By NightDragon Team
The NightDragon team just returned from another great Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, one of the biggest cybersecurity conferences of the year. NightDragon had a strong presence at the event, including hosting a kickoff party for 350 CISOs and innovative companies, Chairing the conference’s AI Summit, and more.
Across the meetings with our investment and business development teams and events with our network, we had the opportunity to gather insights into what was happening in the market and what new cutting-edge technologies are gaining traction. What we heard: while the threats are greater than ever before, so too is the opportunity for innovators to help defenders secure our world for tomorrow.
Here’s some of takeaways and trends our team heard throughout the week:
- AI, AI, AI – While it’s likely not surprising, talk of artificial intelligence was everywhere you turned at the Black Hat Conference. At a dedicated AI Summit, we dug into the topic of AI, including discussions about how AI can be a defender’s advantage through automation, large-scale data insights, expanded threat intelligence capabilities leveraging large pools of open source and proprietary data, and more. Additionally, AI was part of many of our team’s pipeline conversations as the frontier of new innovation. It’s clear our new era of AI is here in cybersecurity.
- AI Expanded Attack Surface – Almost all speakers at the AI Summit expressed concern that AI has expanded the attack surface significantly and that the threat actors are adopting newer methods using AI much more rapidly than the defenders. One example highlighted at the event was prompt injection, which is a cybersecurity attack on AI systems and applications, particularly large language models (LLMs) and chatbots, by manipulating the inputs such that it produces harmful outputs. Speakers emphasized the importance of data protection as an integral tool in defending AI systems, specifically as more companies deploy LLMs and threat actors utilize more AI to amplify their attacks. In many ways, data security bridges the pre-AI security market and the market for securing AI.
- Secure by Design Essential in an AI World – CISA Chief AI Officer Lisa Einstein spoke at the AI Summit about the importance of the practice of secure by design (SBD) in our new AI world. She urged security vendors to design with security in mind, instead of following the pattern of many vendors in the past who rushed products to the market with security as an afterthought.
- Supply Chain Security Management Rises in Importance – With the Crowdstrike incident still top of mind, many were eager to talk about the importance of having deep visibility and understanding of risks lying in your software supply chain. According to NightDragon portfolio company Interos, the outage impacted 674,620 direct customer relationships of Crowdstrike and Microsoft and over 49 million organizations indirectly. On the show floor, there were many startup supply chain security management technologies displayed, ranging from management for open-source supply chains across the development lifecycle to third-party risk management.
- Disinformation is on the Rise, but so are Technologies to Help – With only months to go until the 2024 Presidential Election, discussions on disinformation are rising. We’re also seeing new innovations leveraging AI and other technologies emerge to combat these threats and track risk to businesses and for government agencies.
- VC Investment Ticks Up in Cybersecurity – After nearly a two-year lull in terms of overall investment, VC investment is starting to trend upward. VC funding in 1H 2024 was up 42% to $7.4B YOY across 502 transactions, according to Altitude Cyber. We even saw funding announced at Black Hat, including a $250M Series D round in Abnormal Security.
- Public-Private Partnership Continues – The government and the private sector convened at Black Hat and Defcon to continue an increasing pattern of public-private collaboration. Top government leaders – nearly all of the top leaders in cybersecurity – spoke on stage at the events, including CISA Director Jen Easter, Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger, National Cyber Director Harry Coker, General Paul Nakasone, former NSA Cyber Director Rob Joyce and more.
- Cyber Community is Strong – It’s clear from the Black Hat Conference that the cybersecurity community is stronger than ever. The momentum and energy in this post-Covid world are palpable, with everyone excited to talk shop, but also share industry issues, problems, and brainstorm solutions. We look forward to seeing this continued collaboration, energy and excitement and the impact it will have on our ability to secure our world for tomorrow.
NightDragon was energized to see our network and community come together at the Black Hat Conference and discuss how we make progress toward securing our world for tomorrow across cybersecurity, safety, security and privacy categories. We look forward to connecting together again at our next event!
