference and they’re like, “Oh, come meet me at this thing afterwards, and we can catch up.” So I definitely attend them, and I definitely find value from them. I don’t try to plan them in advance, only because I feel like the best networking at RSA is done ad hoc. So I kind of just go with the flow there and see where the day takes me, and then kind of follow up at night, or, you know, in the evening at those networking events, if possible, to catch up on anything that I may have missed.
MF: Yeah, that makes sense. Because I’ve also heard from some reporters where the night time is when they’re working on all of their stories too, for the week, so.
GO: And there is that, that there I will need time to write. So I will probably, like, like I said, I do pick and choose only because, yeah, there’s not enough time in a day when it comes to RSA. So there’s only so many events that I can attend to and still do my job.
MF: Is there any event in the past that has really stood out to you, like, do you have a favorite from over the years or something that was just really cool that you had attended
GO: At RSA? I think that I know that there were a bunch of companies here, and so don’t get mad if any companies are out there listening. Don’t get mad if you sponsored this event with them, but that Bugcrowd, the report and had a party at the Mint, and don’t get me, it was fun, like, of course it was. It was a party, but that was really good, from the standpoint of, had a lot of good one on ones there, had a lot of conversations with people that I’ve been trying to talk to for years that I just never got a chance to, and it was a very fruitful networking event. So that, and it was pretty cool. I mean, having a party at the Old San Francisco Mint. I mean, that’s not your usual, you know, just bar rented out, or ballroom, or, you know, whatever. It was fun. It was fun and worthwhile. So that definitely stands out.
CB: I think I was at that one. They had very interesting decor, like really interesting aesthetic. I was into it also. I’m curious your perspective on this next question, because you obviously have the media background and the vendor background. What do you think that companies need to do to cut through the noise on the show floor, which is crazy?
GO: The actual show expo floor. Yeah, to cut through the noise. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know. I wish I knew. From a marketing director standpoint, I’m sure that there, they all want the secret sauce. But to cut through the noise, it’s, I don’t know it’s, it’s tough. I mean, everybody, I feel like, you know, they do the whole T-shirt and giveaway and swag and demo, and they do all of that, and I don’t, I don’t know what the ROI is for that. For my ROI, obviously, I don’t spend a lot of time on the expo floor because those are like, that’s your sales team, and that’s your like, operations team, like, those are the people that are trying to put pen to paper and really make money in terms of actually cutting through the noise there. I think going back to what I was saying about most of these companies and their executives setting up in other areas outside the expo floor, I mean that. I mean that that says really all that you need to know, right? Like a lot of this work does not happen on the expo floor.
So, I would think for companies that try to cut through the noise, I think it’s really sitting down with your marketing team and thinking about is, am I getting ROI by spending time on the expo floor? Or are these demos worth it? Or can we think outside the box? Can we think about some different way than just giving away a T-shirt and inviting people to a party and doing all that like that may work. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I have not been a CMO at these companies, and every CMO has a different different goals, different ideas, and they may see some value in that. However, in terms of cutting through the noise on the expo floor, that’s a tough place because that’s, that’s where all the noise is.
CB: Mhm. And I know a lot of our a lot of companies put out, like, research too, like associated with the week of the conference. Do you find that to be valuable to cut through the noise? Or I know they do product launches, things of that nature. Is there anything that you think is valuable from a media perspective?
GO: I actually think the earlier you get it out before RSA, the better, because that week is just drowned in noise like, and I know that sometimes a lot of companies will do it just to do it, just to be included in the noise. I think that’s a bad idea. You’re going to get buried. You’re just going to get buried in noise like. And if you’re really trying to stand out, you’re talking about trying to stand out with the Microsofts and the Mandiants and the Oktas and the CrowdStrikes of the world. I mean, we’re talking about publicly traded companies, and we’re talking about tech like, pillars of the American economy. Like, if you’re, if you’re a plucky, you know, growing company, like, you’re just going to get drowned out by by these just monoliths of of technology. I would say, trying to get something out before the conference, and then sort of reaping the benefits of what that is at the conference, to say, maybe a week before, if you do have research, to say, “Oh, well, did you read about it in CyberScoop or WIRED or whatever, that way your momentum is coming from earned media, and it’s the heavy lifting comes from us.
Like, it really does the heavy the heavy lifting comes from us. You don’t have to worry about getting your eyeballs on a press release that, again, is just going to be drowned out by all of these bigger companies. So I would say the earlier you get your news out, but obviously not too early. Like, if right now what, what are we about a month out? If you send me something that, oh, there’s research I’m going to be talking about in three weeks, people are going to forget because people forget, like, that’s just human nature. I would say the sweet spot is probably seven to 10 days before RSA, get it in front of the media, and see what you can do to try to drum up some earned media, and then sort of reap the benefits of that at the show.
CB: Great insight. Yeah, thanks for sharing that.
GO: Yeah. And this has been great, Greg. I think we have one final listener question for you, just overall about RSA and kind of the themes that will be talked about. So what is a trend that you think might fly under the radar at RSA that you think deserves more attention? Or maybe a trend that you’ve been noticing and paying attention to, but you think the media hasn’t really covered as much that you think should be? So, I think I’m going to go back to that cyber-adjacent part that I talked about in that look, all of the technical stuff is always going to be there, and there’s always going to be a certain like flavor that comes with greater technology trends overall. Like AI is going to be big this year. But that’s not really an insight. Of course, all you have to do is just look at the the program, and obviously AI is going to be a big thing.
So, I go to that cyber-adjacent thing that’s really under the radar is that you’re starting to see a lot of other business operations recognize that they need to have a voice in the way that companies operate on cybersecurity. So whether that is your chief financial officer, your chief revenue officer, your chief operations officer, your chief legal officer, your chief counsel, whatever it is, other people in the C suite besides just the CEO are starting to realize, and not only realize but operationalize those other parts of the company to concentrate on the cyber part of the company. So I think that that is something that is a little bit underserved, and something that we are covering more, something that I’m going to be paying attention to, is that the lawyers and the insurance programs and all of that other like operational business, like the business of running the business, is starting to realize that cyber is part and parcel to running the business. So they’re starting to be more and more integrated with cybersecurity plans and cybersecurity postures inside industries, and they’re starting to come and play at RSA.
So, I will be paying attention to that, and I think more people should be paying attention to that because at the end of the day, cybersecurity really is a business function. So how that interplays with all the other business functions inside organizations is really starting to be more and more important, and the more and more we get to cover it, I think is going to be better for the industry overall.
CB: Well said. That’s a great way to wrap it up. Thank you so much, Greg, for coming on the podcast and chatting with us about your background and then everything for RSA this year. We really appreciate it.
GO: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
CB: Awesome. Thanks, and we’ll see you out there. Thank you for joining us in today’s episode of Inside the Media Minds. To learn more about our podcast and hear all of our episodes, please visit us at w2comm.com/podcast, and follow us on Twitter @MediaMindsShow, and you can subscribe anywhere podcasts are found.