Last week, I had the privilege of representing the Dutch Ministry of Defense and Cyber Innovation Hub as part of a 40+ company trade and government delegation at RSA 2026.
It was a unique opportunity to explore and discuss the latest developments in global cybersecurity technology. This included deep dives into the technical details of both startups (e.g. Dawnguard, Hadrian, modat, Manukai, Enkrypt, Dreadnode) and established tech giants (Google Mandiant, Anthropic), as well as knowledge institutions (Stanford, MCPA). Along the way, I had the pleasure of meeting many fellow experts and entrepreneurs from the cyber industry (shoutouts to TinCapital, Beyond Products and Venable).
Here are a few takeaways I brought home on the flight from SFO to AMS:
- Securing AI is a “perfect storm opportunity” for cybersecurity: CIOs deploy AI solutions → CISOs are tasked with securing them → executive-level budget becomes available for cybersecurity hygiene.
- Current company multiples are low, as forecasting future cash flows is increasingly difficult. Particularly since agentic coding is actively eroding the competitive moats of existing solutions that lack proprietary, domain-specific IP.
- AI labs are highly aware of the offensive potential of frontier models. They are monitoring malicious agentic use to generate threat intelligence and are researching their own pentesting frameworks to responsibly identify and disclose vulnerabilities in widely used products before publicly releasing new models.
- Cyber operations are less escalatory than expected. Academics had assumed offensive cyber operations would escalate quickly, but in practice they have proven far less escalatory than anticipated
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