Presented by RSAC

For two decades, the RSAC Innovation Sandbox contest has been the industry’s most reliable crystal ball. With over $50.1 billion in investments and more than 100 acquisitions across its alumni, the contest has an extraordinary track record of spotting cybersecurity’s future leaders before the rest of the world knows their names.

The contest’s track record also offers a story of generational innovation that speaks for itself, says Cecilia Marinier, vice president of innovation and scholars at RSAC.

“We see one founder buying another founder buying another founder,” Marinier says. “Think about the amount of accumulated knowledge, and how powerful it is to continue to build on such solid foundations.”

It’s a pattern that repeats throughout the Sandbox’s alumni network. Last year, Donnchadh Casey and James White, CEOs of Calypso AI sold their company to F5, whose current Chief Product Officer is Kunal Anand. Anand was on the RSAC 2016 Innovation Sandbox stage as co-founder of Prevoty. His company was bought by Imperva, which was the winner of the contest in 2007. It’s all resulted in a tight-knit cycle of founders, operators, and acquirers that continues to shape the cybersecurity ecosystem.

Oliver Friedrichs, currently GM of CrowdStrike appeared on the Innovation Sandbox stage twice, winning in 2016 with Phantom, which was acquired by Splunk. He then returned as a 2023 finalist with Pangea, which was later acquired by CrowdStrike. Ali Golshan, a 2017 finalist with StackRox, went on to sell Gretel AI to Nvidia. Rehan Jalil, the 2020 winner who brought Securiti AI to the stage, saw his company acquired by Veeam for $2.7 billion.

“That’s with a B,” Marinier notes, underscoring the scale of value emerging from the Sandbox alumni network. “Those numbers also speak for themselves.”

See the 2026 RSAC top 10 finalists live on stage

This year’s Top Ten finalists take the stage at Moscone Center in San Francisco on Monday, March 23, each delivering a three-minute pitch to a panel of seasoned industry judges. The lineup reads like a map of enterprise security’s most urgent pressure points in 2026: agentic AI governance, non-human identity management, social engineering defense, supply chain provenance, and AI-native code security, among others.

Finalists include:

• Charm Security: uses its agentic AI workforce to targets scams and human-centric fraud

• Clearly AI: helps teams ship secure software fast by replacing manual work with AI-powered reviews

• Crash Override: embeds in CI/CD to capture build execution data that APIs can’t access

• Fig Security: finds and fixes broken security flows across the entire SecOps stack

• Geordie AI: a security and governance platform purpose-built for AI agents

• Glide Identity: verifies users instantly and securely—without passwords or SMS codes

• Humanix: designed to stop social engineering attacks by detecting and responding to attacks on people

• Realm Labs: enables enterprises to see inside the AI’s “brain” and monitor its thoughts during inference

• Token Security: focused on governing AI agents and machine identities at enterprise scale

• ZeroPath: replaces traditional SAST, SCA, and secrets scanning with a single AI-native engine capable of detecting complex business logic flaws.

“The most disruptive technology right now is obviously AI, and it’s bringing with it some brand-new security challenges that are being developed at the same rate that AI is evolving,” Marinier says. “Our finalists are bringing cutting-edge solutions for tackling those problems and beating those nefarious actors.”

Agentic AI, in particular, emerged as a dominant theme this cycle.

“Governance for AI, continuous monitoring, automation, SecOps resilience, everything from threat modeling to how to use agentic AI, and then controlling against agentic AI getting into systems, it’s all there in our top 10,” she says. “It’s the call to action to today and tomorrow’s security leaders.”

Who selects the winners, and why it matters

One of the less-discussed secrets behind the Sandbox’s track record is the rigor of its judging panel. This year’s panel includes:

• Nasrin Rezai, SVP & CISO at Verizon

• Larry Feinsmith, head of global technology strategy at JPMorganChase

• David Chen, head of global technology investment banking at Morgan Stanley

• Paul Kocher, cryptographer and entrepreneur

• Niloofar Razi, operating partner at Capitol Meridian Partners

“We’re very careful about how we put together the panel,” Marinier explains. “They have to represent a variety of perspectives, including an eye for startups that are likely to have positive trajectories. They’re top leaders in the industry, who are able to recognize the companies that have risen above the noise.”

Critically, RSAC itself plays no role in the selection, she adds.

“The judges select these companies,” she says. “They have for the past 20 years, and they will be going into the future.” That independence, she argues, is a core reason why the contest carries such weight with the industry.

The $5 million investment for the future of finalists

Beginning in 2025, as part of the contest’s 20th anniversary, all 10 finalists receive a $5 million investment in the form of a SAFE note, funded by Crosspoint Capital. It’s still early days for measuring the full impact, but Marinier points to the trajectory of ProjectDiscovery, last year’s winner.

Funding launched ProjectDiscovery from a hopeful startup to a company with enough traction to hire industry professionals with experience and know-how, who wouldn’t have previously considered an early-stage startup. Not only did they have the funds, they had the recognition, and they were able to attract great talent because they’re obviously going somewhere.

“The money is ultimately about extending the runway,” Marinier adds. “The SAFE note gives finalists breathing room to scale infrastructure and capitalize on the visibility the contest generates, before the spotlight fades.”

RSAC’s broader innovation ecosystem

The Innovation Sandbox contest is the flagship, but it’s the centerpiece of a significantly larger innovation infrastructure that Marinier has built over the past decade. In that time, RSAC’s innovation programming has touched more than 1,000 companies across multiple programs.

Launch Pad, now in its sixth year, functions as the Sandbox’s “little brother,” a Shark Tank-style forum where earlier-stage companies receive real feedback from judges without a winner being declared, though some of those companies are already starting to “graduate” to the next level of industry success. The Early Stage Expo, featuring 78 companies this year, gives attendees a window into what’s coming down the pipeline, sitting alongside the conference’s 600 main exhibitors.

The Innovation Showcase runs year-round, not just during conference week, with live Q&A sessions between entrepreneurs and audiences that are then carried into RSAC’s new membership platform, an effort to sustain connections across the full year, not just the five days in San Francisco.

There’s also a dedicated track for investors and entrepreneurs, featuring VCs sharing forward-looking perspectives, sessions on fundraising strategy, and design partnership frameworks. And for the next generation, RSAC’s Security Scholars program selects 60 students from universities across the country, with 22 presenting research posters on Wednesday of conference week.

“The security scholars are presenting their research that could lead to nascent technology,” Marinier says. “They’re in theearly phase, working their way up the ladder. One day they’ll make it onto our stages, and after that, the world’s their oyster.”

Why RSAC Conference is unmissable

For anyone serious about the future of cybersecurity, whether you’re a CISO, a founder, an investor, or an engineer, Marinier makes the case plainly.

“Building a safer society requires bold ideas, and new technologies, and real-world solutions,” she says. “RSAC Conference is bringing together some the newest, the smartest, the most innovative security perspectives in the industry for critical conversations about solving the security problems the world faces.”

The RSAC Innovation Sandbox contest kicks off at Moscone Center on Monday, March 23 at 9:30 AM PT. Winners will be announced by approximately noon the same day.

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A new malware strain dubbed Slopoly, likely created using generative AI tools, allowed a threat actor to remain on a compromised server for more than a week and steal data in an Interlock ransomware attack.

The breach started with a ClickFix ruse, and in later stages of the attack, the hackers deployed the Slopoly backdoor as a PowerShell script acting as a client for the command-and-control (C2) framework.

IBM X-Force researchers analyzed the script and found strong indicators that it was created using a large language model (LLM), but could not determine which one.

Evidence pointing to AI-assisted development includes extensive commentary in the code, structured logging, error handling, and clearly named variables. All this is rare in human-developed malware.

They attributed the attack to a financially motivated group they track as Hive0163, “whose main objective is extortion through large-scale data exfiltration and ransomware.”

According to the researchers, Slopoly is rather unsophisticated, although its deployment in ransomware operators’ attack chains indicates that AI tools are actively used to accelerate custom malware development, which can help evade detection.

Although comments in the Slopoly script describe it as a “Polymorphic C2 Persistence Client,” IBM X-Force did not find any feature that would allow modifying its own code during execution.

“The script does not possess any advanced techniques and can hardly be considered polymorphic, since it’s unable to modify its own code during execution,” reads the IBM report.

“The builder may, however, generate new clients with different randomized configuration values and function names, which is standard practice among malware builders.”

IBM X-Force researchers believe that Slopoly was generated by a builder that inserted configuration values, such as beaconing intervals, command-and-control addresses, mutex names, and session IDs.

The malware is deployed in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Runtime\, and its main functions include:

• Collecting system information
• Sending a heartbeat beacon every 30 seconds to /api/commands
• Polling for commands every 50 seconds
• Executing received commands via cmd.exe
• Sending command output back to the C2 server
• Maintaining a rotating persistence.log file
• Establishing persistence through a scheduled task named “Runtime Broker”

The commands it supports allow downloading and executing EXE, DLL, or JavaScript payloads; running shell commands and returning the results; changing beaconing intervals; updating itself; or exiting its own process.

The attack IBM observed started with a ClickFix social engineering flow, and deployed multiple malware components besides Slopoly, including the NodeSnake and InterlockRAT backdoors.

Interlock ransomware emerged in 2024 and was an early adopter of the ClickFix social engineering technique, and later also the FileFix variant.

The threat group has previously claimed attacks against high-profile organizations such as the Texas Tech University System, DaVita, Kettering Health, and the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The Interlock ransomware payload observed in the attacks reported by IBM is a 64-bit Windows executable delivered via the JunkFiction loader.

It can execute as a scheduled task running as SYSTEM, and uses Windows Restart Manager API to release locked files, appending the ‘. !NT3RLOCK’ or ‘.int3R1Ock’ extensions on their encrypted copies.

IBM reports that Hive0163 may also have associations with the developers behind Broomstick, SocksShell, PortStarter, SystemBC, and the Rhysida ransomware operators.

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Microsoft has just launched Copilot Health, a completely new feature of its AI assistant that functions as a health hub, deciphering your medical records and fitness tracker data to identify key health trends. Users get started by simply creating a dedicated tab in Copilot and give authorization to import data from the appropriate sources.

The system then collects data from electronic health records at over 50,000 hospitals and clinics across the United States via a business named HealthEx. Then there are lab reports from companies such as Function. More than 50 fitness devices are now connected, including Apple Health trackers, Oura rings, Fitbits, and other wearables. When users give the go-ahead, the system collects data on activity levels, sleep patterns, heart rates, and step counts.

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Once everything is connected, the AI does a nice job of sorting through the data and creating easy-to-read summaries. It searches for patterns that could have gone overlooked otherwise. A protracted period of restless nights could be attributed to changes in daily mobility or other factors identified in the records. Test findings that were previously collected individually are now gathered in one place, allowing the tool to identify potential correlations. Their responses will also include references to credible sources, such as summaries prepared by Harvard Health specialists.

Microsoft built this new feature to make it easier for users to prepare for doctor appointments. Many people arrive at tests unsure of what to ask or unable to recall critical details from previous appointments. Copilot Health sort of allows people to organize their thoughts ahead of time. Users are given suggestions for inquiries based on their own data. It also includes a feature that allows users to search for doctors based on their specialty, location, languages spoken, and insurance coverage.

All interactions are kept separate from ordinary Copilot chats, which is important for privacy reasons. Data is encrypted regardless of whether it is stored or transferred. Users have complete control: disconnect any source, remove stored information, or just stop sharing entirely. Microsoft assures that the data will never be utilized to train their larger AI algorithms. The company has even received third-party certification for how it handles this type of situation, such as the ISO/IEC 42001 standard, which examines how to employ AI responsibly. A team of over 230 doctors from around the world assessed the approach and provided recommendations on how to make it safer.

This launch comes at a busy time for consumer AI in healthcare. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Amazon already have technologies in place to handle personal records in a secure setting. Microsoft is using this as an opportunity to demonstrate their experience with health-related data, since they receive over 50 million health-related questions every day. Executives characterize the tool as a minor step toward gaining a better knowledge of medical conditions, but emphasize that it is a long way from providing actual diagnoses or treatment.

For the time being, the tool is only available in English and is limited to persons over the age of 18 in the United States. A waitlist allows users to participate in an early group that helps shape the experience. Microsoft intends to add languages, voice functions, and other geographies later on.