RSA 2026 Recap: Strategic Briefings, Targeted Visibility, and Two SC Media Awards Wins

By Peggy Tierney Galvin, chief strategy officer

RSA Conference 2026 was a strong week for Force4 and our clients, marked by strategic media and analyst engagement, meaningful market visibility, and two SC Media Awards wins. Across the industry, this year’s show was heavily shaped by AI security, agent governance, identity, and the push to prove practical value rather than just promise.

RSA is one of the most important moments of the year for cybersecurity companies, but success at the conference is not limited to brands with major launches or breaking news. Some of the most valuable momentum comes from securing the right conversations with the right publications, analysts, and influencers, even when a company is focused on positioning, relationship building, and long-term market visibility rather than a single announcement.

That is exactly where Force4 delivered.

Securing the right briefings

Force4 secured a strong lineup of briefings and media coverage for clients across top-tier and highly targeted publications, analysts, and industry influencers, around the show including Axios, Business Insider, Dark Reading, Forrester, Marketplace, Omdia, SC Media, INSIDER and Wall Street Journal.

These were the kinds of conversations that matter – they created opportunities for clients to build credibility, introduce differentiated perspectives, strengthen relationships, and stay part of the cybersecurity conversation at a critical moment in the year.

One of the biggest misconceptions about RSA is that media and analyst interest only follows hard news. In reality, the conference is also one of the best opportunities to advance a company’s narrative, deepen relationships with influential voices, and build visibility that continues well beyond the event itself.

Some clients arrived at RSA with major momentum. Others came in focused on strengthening awareness, refining messaging, or building foundational relationships with the publications and analysts most relevant to their business. Both approaches matter, and both can create real value when supported by the right strategy.

That is why our focus was on securing the right visibility through the publications and firms most aligned with each client’s goals, category, and audience.

Trends that shaped RSA 2026

The clearest story coming out of RSA 2026 was that cybersecurity has entered a more practical AI era. The conversation was about how quickly enterprises can secure agentic systems, govern autonomous behavior, and decide which vendors are truly built for this next phase. Axios described the show as a race to find the next breakout AI-security leader, while keynote and show-floor coverage repeatedly pointed to AI-native security, agentic security operations, and autonomous workflows as the center of gravity at this year’s event.

A second major trend was the shift from protecting human users to governing non-human identities and AI agents. Multiple RSAC discussions and related coverage focused on the idea that agents are now acting inside the enterprise with access, permissions, and autonomy that require the same, or greater, scrutiny as human employees. Microsoft emphasized observability, governance, and identity as foundational controls for agentic AI, while SC Media and Cisco-focused coverage centered on securing AI agents as first-class identities and moving beyond simple access control toward tighter oversight of agent behavior.

A final emerging thread was resilience at deeper layers of the stack, including post-quantum readiness and hardware-level trust. Alongside the AI wave, SecurityWeek highlighted announcements tied to post-quantum readiness, certificate lifecycle management, and quantum-resistant device security from major vendors. That suggests the market is broadening its definition of resilience beyond perimeter and detection tools alone.

Taken together, RSA 2026 felt less like a conference driven by one-off launches and more like a market-wide reset around three questions: who can secure AI safely, who can govern autonomous systems at scale, and who can deliver measurable results in an increasingly noisy category.

Two SC Media Awards wins

In addition to securing strong briefing momentum for clients, we were proud to secure two SC Media Award wins for our clients at RSA 2026:

• Security Executive of the Year
• Best Emerging Technology

These wins reflect the caliber of leadership and innovation represented across our client work, and they are a strong reminder that consistent strategic communications can help translate market differentiation into meaningful industry recognition.

Why this matters

For us, RSA is about creating the targeted visibility that helps clients build authority over time.

That means securing conversations that matter, even without headline news. It means aligning clients with the publications, analysts, and influencers most relevant to their space. And it means turning conference presence into momentum that continues well after the event ends.

RSA 2026 was a strong example of that approach in action, and we are proud of what our team and clients accomplished.