On this episode of Inside the Media Minds, our co-hosts Christine Blake and Madison Farabaugh get together with Kelly Jackson Higgins, Editor-in-Chief of Dark Reading and Vice President of Cybersecurity Editorial at Informa TechTarget, to learn about the Informa TechTarget merger, the 20th anniversary of Dark Reading and the future of the cybersecurity media landscape.
A veteran technology and business journalist with more than three decades of experience, Kelly currently leads editorial strategy across three major cybersecurity publications: Dark Reading, SearchSecurity and Cybersecurity Dive. Since the Informa Tech and TechTarget merger, her role has expanded, placing her at the center of a newly united media powerhouse.
Building a 360 degree Cybersecurity Media Ecosystem
Kelly offered her perspective on how the merger reshaped not just internal workflows, but the editorial philosophy behind each publication. Rather than collapsing brands into one voice, Kelly’s focus has been on clarity, distinction and collaboration.
“We’ve been working together this past year as a group, the three brands, to make sure we’re distinct and not cannibalizing one another,” she said.
Each of Informa TechTarget’s cybersecurity publications play a decisive role in this new ecosystem. Cybersecurity Dive is highly news- and newsletter-driven, designed for CISOs and executive leaders who need quick, actionable insights. SearchSecurity leans into deep technical analysis and long-form reporting for readers who want to fully understand emerging technologies. Dark Reading spans both worlds: covering breaking news, threat analysis and industry trends for everyone.
“What I like about the three brands working together is, even if it’s rare that we cover the same exact story, they are different stories. You’re going to learn something from both those articles, which is, I think, really cool,” Kelly said.
The Future of Cybersecurity Media
Kelly further shared how cybersecurity journalism is evolving under pressure from industry consolidation, artificial intelligence (AI) and changing audience behaviors.
“The media industry is tough right now,” Kelly explained. “But if you’re doing something unique, if you have a loyal audience, that still matters. People want to read what you have because you’re giving them something they can’t just get from an AI summary.”
Rather than chasing every headline, Kelly emphasized the importance of context, originality and being open to change, both for journalists and for the vendors trying to break into the news cycle.
“I think that’s part of what makes the media industry so fun and interesting, is that it is always adapting to what’s new,” Kelly stated.
Looking ahead, she is focused on growth: the growth of audiences, formats and collaboration across brands. Kelly sees the next phase of Informa TechTarget as both a challenge and an opportunity – one rooted in staying close to the cybersecurity community and honoring the publication’s legacy while pushing it forward.
“It’s an exciting and challenging role,” she said. “And I’m really excited to do more with it this year.”
To hear more from Kelly about the Informa TechTarget merger and what she’s watching closely in 2026, listen to the full episode of Inside the Media Minds or read the complete transcript.
Timestamps
0:22 – Christine and Madison’s Podcast Preview
2:03 – Kelly’s Role at Informa TechTarget
5:57 – Differentiating Dark Reading, SearchSecurity & Cybersecurity Dive
10:36 – Lessons Learned from a Complex Merger
12:36 – Happy 20th Anniversary Dark Reading!
14:24 – Cybersecurity’s Evolution
17:41 – The Evolving Cybersecurity News Cycle
19:31 – Generative AI, the Cloud, and Other 2026 Security Priorities
23:44 – Covering RSA vs. Black Hat as a Unified Team
27:19 – What Reporters Need for Rapid Response
28:51 – Kelly’s “Publicly Hacked” Black Hat Story
31:26 – The Future of Cyber Media at Informa TechTarget
34:15 – Kelly’s Goals for 2026
Ready to listen to more from Inside the Media Minds? Find all of our past episodes here!
Transcript
Christine Blake (CB): Welcome to Inside the Media Minds. We are your co-host, Christine Blake,
Madison Farabaugh (MF): and Madison Farabaugh.
CB: This show features in-depth interviews with tech reporters who share everything from their biggest pet-peeves to their favorite stories.
MF: From our studio here at W2 Communications, let’s go inside the media minds.
CB: All right. So, on today’s podcast, we have Kelly Jackson Higgins, who is the Editor-in-Chief of Dark Reading and VP of cybersecurity editorial at Informa TechTarget. She leads editorial strategy for the company’s three cybersecurity media brands: Dark Reading, SearchSecurity and Cybersecurity Dive. She’s an award winning veteran technology and business journalist, with three decades of experience, and reporting and editing for various technology and business publications and major media properties.
This is a fantastic episode. We really loved chatting with Kelly. She had so much to share. I mean, we really dug into what the past year has looked like since the Informa TechTarget merger, and how each of the publications she oversees approaches their coverage in a different way. A really fun conversation. Madison, what was your favorite part?
MF: Yeah, I loved hearing Kelly’s perspective on just how the industry and covering security has changed in the almost 20 years since Dark Reading first published its first piece. And I also liked hearing her perspective on how the CISO recognition and acknowledgement has changed. You know, back then, the CISO term, it wasn’t even really widely talked about. That position didn’t exist as much. But now today, of course, those are some of the most sought after perspectives that they’re looking for at these security publications. So, I think our listeners will definitely love to hear more about that.
CB: Yeah, we also heard about their approach for RSA this year, so tune in for that. And then Kelly also shared a really funny, embarrassing story of her first couple years at Dark Reading back in 2007, so we hope you all enjoy this episode.
Hey there, Kelly, welcome to the podcast. We’re so happy to have you on Inside the Media Minds today.
Kelly Jackson Higgins (KJH): Hi there. Thank you so much for having me. Christine, it’s great to be here.
CB: Yeah, thanks for joining us. So we’ve had you on the podcast before, back in 2018. A while ago, and gosh, back then we talked so much about Black Hat, back in that August 2018, and it goes without saying, so much has changed since then. This year, 2026 marks 20 years of Dark Reading, and it’s been just over a year since the Informa TechTarget merger. So, I’d love to start the conversation there. Tell us a bit about the decision to merge these entities and what the past year has looked like for you. There’s been so much going on.
KJH: Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, it has been a very big year. So, the what happened was year and a half ago now, every year ago now, our company, Informa Tech, which Dark Reading was part of, merged with Tech Target. So interestingly, Informa Tech also owned Industry Dive, but they were very separate from us. They operated a separate entity. So we never really met them. Didn’t work with them. But when the merger happened, we merged, basically merged, in my case especially, three different media companies into one group.
So we brought over, we basically broke a lot of the silos, right? And suddenly you had TechTarget, the Informa Tech brands, you know, Dark Reading, InformationWeek, AI Business, all those folks, Light Reading, and then the Dive publications. So in January of last year, the Informa TechTarget executives created what we kind of called, like, different industry groups. So my job changed dramatically. I became the VP of the cybersecurity editorial team, which encompasses Dark Reading, SearchSecurity and Cybersecurity Dive, so I oversee the strategy for all three publications. I’m still Editor-in-Chief at Dark Reading, I’m also default Editor-in-Chief at Cybersecurity Dive, because in the merger, they kind of reorganized and lost their editor. So I also work with them on a daily basis. So I have, I wear probably a few hats.
CB: That is a lot, that is a lot.
KJH: But bottom line, we, we now have this really, I want to say, like a powerhouse, especially, I mean, across the company. But of course, in my area, the cybersecurity side of things, we have the sort of powerhouse of the hottest brands, and I would say, are the rock star, journalists and editors, and we’ve been working together the past year as a group, the three brands to make sure we’re distinct and we’re not cannibalizing one another.
Number one, number two, to also amplify one another’s content. We do projects together. I can talk a little about that if you want to hear about it. But really, I look at this group as sort of the 360 of cyber media. You know, you have three brands who approach things differently. We have very little overlap in our audiences, which I think is really interesting, even though we’re all kind of, you know, we want to target those CISOs and all the big folks, but also we do talk to different people, and we do it in different ways and different types of content. So, I think it’s a pretty complimentary approach, and it’s been really exciting to sort of evolve this group. We call ourselves the cyber media team.
CB: Okay. And we love it.
KJH: We meet once a week, and we actually really, we have a really good, I would say, really good chemistry with the three brands among the three groups. I think we look at ourselves as a team. You know, obviously doing our own things, but also trying to support one another as well.
MF: Love that. And as you said, these three brands are definitely a powerhouse, and our team thoroughly enjoys working with each one of the individual brands, for sure. Yeah, we would love to hear a bit more about, kind of, how these brands are each different, how the maybe editorial approach is different for them and even the audiences that you all are specifically targeting. Could you elaborate a bit more on that?
KJH: Absolutely, thank you for that’s a really good question, Madison. That’s something we’ve been really working on refining over the past year. So, I’ll start with Dive, since they’re the smaller team of two. But Dive, you know, traditionally, has always been aimed at the CISO, C-level folks. They’re, you know, the very news newsletter forward, obviously. The newsletter comes out at noon et every day, so that’s 9am for Pacific Time executives and lunchtime, if they take a lunch break, for the East Coast, the idea being, you know, getting them the really important news that they need to know about and what they can do about it. So, I would say Dive, does not dive as deeply into the technology side of things, and is really talking to the higher level folks and cyber risk, CISO, C-level people. So every morning you know you’re basically triaging, you know, what those key news stories are that those folks need to know about in their jobs.
So that’s Cybersecurity Dive. SearchSecurity has had an amazing heritage of this deep look into technologies, long form content about trends, you know, looking at someone who really wants to do their homework about the industry, right? They really want to know, I have to know a lot about this agentic AI thing. I’m going to just really study this thing, right? They’ve always done a great job of that kind of that kind of content, and that’s something, you know, we’re still emphasizing. They’re also starting to do some news of their own, like in their own form of news analysis that’s a little bit different than the way Dive does things and the way Dark Reading does things. So they are expanding a little bit in that direction. They recently launched a newsletter called The Cybersecurity Insider that goes out twice a week. And then there’s a third issue on Saturdays that encompasses all three of our brands, which is kind of exciting. So we can, and we all do, share in our newsletters each other stories and things like that. And that group, SearchSecurity is headed up by Sharon Shea, and she’s, she’s incredible.
Dark Reading. Let’s see. It’s been a long journey. Been around there since 2006, and in some ways, our mission has not changed. I would say it’s evolved a bit. So we’ve always been about sort of providing all cybersecurity professionals with breaking news, news analysis, technology trends, feature pieces. We’re really expanding into different types of content now, led by Tara Seals and Fahmida Rashid, are doing more more video content, which we were able to do as well on our website until recently, when it was able to support it better. So we’re experimenting with that a lot.
And we’re doing, I think, Dark Reading, the difference with Dark Reading is we’re talking to all levels of the industry, right? We’re not just talking we’re talking to executives, absolutely, but we’re also talking to the security operations team. You know, these are the folks who are in the trenches. We do get more technical. We do help them, like, understand, you know, what the latest threat is, what they can do about it. I think the difference with Dark Reading we’ve always strived for is to have the sort of secret sauce we call it, or we try to provide context and analysis that nobody else is providing, right? We want to really lean into that and not just be writing about everything else, writing about everybody else is writing about. We really do try to, you know, add that extra to it, and also, every piece of content that Dark Reading writes is written for the audience and the audience in mind. We don’t write something just because this sounds cool. We want to sounds cool. We want to be like, what does this matter to the security operations team or to the CISO? Would they care about this?
So that kind of, I would say, that’s the difference and the three what I like about the three brands working together is we all, even if it’s rare that we cover the same exact story, but when we do, there are different stories. So Cybersecurity Dive does a story and we do a story on the same topic. You’re going to learn something from both those articles and different things, which is, I think, really cool about it. We do keep each other apprised what we’re working on, so that there’s no, like, we’re not, like, reinventing the wheel, but we don’t say, ‘oh, you can’t cover that because, you know, dive is covering that, or dark reading is covering that’. We want to look at it from different lenses, and that’s what’s so great about our reporters. They’re able to do that, and the stories come out very differently, which I think is really interesting. And that’s a testament to this group of reporters and editors we have on all three brands.
CB: Yeah, that’s amazing. And how you describe that really encapsulates the 360 view of cyber media, how you described it in the beginning. I think that’s a really cool approach. I’m sure it’s been there was a lot of adjusting when you first kind of merged together. Did anything surprise you over the past year? Kind of when you got used to the three different publications, these different approaches, what was the most surprising thing?
KJH: Yeah, I think what I really liked about this, it was, I’m not gonna say was easy, because no change is easy. A merger is really hard, and this was an especially hard one. I think most people would agree to that. But what I think I would surprise me in a good way, and it wasn’t always easy, was how the three media companies are learning from each other on how they approach things, and how we’re all having to evolve in this new world, and what we can learn from each other and how we can get better because of how the other, the other group, operates, right? We’re taking sort of the best of the, I guess, the greatest hits of all the three brands, right? And and using that in the business strategy. So I really appreciate that.
I’m not going to say that was easy to do, friend, it was really hard on people, right? They were, you know, like, ‘Oh, no. What does this mean? You know, our way is wrong,’ you know. And I don’t think it was that. I think it’s more like, Okay, we you know, one thing I’ve always felt with, you know, over the years with Dark Reading, was we never should sit still. We should always be looking ahead. You know, the industry moves fast. Media has definitely gone through a lot. The media industry has gone through a lot. So, I’ve always tried to like, let’s look at the next thing. What’s the next thing we can be doing? Let’s not just sit here and be like, ‘Oh, we’re doing it great.’ This has been good for all of us to kind of sort of examine, you know, the ways we were working, the ways we were writing content, the way we were approaching things.
And I think what surprised me was that as painful as that was, in some ways, it’s also been fun for people. In the end, yeah, everyone was a lot of people were hesitant about it, but I think the more we get to know each other, and the more we work together, then we realize this is actually really great for all three brands.
CB: Exactly. And it sounds like sometimes a challenge like that, can it really pays off. And from our perspective, it seems like it’s been going really well, and makes a lot of sense.
MF: You had, yeah, you had mentioned, you know, Dark Reading, starting in 2006 so just curious, we are coming up on about 20 years now of dark reading. Is there anything significant that your team might be doing to celebrate that, or anything, you know, the team is planning ahead for?
KJH: This has been something I’ve been thinking about for two years, because I was like ‘we’re coming up on the 20th!’ So yes, we are. I’m actually getting ready to hopefully present to my team in the next week or so, we’re going to have a special content package that will roll out over the months. We did that at our 10 year. We did like 10. We use the number 10 as like strategic, but I think 20 is a little too much. So I’m not going to do these the 20 number, but we are going to do some special content, you know, between writing, video, podcast, and maybe bringing in some folks who used to work with Dark Reading.
CB: Oh, cool.
KJH: The old industry pioneers who helped us get launched, like, get their take on things. We’re pretty excited about it. I’d like to have it culminate, hopefully at Black Hat with some sort of a celebration white industry folks to celebrate with us. We did that for our 10 year, and it was really it was really neat just sort of hearing from people, you know about their thoughts about us. We don’t know what people think about us, right? Are we doing this right?
And then thinking hearing about how, you know, they saw us over the years and, you know, our early days. And I actually was just looking at our first issue on May 1, 2006 is on Wayback Machine. It’s hilarious. It’s actually great in some ways, but it’s also like, wow, this was a busy homepage. Hopefully some fun graphics and art to sort of look at where we were then and where we are now. So I’m really excited about it’s really nice to get to to look back at all the things we did, and the things we’re doing differently we learned, and all the people that sort of were part of that. So it’s pretty special time.
CB: Yeah, I love that. That’s so cool that you have that and can look back at it. So, you know, looking at that 20 years you mentioned, like, the evolution of the industry, what are your thoughts on it? Like, back then? Like, how have things changed now? Everything’s AI. I mean, just what are your thoughts on the past 20 years of the industry?
KJH: Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about that because it’s just an I’m in awe. Sometimes, some things, I think, gosh, I’ve been talking about this for 20 plus years. We’re still talking about the same tissues. But then I look back and, you know, back then it was really, you know, the CISO term was not well known. There were maybe, maybe a handful of CISOs in the world, and nobody really talked about it. It was all you it was all, you know, people. The industry was still really new, and so much of the the news was about researchers breaking things and exposing them, because there was no, you know, vulnerability disclosure programs back then. So it was like all these cool things that were happening, like HD Moore doing his month of browser bugs.
And, you know, getting to see, like, you know, the things that he found in browsers that were broken and publishing them. And we were writing stories on that, Dan Kaminsky figuring out how DNS had a big, huge hole in it, and how that, like, break the whole internet and, and so those kind of things were exciting. There weren’t a lot of vendors back then. So, the products were, you know, very focused on firewalls, on premise, right? That was, was not a thing yet, right, really, right? It was more on prem, you know, you had your routers, you had your firewalls, and you were looking at, you know, PC security. You know, there were no BYOD back then, you know, it was, it was a different world. They were, you have your smartphones. It’s scary to say all this.
CB: That’s crazy.
KJH: Yeah, yeah, I feel very old talking about this, but so the things you’re protecting were, you know, a little more close to home, but there were still a lot of the software wasn’t secure back then Microsoft kicked off its secure development lifecycle back then, so it was still new to like, you know, have secure software written at all. But in some ways, I laugh, because I’m talking about, oh, we talked about oh, we talked about browsers, but now we’re talking about browsers again, right? We’re talking as something we’re not necessarily always securing well, even though they’re more well built than they were back then. So I feel like we come full circle a lot.
I mean, I wrote about AI 20, more than 20 years ago, and I thought, ‘That’s not new,’ but we really were using it like we are now. So it’s interesting, some things stay the same, but the themes, but I really feel like the industry is obviously massively bigger than it was back then. We were able to, what was nice in our role, was we were able to kind of pioneer a lot of things. Because we were the we were one of the first pubs, one of the first. And we were able to, kind of like, you know, we met all the pioneers in the industry. We profiled them. We, you know, learn from them. You know, just dug into it. We had, it was like a greenfield for us to write about stuff, whereas now, it’s a fire hose, yeah.
And we are rarely are able to cover everything. Like, well, we don’t cover everything. We are rarely able to keep on top of most of it, I would say, to be honest, even with the, you know, Dark Reading’s, a little obviously bigger stuff than than Cybersecurity Dive, for example. But it’s still not enough people to cover all the things that are happening. So that’s really different. Those are probably the main things to me. But looking at that homepage, I was like, ‘something seems similar.’
CB: Yeah, full circle.
KJH: Yeah, yeah.
MF: Yeah. And that’s such an interesting perspective you brought up about just the number of vendors and the vendor landscape expanding so much. So I’m just curious, after you know, your experience of covering the security industry for so long, how has that shifted? Or maybe, where are there still challenges with organizations, vendors who are trying to break into that cybersecurity news cycle? Is there anything that, overall, this time, you know, people still need to keep in mind, maybe things that still need to be improved there?
KJH: I think it kind of all comes back to, you know, most vendors, if you look at their descriptions of what they do today, kind of send a little alike in security, right? They all want to be AI forward, which I totally get, and that makes total sense, you know, they want to be, you know, seeing the cloud, they want to give you visibility, they want to protect all these things. So I think it’s hard for them, I do feel for them, like, that’s hard to stand out. But I think what it comes boils down to is it’s always telling a good story. What is it that you do that’s unique? Or, what is it about your your company that’s unique? You know, do you have a founder who was, you know, had some, you know, pioneering role in the industry, or why this idea that you had, that started your company actually got you here? I think those kind of stories are important to tell, because it’s hard as journalists, I’m not as much in the day to day anymore, but I still get all the emails, and I know how, like it can be overwhelming. Everything starts to sound the same.
If you’re getting pitches and you’re like, ‘I think we wrote about this already,’ you know? And how do you you know? How do you get past the noise, right? So I think it’s hard. I feel like it’s always all about show, and this is true for the media like, for us to show what we’re unique. What do we do uniquely, how we write stories, uniquely, that what we bring to the table that nobody else does. I think that’s probably true for vendors too, and I’m no marketer, but you know, I do know that I think that’s the hard part. You know, from the journalist perspective, sometimes weeding through what’s just marketing speak, and what’s real. And everyone kind of wants to know what’s real, right? They really do are interested in that. What’s the new thing? What’s the thing driving this trend or this, you know, this, this vulnerability, or this threat.
CB: And similarly, with so many companies coming out with various AI solutions. Like you said, AI forward. What do you think is the most interesting thing about AI right now, and how are the informant tech target brands approaching that coverage?
KJH: Yeah, so you know when, when generative AI first popped, boy that hit hard, right? It was like we’re talking about then we were talking about every day. I think now we’re getting to that settling in point a little bit about what it can and can’t do, right? Talking about from the news side of things, I think there’s a lot of interesting aspects from, you know, for developers, how they can use it. And everybody wants to use it to make their job easier, right? But I think we keep coming back to the same thing that we’re not surprised by: You still have to be a human in the middle.
And, I mean, we’re even, even as journalists, like, how do we use AI, right? You know, research, you know, we’re, we’re thinking about this all the time. You know, our company is very, is very AI forward. They want to, they want to be innovative there. And we’re figuring out ways where it makes sense for us to use AI. I think for in the security industry, there’s a lot of really good options for it in terms of, like, same for any job, just, you know, easing the manual labor part of your job, like, get, you know, making it more efficient. But I think you always still have to keep in mind it’s not a person, even though some people have come to name their Chat. GPT, oh, yeah, I have a friend who does that. So, you know, calls him Chad. If you do that, that’s great, but there’s still, there’s, it’s still not a person like, the person has to be in there. And you do see things when you mess around with, when you do, when you do your own like, searches, like ‘that’s not right, or this doesn’t look right.’
So, but I do think there’s a lot of capabilities there that this, that security vendors are starting to put out there, and security teams need like, there’s always been the same problem in the sock. There’s too many alerts, there’s too many things coming at them. What’s the real thing? What’s the real needle in the haystack that they have to focus on? And I think that’s where AI is going to be the biggest game changer for them, is to getting them to that point where they’re not missing the one thing that they need to catch.
MF: Yeah so, that makes perfect sense. And kind of switching gears a little bit. But beyond AI, what, what other topics are really top of mind for you this year, going into 2026. Is there anything you know that’s new or emerging that you think we need to be paying more attention to?
KJH: I mean, obviously AI is going to be part of everything. I think every discussion you know, we can get annoyed by it, but it’s going to be there. But I feel like, for me, just watching the cloud evolution, and I say that, I mean, in terms of, like, people’s dependency on cloud applications, cloud infrastructure, it’s becoming more secure, but there is still becoming more of a target as well. So I think that’s going to be a really interesting space to see how that shakes out. We’re seeing some interesting you know, some of the cloud providers are getting more proactive and providing secure built-in security, which is great, but I think that’s going to be more of an area where organizations are gonna have to kind of remember, just because you know your provider is doing it doesn’t mean you don’t have to worry about anything. You still have to pay attention, right? So I think that’s going to get more from what I’m seeing. That’s going to be more of an issue this year.
And, of course, just where folks can use AI to, both how to defend, and also how the attackers are using it as well too. So I don’t lean too much in AI, but that one I can’t get away from. I don’t know. I think those two things. I mean, you know, we’re sort of talking about quantum, but it’s still far enough away that I don’t think it’s, you know, really on front burner for people right now. But, yeah, that’s definitely something. And then, like I mentioned, browser security is becoming more of a conversation again, which I thought, ‘didn’t we already resolve that?’ And then identity security is the other one. I’m sorry, that one. That’s an important one. It’s funny, because that’s been sort of part of a lot of things, but it’s been pulled out a lot lately because of the cloud, I think too.
CB: Okay.
KJH: Identities floating around, they have machine identities floating around. You know, managing that seems like it shouldn’t be so hard, but it really is. So I think that’s going to be a place where people need to pay attention. I think we’ll, you know, we’re covering it. We’re keeping an eye on it.
MF: We’ve definitely been seeing a lot more clients and other vendors putting out more research around identity security too. So we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on that.
CB: Yeah, one thing I’m curious about is when it comes to events, I know we’re, gosh, when this comes out less than two months out from RSA, what are you and your team looking to get out of major industry conferences like that this year, and how does the merger of these three entities impact that?
KJH: That’s a really good question. We, so what we did last year, and we’re doing again at RSA and probably at Black Hat, we try to maximize our resources there, among the three brands, so we’re gonna have a crack team there and RSA. I think the shows are different. So RSA, because it’s so big, as you know, it’s like, everyone’s there, right? It’s more about getting behind the scenes of the market forces and threat trends that are sort of driving the industry. It’s really, I think there is a great place to get sort of a reality check of, you know, what’s really, what are the trends around the industry? What does that really mean for the cybersecurity professionals and folks who are, you know, tasked with selecting this technology and products, because that’s a big product show, right? So what’s, what’s, what are the things that they’re getting, you know, put in front of them, and what makes sense?
So I think for our reporters that are going, they’re going to be digging into some of that, like, this is a chance to meet with everybody, almost everybody’s there, right? So you want to be able to get all your chances, face-time with everybody, and also to just really step back and go, ‘Okay, what’s the theme right now,’ this year, and every year, RSA has a theme. So whether it’s real or, you know, a theme, marketing theme, you know, figure it out like how that applies to what you’re seeing. And again, we try to do for Dark Reading and for SearchSecurity and Dive is we try to think about, okay, our readers, what is it they need to Know. So not just like, oh, this is exciting, because this is all over the show floor, but why would they care about this? Or is this something that they’re thinking about?
So I think at RSA, there’s less news than a Black Hat, because Black Hat’s all the new stuff that’s, you know, coming out from the researchers. So this was our chance to, like, really innovate and dig into some of the trends in the industry and things that our readers need to know about in terms of, you know, product direction, strategy, that kind of thing, yeah. And then Black Hat, of course, you know, you’ve got all the latest policy folks there, the threats, attacks, technologies. There’s too much to write about there, so we’ll be, we’ll be covering all that.
And I think I what I like about Black Hat. I like both shows. Black Hat, you’re like, This is the community of the industry, right? It’s smaller, a little bit smaller, still huge. Now it’s the community of the industry. It’s the people who help build this thing that are all there, you know, and they’re and they’re, you know, successors, all doing the same thing, trying to, you know, stay ahead of the cyber criminals and nation states as best they can. So, I think that’s always more exciting for people, just because there’s a lot of cool new things that come out. But I think all the reporters will be, you know, we do a really good job like divvying up who’s going to follow what, so we’re not like running into the same things. And if we do, we’re taking it from a different lens, but we’ll be strategizing and about that too. So both really hard shows, obviously.
CB: Yeah, and I think at the end of the day, it’s important to remember it’s your focus on what your readers want to know, regardless of trends, or, you know, anything that crazy that happens at these shows, that’s the, that’s the goal at the end of the day.
KJH: Yep, absolutely. That’s what we have to keep in mind. I think that’s how we sort of our North Star, right? You don’t want to get sucked into, like, it’s easy to get caught up in all the, yeah, there’s just so much going on. You could easily lose your way if you weren’t keeping that in mind.
MF: Wonderful. Well, this has all been super helpful to know. Kelly, we do have a few final listener questions for you before we wrap up the episode today. So the first question kind of relates to the idea of rapid response. And as you went through towards the beginning of this episode, the difference between now, SearchSecurity, Cybersecurity Dive, Dark Reading, when it comes to things like rapid response for the security and tech industry. How can vendors, PR professionals, how can we best serve you and your journalists? Are there any misconceptions? Are there any challenges that you typically face where you just like to clear the air on that?
KJH: That’s a really good question. I feel like you should probably be asking my reporters, not me, this question. I’ll give you my experience with it. I think you know, having if you’re talking about a big news event happens, right? Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things we always appreciate is when we can get the right people to talk to quickly, right? I know that’s not easy to do in this industry. Everyone’s busy, but if we can get the right voices in the story, you know, we and we’re one thing that I know all three brands want to be able to talk to practitioners more.
So, even customers of the vendors are super helpful to get that reality check for our audience, right? So as many of those folks that we can talk to, I think, you know, sometimes Dark Reading, we try not to use, like, canned quotes, you know, when I know that’s it’s nice to have that when you want to get perspective, we kind of use it for background, but we really want to talk to the person. You know, that’s kind of what we shoot for doing. And I think that’s true with with Dive as well and SearchSecurity is trying to really get on the phone with somebody, if you can. On the phone sounded very ancient; on teams or whatever, on Zoom, but you know what I mean. And sometimes it is a focus on people, but basically being able to talk to them, because I think it is more like trying to get that extra insight into what this really means.
Because again, with this industry, there’s so much happening at once, and sometimes things can get, the important stuff can get lost in the noise. You might be excited by the fact that this is a this threat groups doing this again, but there might be some subtle difference on there that they’re doing that we need to raise for our readers to watch out for. So I think having the right people to available to talk to in short order is, I know that’s not an easy task, but that is helpful. Everybody’s on deadline, so.
CB: Yeah, that’s good insight. Another listener question: What is one of the funniest of moments that you’ve experienced at Dark Reading in the last 20 years.
KJH: Okay, well, this is an embarrassing one. It happened my first year at Dark Reading. So this is 2007 mind you, before smartphones, WiFi was the Wild West. I had written a story. I had a scoop on this new WiFi sniffer that Robert Graham and David Maynor, who are two old contacts of mine, who had been in the industry forever, had built and they were going to demo it at Black Hat. So I got the scoop on it. This was actually at Black Hat DC, which is no longer but there was a DC Black Hat that I went to and they were going to demo, and I’d already written about the story. So I’m like, I’ll do another section. I’m like, I’ll go another session. I’ll just, you know, I’ve already written about it.
So I was in the session, next door to where they were, and I you know, back then you should never get on the WiFi at a show. And I knew this, and I was writing about it, but I have, like, I need to check my email. So I quickly jumped on, and I quickly jumped off, and then about two minutes later, he was laughing next door. I’m like, Oh, they’re having a good time over there. Must be the session. Must be going well. And then I got back to the press room when I had this frantic text message from Dave Maynard saying, ‘Kelly, we need to talk.’ They had sniffed me on the WiFi and blasted my name and password onto the screen with all the other ones they found on on the WiFi. So back then, I had to call the IT department on my, I had a flip phone, and call them to, like, fix my to change my password, because I just blasted out. It just got blasted on the screen.
This was back in the day, as the wall of sheep, you know, one, and I knew better, but I was like, ‘Oh, one second is not gonna matter.’ Well, I was so embarrassed. And then I realized that people were laughing because they saw my name on there, and those guys had to come tell me. So to this day, they still joke about it, which I think is funny, and actually wrote a column about it in our 10 anniversary because I was like, ‘the time I got publicly hacked,’ and it sounds so dumb now, because now you can do that, you can be on WiFi at a show back then, you could not do that. So I learned a lesson. I was also humbled, as I thought, ‘so cool’ writing the story and then got owned by the same tool that I wrote about.
CB: It’s crazy how fast that happened too. You’re like, ‘Oh, just a couple seconds.’ Nope.
KJH: You got it. You got it. They were like, they just were like, ‘how did you? ‘They felt really bad. But they were also like, ‘how did you?’ I’m like, I know.
CB: Yeah, gosh. And then when it comes to kind of the future of Informa TechTarget, do you see any more acquisitions ahead, or do you foresee any other media entities combining at this point?
KJH: That’s a really good question. I don’t know about the company’s plans. I do know that, you know, cybersecurity is a very strategic piece of the Informa TechTarget puzzle for the company overall. So, I know that we’re our brands are very important to that. There’s a lot of other pieces to it. Of other pieces to it as well. So I feel like we’re strategic for the company, which I think is great that gives us so much room to grow and to, you know, try new things, and, you know, work as a group, and also ensure that we keep our individual brands unique.
And I feel like, you know, the media industry is tough right now. A lot of, there’s been a lot of consolidation, a lot of, you know, shuttered doors, etc, but I feel like our industry especially is still so relevant that there will always be room for some, for cybersecurity, media, even in the AI world. You know, obviously, traffic has been affected. The last year, we saw that coming, right? We knew that was going to happen. But what always stands out on the analysis that we do is if you’re doing something unique, if you have a loyal audience that matters, like people want to read your they want to read what you have, because you have something that they can’t just find an AIO, AI, you know, summary. But I think it’s always going to be, it’s an ongoing challenge to kind of make sure you’re paying attention to that. You know, we’re very, we’re very cognizant of it, and working very hard to make sure we still but even, you know, when Dark Reading started, for example, there was really no SEO, and 20 years ago, wasn’t really a thing, so we didn’t even have that.
So for me, it’s not shocking to my system, but it’s also like, okay, we need to, you know, think about other ways to and the key is really keeping our audience, our audience engaged, and that we’re still doing what they need, we’re giving them what they need, right? I think that’s true for all three of the brands. We’re really leaning into that and trying to, you know, just, try new types of content, new ways we communicate with our readers, you know. So that’s definitely like, I think survival for all brand, all media, to be more, you know, open to change.
CB: Yeah, absolutely.
MF: I think that’s part of what makes the media industry so fun and interesting, is that it is always adapting to what’s new. I know we’ve had some guests on in the past talking about how even journalism, it kind of goes back and forth. You know, at one point it was podcast, now it’s videos, now it’s journalists creating their own almost profile or not, not necessarily in the same way as an influencer, but reporters making more of that profile on social media, on these different platforms. So, I think it’s very interesting to see how all of these different publications and some corporations are doing it differently, for sure.
And then our final listener question for you, Kelly, we’re about a month into the new year, so any professional or personal goals for you this year that you’d like to share?
KJH: Oh gosh, well, I think you know, we’re now a year into this merger, so I really want to take us to the next level. The three brands grow each of them, their audience, their market, and make sure that we’re, you know, still complement each other, but also each growing in our own way. I think that’s really important. You know, there’s always new things we can be doing. I don’t want to just think we’ve done it all like there is no way we have. So I think that’s really important to me.
And you know, I this 20 year anniversary has really made me think a lot about how, you know, thankful I am that I’ve been with this. I’ve been doing this for so long, even before I started Dark Reading, I was doing this. And you know, I’m always trying to honor my late friend colleague, and mentor, Tim Wilson, who co-founded Dark Reading, and his imprint on the brand is, remains the foundation of Dark Reading. And I’m really proud and honored to be able to lead it and grow it and now help this whole Informa TechTarget, cybersecurity, media portfolio grow. I think that’s a, it’s a, it’s really, it’s an exciting and challenging role. And I’m really, I’m excited to do more with it this year. I think that now we’re settled in where we’ll be able to do more things, and I’m looking forward to that.
CB: Yeah, well said, Well, Kelly, this has been amazing. Talking to you, learning more about the merger and talking about the 20 years of Dark Reading. So thank you so much for coming on Inside the Media Minds today to talk about it with us.
KJH: It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Christine and Madison. Was great talking to you.
CB: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for everyone for tuning in.
CB: Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Inside the Media Minds. To learn more about our podcast and to hear from some of our past guests, please visit us at W2Comm.com.
MF: You can also subscribe anywhere podcasts are found.