Ahead of RSAC 2025, we hit the road with BlackCloak’s founder Chris Pierson to explore how cybersecurity pros can protect what matters most—at work and at home. From supply chain risk to executive protection, it’s a powerful conversation about community, leadership, and digital safety.
As the cybersecurity world gears up for RSAC 2025 in San Francisco, we hit the road again—this time with Chris Pierson, Founder and CEO of BlackCloak, for a pre-event chat packed with insight, community spirit, and some big news.
Chris is no stranger to the RSA stage—this year marks his 21st year presenting—and he’s bringing his energy to two powerful sessions. The first, titled “Protecting What Matters: Your Family and Home,” kicks off bright and early on Monday, April 28. It’s not about blinky lights or enterprise networks—it’s about us. The cybersecurity community often talks about protecting organizations, but what about protecting ourselves and our families? Chris will explore how security pros can apply their skills at home, covering identity theft, scams, and home network safety. It’s a refreshing and much-needed call to action that connects the personal and professional.
On Wednesday, Chris returns with co-presenter James Shreve for a two-hour Learning Lab, “When Things Go Boom: Supply Chain Risk.” This Chatham House Rule session dives deep into one of today’s most complex challenges: managing third-party risk without stopping the business in its tracks. Participants will step into different roles—board members, CISOs, legal, finance—to engage in a live, collaborative scenario that pushes them to think beyond checklists. Real talk. Real collaboration. And practical takeaways.
But that’s not all. BlackCloak is also unveiling its new Digital Executive Protection Framework, designed to help organizations assess and strengthen protections for executives and their families. Chris teases that this framework includes 14 essential tenets that blend physical, digital, and organizational awareness—and he’ll be sitting down with us again at the event to go deeper.
With 15–20 BlackCloak team members on site, a full schedule of meetings, events, and community conversations, this year is shaping up to be a milestone for BlackCloak at RSAC. If you’re attending, keep an eye on their LinkedIn page for updates, booking links, and suite details.
As Chris says, it’s about lifting our heads, scanning the horizon, and showing up for our community—and our families.
Keywords: RSAC2025, Chris Pierson, BlackCloak, cybersecurity, RSA Conference, digital protection, executive protection, supply chain risk, identity theft, privacy, home network security, third-party risk, CISOs, cybersecurity community, digital executive protection framework, GRC, threat intelligence, infosec, personal security, cybersecurity awareness
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Guest: Chris Pierson, Founder & CEO of BLACKCLOAK | Digital Executive Protection | Concierge Cybersecurity & Privacy Protection . . . in their Personal Lives | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drchristopherpierson/
Hosts:
Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast [@RedefiningCyber] | On ITSPmagazine: https://www.itspmagazine.com/sean-martin
Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast | On ITSPmagazine: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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This Episode’s Sponsors
BLACKCLOAK:
https://itspm.ag/itspbcweb
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Resources
Learn more and catch more stories from RSA Conference 2025 coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsa-conference-usa-2025-rsac-san-francisco-usa-cybersecurity-event-infosec-conference-coverage
Chris Sessions
Protecting What Matters—Your Family & Home https://path.rsaconference.com/flow/rsac/us25/FullAgenda/page/catalog/session/1739369849404001eWtU
When Things Go Boom! Your Supply Chain Risk
https://path.rsaconference.com/flow/rsac/us25/FullAgenda/page/catalog/session/1727434586212001yGwM
BLACKCLOAK WEBSITE:
https://itspm.ag/itspbcweb
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Marco Ciappelli: Sean.
Sean Martin: Vroom, Vroom.
Marco Ciappelli: Oh yeah. You know what?
Sean Martin: we're on the road.
Marco Ciappelli: I'm ready. We're driving together this year again, [00:01:00] right
Sean Martin: I we're, I think we're driving together for the first time in a long time.
Marco Ciappelli: I know. Are we gonna stop on the beach or talking to cows on the way? You know, like all the
Sean Martin: we, we, we spoke to the cows on the way back,
Marco Ciappelli: that's right.
Sean Martin: I guess we could have a chat with 'em on the way up this time.
Marco Ciappelli: They were relevant. They were relevant. They had good points to share with us.
Anyway, talking about good points to share with us. Seriously, we are
Sean Martin: call our guest a cow, Marco.
Marco Ciappelli: No, no, no, no. See that you throw me under the bus, Matt, the good news is that it's Chris, Chris Pierson, so he, he knows We're kidding. How you doing, Chris?
Chris Pierson: I am doing good. How are you guys doing
Marco Ciappelli: We're good. Always happy to chat with you
Sean Martin: mood today, obviously,
Marco Ciappelli: obviously Yep,
Sean Martin: we, we, we, we love chatting with you, so it adds a little extra spice to, uh, to our silliness.
Marco Ciappelli: Mm,
Chris Pierson: day.
Sean Martin: It does. It does, and talking about it
Marco Ciappelli: be exciting is the RSA Conference 2025, uh, San Francisco, of course. April 28th, [00:02:00] May 1st, so coming up. I know you're gonna be there. You're gonna have two talks and, uh. Meeting with people and doing a lot of fun stuff.
So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
Chris Pierson: I love it.
Marco Ciappelli: Yeah.
Sean Martin: Right, so, so BlackCloak will be there, Chris will be there. Some of the team, I presume will be there and, uh, you'll be meeting with folks. But you, in amongst all of all the conversations you're gonna have with people, you're, you're presenting. Two, two different times. So let's, uh, let's talk about the first one.
Let's see that, that would be the Monday, the Monday event, the 28th at eight 30 in the morning, bright and early to wake folks up, protecting what matters. Your family and home. What's that one all about? I.
Chris Pierson: Yeah, I mean, well first of all, like I am so super excited. I mean, just, you know, four weeks away, getting out there, getting back together. I used to love when you remember, RSA was like the last week of February, right in there. It's like you can, you can see everyone, talk to everyone, ruminate with [00:03:00] everyone at the beginning of the year in Q1.
And I, I really enjoyed that. 'cause then it's like a little while before Gartner, a little while before Black Hat kind of spreads it out. But, but I mean, hey, look, at the end of the day. We're gonna be there Monday, April 28th, protecting what matters. What's really cool about this is we're gonna do a whole, there's like a whole series being put together, and so this is gonna be, I'm gonna kick it off and what we're gonna do is talk about how you.
The cybersecurity professional privacy, professional compliance, GRC threat, Intel SOC professional. How do you think about not cybersecurity for your corporation or for the government or for your clients? How do we actually stop and pause, right? If you remember a few years ago, mental health and hey, let's pause.
Let's make sure that our community is good. Let's go ahead and put our arms around our friends that are there. Make sure everyone else is good. This is a, guys, let's, let's, let's stop and pause. Let's make sure that we are giving something back to the [00:04:00] community of professionals that are there. How are we thinking about protecting I.
Ourselves and our personal lives, our families and our personal lives, our moms and dads, brothers, sisters, kids, grandkids, all the rest. How do we think about this from the perspective of privacy? How do we think about it from the perspective of identity theft? How do we think about it from other interesting attack vectors into the home, the scams, tax season, scams?
How do we think about the real things that really matter each and every day? To all consumers, right? All consumers. And what types of things do we do? What are the low hanging fruit? We already know what we're telling our companies to do. We already know what we're doing while we're at our company. What can we do to be better in our personal lives and be a better friend to our family members?
And this is gonna be really, really cool 'cause it's gonna be low hanging fruit. [00:05:00] Easy discussions of five other folks that will follow me on a different myriad of issues on privacy, identity theft, home protection, wireless network, protect all the rest of these. And I'm super excited because it's one of the, again, gonna be one of those things where it's a, Hey, when we all walk out of RSA, we did something to help everyone else out.
Kind of lift up our heads, get our scanning on there, make sure we're helping all of our loved ones and really, really paying some good attention to this. Now we can only hit five types of items, so we can't go super deep on any one, and we can't talk about a hundred items, but I think this will be really, really value add and I'm, I'm looking forward to, it's gonna be fun.
Sean Martin: Sounds really cool. The co, the cobbler, uh, their family has shoes finally.
Chris Pierson: Yeah, it it is. It is. And it's, um. It's so, I think it's something that we forget about. We're like, ah, you know, I've got dual factor in at work. Everything's good. You know, I've got federated identity. I've got all these cool, fun gadgets, but, ah, no, my, my Gmail account, everything's [00:06:00] good. My mom's a uh, Yahoo account.
Everything's fine there. It's just mom. What does she have going on? It is, uh, hold on guys. We've got the expertise to knock off those top 10 items. Top 10 items. Be a friend to our parents, brothers, sisters, all the rest, and create a stronger cybersecurity community without coming in hard fashion of massive blinky lights and equipment and other things to be complicated.
There's a lot we can do. I mean, there really is a lot we can do.
Marco Ciappelli: Yep. I think I, I love the fact that you're, you're doing it a community level because, you know, RSA conference is about that. You, you mentioned what it was, uh, years ago this year is many Voices one community. So the community is still there into the theme of the event. And I think that, let's stop a second and let's look into what we do.
Beside work I think is really cool. So. Thumbs off for that.
Chris Pierson: I appreciate it. It's, uh, um, like I said, it's, it's going to be fun, right? There's no vendor stuff [00:07:00] in this, none of that whatsoever. It's just a look. You, this is, I think this is my first presentation. RSA was 2004, so it's maybe my 21st year presenting at RSA. I mean, this is gonna be fun.
Give back to the community, make everyone, you know, try to make everyone a little bit better. And, and I, I couldn't be happier to do it.
Marco Ciappelli: Yep. Love that.
Sean Martin: you, you host great sessions, by the way.
Chris Pierson: Yeah.
Sean Martin: I'm, uh, I'm, I'm thrilled to, thrilled to see it and partake. Hopefully everybody else joins you as well. That's just a recap. That's Monday, April 28th. 8:30 AM
Chris Pierson: bright and early. I'll be caffeinated.
Sean Martin: That's right. Uh, does it say the room yet? Doesn't say the room yet. Uh, no room yet. But anyway, PH FM oh one is the code for, if that matters to anybody.
But, uh, the other end of the spectrum, so the, have the, have the home and our little nucleus of family. And then, and then there's. Everything, [00:08:00] uh, supply chain risk. When things go boom, your supply chain risk. That one's on Wednesday, April 30th, also at eight 30 in the morning. That's a two hour session by the way.
You and, uh, you and James Reve are gonna be presenting there together. That's a complex topic. Evidently two hours, uh, allocated to that, to, to dig in there. What, what are you doing there?
Chris Pierson: Oh my gosh. It's, uh, uh, you know, two hours we'll have, we'll have caffeine on hand for those people that stayed out late, uh, Tuesday night, doing an eighties disco, whatnot. But I mean, look, this is gonna be fun. So my partner crime, Jim Shreeve, so he and I are gonna team up together. This is gonna be a Chatham House rule event.
We're gonna pack people in, you know, I think 200 people learning lab style, two hours of dedicated focus energy. And really this is a, a, you know, what about a title? I mean, when things go boom, I mean, nobody likes when anything goes boom. Um, but uh, maybe when the money bag hits the table and it goes boom.
But other than that, um, every single company uses right third [00:09:00] party products, third party products, software, hardware, and other services to deliver or create their own goods. I. How do we figure out, right, really how to assess them without being, well, it's a high risk and everything's a high risk, and there's no in between.
How do we think about this in terms of examining the risks? How do we think about it in terms of thinking about some controls that we can add in, and how do we think about that residual risks, so right inherent risk control and residual risk. How do we think about the backend? How do we think about.
Doing this in a manner that actually supports business. I know before we got on today, we were talking about, look, you know, how do you support the overall business? Have a seat at the table and all the rest. Uh, you know, if you're, you're the security team over at Nike, uh, you know, awesome, awesome team. But if you're the team over at Nike, um, you know, you're not there to be the most awesome team.
You have the most awards and most of this, most value. You're there because you believe in the Nike mission of. Fitness and health and exercise and, and getting out there and, and doing stuff and active, you know, and, and everything [00:10:00] else. And it's like, yeah. And so we're gonna talk about how do you actually acknowledge this is a risk.
Good. Yep. We're all there. How do you talk about it in such a fashion that doesn't stop business log jam business. How do you talk about it in a way and work with other business units in a way that actually gets business done? So it's gonna be a learning lab means we're gonna talk a little, we're gonna do a live realtime exercise, break people up into different groups.
We're gonna have the board of directors, we're gonna have executive risk committee, we're gonna have the, uh, business line. We're gonna have privacy and legal and compliance. We're gonna have cybersecurity, we're gonna have some of the finance people and everyone's gonna play different roles. We're all going to try to understand and put ourselves in other people's shoes and think through the problem in the context.
I won't spoil it. We're gonna think through that as to like, do we or don't we? And how far do we Right? And think about that altogether. So we're gonna go through that. It'll have two different major story points in there. Kind of one big story broken up in half. We'll get some discussion there. We'll get some debate in there and, and what I [00:11:00] love is the support of RSA on this.
We've been able to keep it Chatham House rule locked down, no video, no audio, no recording, no-nos, and we're able to deliver stuff back to the community afterwards that attended so that people actually can bring something back to their place of work. That they can actually use. And, and what I will tell you is 'cause of the really frank talk, um, that happens there, um, uh, a lot of people, right, they end up right, they end up getting their, their business cards back and forth, making connections.
Hey, what are you seeing? What am I seeing? And yeah, I got shared experience and now they have somebody else that they can lean on. And once again, I mean, Marco, back to your point, community,
Sean Martin: Are they CSOs in the room with you? Chris, who's
Chris Pierson: Um, yeah, we have everything in so we, so we open it up to everyone. So, some CISOs, um, some, uh, CSOs sometimes get in there. Uh, legal compliance people, Fred Intel, GRC folks get in there. Consultants, um, lawyers internally, lawyers and consultants. [00:12:00] Externally, it is a total mixing pot. And here's the cool thing when we assign people, like, you don't necessarily go to what your day job is.
We go ahead and we randomize it and we assign, and then if you happen to be your day job, it's gonna get flipped in the second part of the thing. Like we just randomly happen to be in that area. So it really makes people, it really makes people stretch their mind, but also empathize a little bit.
Marco Ciappelli: Right. I like that. I like put yourself in other people's shoes. Uh, to go back to the shoe, that metaphor.
Chris Pierson: what are we doing? And the third presentation, RSA will all be about the shoes.
Marco Ciappelli: There you
Sean Martin: all leather.
Marco Ciappelli: You know, one thing I don't like about this, this particular session is that because of the rules, media is not allow it. And so you're gonna have to tell me about it later.
Chris Pierson: Well, well, well, well, maybe, maybe, maybe I'll talk to you guys at RSA after it
Marco Ciappelli: uh. Right? Yeah, yeah. Of, of course. 'cause you're not gonna be there only. For these two sessions, [00:13:00] you're gonna be there to meet with people that want to of course meet with you. You're gonna be there to have another chat with us as, uh, black Clock is, uh, uh, our, one of our official sponsors this year. So we're gonna sit down with you and talk about something that you will unveil right there about a, a, a certain framework for digital executive protection.
So you want to tease a little bit about that.
Chris Pierson: Yeah, I mean, so you know, we've got, black Cloak has released the, you know, digital executive protection framework. It's 14 key tenets that are something where every CSO, every executive protection professional, every cybersecurity professional CISO can go ahead and measure. How do you think about protecting our board members, our executive leadership team, C-suite, and, and all those kind of in between?
How do you think about protecting them and their families? Some of the stuff you might be doing great. Some of the stuff might be done by legal, for example, in terms of like overall monitoring of the brand. That's wonderful. Some stuff might be [00:14:00] already born by the physical protection, the executive protection team at your company, wonderful as well.
But what you're gonna find is, is that really having a holistic view into things is where you need to be. And that framework, which is neutral framework, can help you get there. Um, and so we'll have some other developments there to announce as well. But, uh, I'm, I'm excited about it. I'm excited about it.
Sean Martin: And if for people that want to, well, hopefully they'll listen to our conversation 'cause we'll, we'll dig into it, of course. Um, but as with most things, security, it, it has to tie back to your organization, your executive team. I. The risk that each of those layers have, and that's where the, the nitty gritty comes in.
So, we'll, we'll cover it in, in as much detail as we can on location there, but, but folks are gonna have more questions and we can talk about in the, in the time that we have. So you'll be on site, uh, you'll have a suite there for, for meetings. Tell [00:15:00] us a little bit about how folks, uh, how and when they can connect with you.
You'll be there all week, I presume.
Chris Pierson: No. Oh, yeah. Uh, we'll be there for all week. I, I don't know. At this point in time we have 15 or 20 people going. Um, so we'll, we'll be, we'll be there all week. Um, so we will have a suite there, uh, folks, and pay attention to. LinkedIn page, the Black Cloak, uh, LinkedIn page, and go ahead and make appointments to meet with our, uh, product folks, engineering folks, sales folks.
We have a whole bunch of, uh, people from the team and a whole bunch of groups, uh, represented. Uh, we'll of course be meeting with some of our current, uh, clients and members. Um, always appreciate, uh, their partnership and the relationship there. Um, we'll be announcing a few other cool things, which will come out in a few weeks and, uh, but I think pay attention to LinkedIn and we'll have the, uh, bookings out there soon.
And, uh, and, uh, welcome people into our suite and, uh, I'll be out and about as well with some other team members and hitting the floor and hitting the floor, hitting the speeches. We'll be, we'll be all over and we have a, [00:16:00] a few events. I think we're sponsoring two different events there Monday and Tuesday night.
So we'll also have that as well and, and, uh, yeah. But definitely pay attention to our, check out our LinkedIn page and, and we look forward to seeing everyone and we look forward to making new friends, right? Really look forward to that
Marco Ciappelli: It is really the beauty of going back and, and I see people that commenting like, ah, it's a mad house. It's a mad house. I mean, the, the amount of speakers this year we were selecting people to talk to. It's like, wait a minute, this is still going, this list. It's, it's. A lot of people that are participating actively.
So, RSA Converse has been growing after year, after year. And for me it's still enjoyable 'cause I get to see you, I get to hang out with Sean, I get to see, like I said, all friends, make new friends. And that's, that's the beauty of it. So,
Sean Martin: And I'm gonna sport some new shoes.
Marco Ciappelli: there you go.
Chris Pierson: there you go. I like it.
Marco Ciappelli: do you have? A weird color.
Sean Martin: It's a weird color.
Marco Ciappelli: right, we'll
Sean Martin: you'll, you'll see me a mile away on these ones.
Marco Ciappelli: [00:17:00] we'll pay attention to that.
And again, Chris, he went back on shoes. I don't know what's wrong with him today, but he is just talking about shoes all day long. Well, we, we are excited. We'll, we will keep updated the audience on, uh, you know. Amplifying your messages, uh, on, uh, on LinkedIn and of course they can check what's going on on your page.
The directory page for black CLO on it P magazine and we will have a lot more conversation pre-event during the event on the road after the event. We, yeah, we, we are excited as much as you are Chris, for a full. Weak of, uh, of mingling and shouting and coming back stronger as a community. 'cause
Chris Pierson: I am ready, I'm ready, willing, ready, able, and, and I gotta tell you, it's gonna be super exciting to see everyone really, and super excited to see you guys, uh, uh, there as well. But really excited to see the whole community.
Sean Martin: Yep. Absolutely.
Marco Ciappelli: [00:18:00] All right.
Sean Martin: And so are we. So we'll see you, uh, that week, end of May, and into, into, uh, sorry, end of April, into May if I get my months right. And, uh, lots, lots coming. So thanks everybody for joining us. Stay tuned. Itsp magazine.com/rsac for all of our coverage, including more with Chris, uh, just, just down the road.
See you then.[00:19:00]