To understand the state of EUC (end-user computing) security in 2025, you don’t need a crystal ball—just good shoes. At least, that’s the consensus after navigating the RSA Conference’s sprawling Moscone Center, where tracking down the future of endpoint and email security looks suspiciously like training for a marathon. But if your sneakers survived last year’s AI buzzword blitz and a half-mile between sessions, you’re no doubt ready for round two, with three pressing security trends to keep an eye on: AI with actual purpose, convergence in endpoint management and security, and the evolving menace in your inbox—email security.
Last year’s RSA Conference attendees were pummeled with AI narratives at every booth, blinking LED, and vendor slide deck, like freshmen enduring a particularly geeky fraternity initiation. The messaging was, if we’re being polite, repetitive: “The bad guys use AI,” “AI helps us detect bad guys,” “Our AI chatbot can totally help you!” After a while, it felt like the “AI stick” was wielded with more enthusiasm than substance.
But while the AI story spun in circles, tangible innovation was scarce. Now, with neural processing units starting to land in endpoint security solutions, there’s hope that RSAC 2025 might finally serve us some AI that does more than just generate catchy PowerPoint slides. These AI-focused chips promise optimized scanning and, just maybe, a hint of practical magic for “AI PCs”—those local workhorses running sophisticated models on your desk. Whether more companies follow suit, or the industry keeps touting theoretical benefits, is the question on everyone’s mind.
Meanwhile, an equally pressing point emerges: Are bad actors exploiting these local AI processors? Truth be told, it’s probably not today’s biggest threat—but let’s not bet against tomorrow’s threat actors snooping around for new attack surfaces like kids in an unattended candy store. As AI agents—autonomous software running tasks for users—move from drawing-board to desktop, their own security Achilles’ heels will likely steal headlines. Identity, data loss, compliance; you know, the kind of stuff that turns CISOs into insomniacs.
What we really need is less “please clap for AI” and more honest panel discussions on agentic AI. The term means a lot of things to a lot of people (and occasionally nothing to a room full of bored engineers). Some see it as a chance for end-users to spin up digital clones on their PC or virtual machines, automating repetitive tasks. Others fret over the security baggage: identity theft, ambiguous governance, even accident-prone automation sending confidential files to the wrong place.
For IT professionals tasked with securing these agentic AI processes, the real question is: Will security even keep up, or are we simply handing the attackers cognitively supercharged new vectors and hoping for the best?
The latest buzzword? Autonomous endpoint management. Think: platforms that not only inventory, patch, and configure your endpoints but somehow work in concert with security tools, ideally without unleashing a war of notifications or resulting in organizational “finger-pointing as a service.”
The power play here is integrating real-time risk mitigation with operational flexibility—because in a world where a single infected USB can cause chaos, there’s simply no room for turf wars. Companies like Tanium have gotten everyone talking (and judging by floor space at conferences, possibly everyone’s budgetary attention, too). This convergence isn’t just a play for better metrics; it’s a shrewd response to the fact that attackers aren’t respecting your organizational chart.
But, let’s take a step back: Autonomous management can sound a lot like “automatic chaos” to a skeptical sysadmin. Sure, it promises frictionless visibility and seamless workflow, but hands up if you’ve ever watched a bright, shiny tool automatically brick a fleet of endpoints because its AI “thought” it saw a threat... and didn’t check with anyone first.
For IT professionals, the rub is trade-offs: do you get better security, or simply more complex dashboards to ignore? Will converged platforms reduce response times, or just rebrand the blame game with fancier acronyms?
Fast-forward to 2025, and the landscape is unrecognizable. Generative AI now crafts personalized, convincing phishing messages at industrial scale. That embarrassing typo-ridden phish from 2015 has given way to symphony-level social engineering, with attackers using models that can mimic tone, guess context, and sidestep the red flags that once made detection “easy-ish.” No more broken English; in many cases, your C-suite’s digital double could send a better phishing email than the real thing sends a memo.
This ratchets pressure on the tools and techniques supposed to keep your inbox safe. Email security vendors, never one to miss a trend, are promising their own flavors of AI—behavioral analysis, impersonation detection, or even real-time user coaching. Their approaches vary wildly. Some tout behavioral baselining, others focus on natural language understanding, while a few take the “train everyone until they don’t click anything” approach.
For those charged with defending against these threats, the stakes aren’t just financial or reputational. The attack surface scales with every bot that can convincingly impersonate a company’s VIP. Meanwhile, the margin for error shrinks: With automated, AI-powered phishing, the attackers only need to succeed once. The rest is left to your overworked security analysts and the ever-promised, never-delivered “AI magic bullet.”
That’s why RSAC’s vendor booths aren’t just hawking features—they’re playing catch-up with a threat that’s mutating at the speed of innovation. From startups with scrappy new approaches to legacy vendors attempting gymnastic pivots, everyone is scrambling to keep email from morphing into the next Wild West.
On the one hand, the steady incorporation of AI into endpoint tools represents genuine progress. If neural processors can scan locally without pinging cloud servers for every threat analysis, security teams finally get both speed and privacy. But, as with all things AI, the devil is in the defaults. Will these chips become yet another point of failure—or worse, a new golden ticket for attackers if poorly secured? The crosstalk between data privacy, on-device decisions, and auditability is only going to get noisier.
The convergence between endpoint management and security presents just as many opportunities as headaches. For years, the greatest threats were often hiding in the gaps between teams; now, the hope is that unified tools will force cross-functional collaboration, or at least mediate blame via shared dashboards. But the jargon-laden messaging (“autonomous endpoint security,” “zero-touch management,” “hyper-converged blah-blah-blah”) can just as easily obscure practical realities. The proof will be in the incident response pudding.
And email? It’s the quietly terrifying foundation of most businesses, the single sign-on to chaos. The race to outwit AI-generated attacks calls for not just clever tools but equally smart users. Unfortunately, the law of averages—and a few too many “Reply All” disasters—suggests that humans will always be the weakest link. Training campaigns are multiplying, but so too are attacker tactics, in a classic arms race where defense often lags by a patch update or two.
For AI in security, the hidden risk is “explainability.” Even as neural networks uncover subtle threats, try explaining your incident response to an auditor when your only defense is “the AI said so.” Regulators (and angry incident victims) don’t accept “it’s complicated” as an answer. Vendors who can deliver not just smarter AI, but transparent, auditable AI, may ultimately win the trust war.
With endpoint management convergence, the risk lies in “vendor lock-in by stealth.” If consolidating your tools means you hand the keys to a single platform, what happens when their cloud goes down? Or their pricing balloons at renewal time? The counterpoint: Companies who manage to pull it off without locking themselves in could achieve efficiencies and visibility that, let’s face it, IT pros fantasize about during long compliance meetings.
And email? The wildcard is social engineering layered with AI. Humans are endlessly creative, and AI models trained to exploit that creativity may soon surpass even the most paranoid admin’s imagination. The superpower here may be layered deterrents—the right blend of technical detection, user education, and (dare we say) incentives for people to “think before you click.”
Under all the excitement, a thread of skepticism is healthy. For IT professionals, the next six months will mean:
Source: TechTarget 3 EUC security topics I'll be looking for at RSAC 2025 | TechTarget
AI with Actual Purpose: Less Sizzle, More Steak
Last year’s RSA Conference attendees were pummeled with AI narratives at every booth, blinking LED, and vendor slide deck, like freshmen enduring a particularly geeky fraternity initiation. The messaging was, if we’re being polite, repetitive: “The bad guys use AI,” “AI helps us detect bad guys,” “Our AI chatbot can totally help you!” After a while, it felt like the “AI stick” was wielded with more enthusiasm than substance.But while the AI story spun in circles, tangible innovation was scarce. Now, with neural processing units starting to land in endpoint security solutions, there’s hope that RSAC 2025 might finally serve us some AI that does more than just generate catchy PowerPoint slides. These AI-focused chips promise optimized scanning and, just maybe, a hint of practical magic for “AI PCs”—those local workhorses running sophisticated models on your desk. Whether more companies follow suit, or the industry keeps touting theoretical benefits, is the question on everyone’s mind.
Meanwhile, an equally pressing point emerges: Are bad actors exploiting these local AI processors? Truth be told, it’s probably not today’s biggest threat—but let’s not bet against tomorrow’s threat actors snooping around for new attack surfaces like kids in an unattended candy store. As AI agents—autonomous software running tasks for users—move from drawing-board to desktop, their own security Achilles’ heels will likely steal headlines. Identity, data loss, compliance; you know, the kind of stuff that turns CISOs into insomniacs.
What we really need is less “please clap for AI” and more honest panel discussions on agentic AI. The term means a lot of things to a lot of people (and occasionally nothing to a room full of bored engineers). Some see it as a chance for end-users to spin up digital clones on their PC or virtual machines, automating repetitive tasks. Others fret over the security baggage: identity theft, ambiguous governance, even accident-prone automation sending confidential files to the wrong place.
For IT professionals tasked with securing these agentic AI processes, the real question is: Will security even keep up, or are we simply handing the attackers cognitively supercharged new vectors and hoping for the best?
Endpoint Management and Security: When Two Worlds Collide
If your security and IT teams are still bickering over whose turn it is to reboot the Wi-Fi router, buckle up. The walls separating endpoint management and security are crumbling, with vendors like Adaptiva, NinjaOne, and CrowdStrike leading the charge. Picture last year’s conference: shiny booths, determined sales reps, and a constant drumbeat about the need for unity between two traditionally siloed disciplines.The latest buzzword? Autonomous endpoint management. Think: platforms that not only inventory, patch, and configure your endpoints but somehow work in concert with security tools, ideally without unleashing a war of notifications or resulting in organizational “finger-pointing as a service.”
The power play here is integrating real-time risk mitigation with operational flexibility—because in a world where a single infected USB can cause chaos, there’s simply no room for turf wars. Companies like Tanium have gotten everyone talking (and judging by floor space at conferences, possibly everyone’s budgetary attention, too). This convergence isn’t just a play for better metrics; it’s a shrewd response to the fact that attackers aren’t respecting your organizational chart.
But, let’s take a step back: Autonomous management can sound a lot like “automatic chaos” to a skeptical sysadmin. Sure, it promises frictionless visibility and seamless workflow, but hands up if you’ve ever watched a bright, shiny tool automatically brick a fleet of endpoints because its AI “thought” it saw a threat... and didn’t check with anyone first.
For IT professionals, the rub is trade-offs: do you get better security, or simply more complex dashboards to ignore? Will converged platforms reduce response times, or just rebrand the blame game with fancier acronyms?
Email Security: The Mutating Menace
If endpoint threats are brawny, email is their sly, convincing cousin. For years, phishing and business email compromise (BEC, for those who like their acronyms in all caps) have reigned supreme, usually fuelled by obviously-fake messages from fictitious Nigerian princes.Fast-forward to 2025, and the landscape is unrecognizable. Generative AI now crafts personalized, convincing phishing messages at industrial scale. That embarrassing typo-ridden phish from 2015 has given way to symphony-level social engineering, with attackers using models that can mimic tone, guess context, and sidestep the red flags that once made detection “easy-ish.” No more broken English; in many cases, your C-suite’s digital double could send a better phishing email than the real thing sends a memo.
This ratchets pressure on the tools and techniques supposed to keep your inbox safe. Email security vendors, never one to miss a trend, are promising their own flavors of AI—behavioral analysis, impersonation detection, or even real-time user coaching. Their approaches vary wildly. Some tout behavioral baselining, others focus on natural language understanding, while a few take the “train everyone until they don’t click anything” approach.
For those charged with defending against these threats, the stakes aren’t just financial or reputational. The attack surface scales with every bot that can convincingly impersonate a company’s VIP. Meanwhile, the margin for error shrinks: With automated, AI-powered phishing, the attackers only need to succeed once. The rest is left to your overworked security analysts and the ever-promised, never-delivered “AI magic bullet.”
That’s why RSAC’s vendor booths aren’t just hawking features—they’re playing catch-up with a threat that’s mutating at the speed of innovation. From startups with scrappy new approaches to legacy vendors attempting gymnastic pivots, everyone is scrambling to keep email from morphing into the next Wild West.
The Real-World Implications: From C-Suite to Cubicle
Peering beyond the conference hype, what IT pros should really be scrutinizing is whether these “next big things” are anything more than upgrades to slick marketing collateral. On the ground, the convergence of AI, endpoint management, and evolved email threats translates to massive operational change—and just a hint of philosophical panic.On the one hand, the steady incorporation of AI into endpoint tools represents genuine progress. If neural processors can scan locally without pinging cloud servers for every threat analysis, security teams finally get both speed and privacy. But, as with all things AI, the devil is in the defaults. Will these chips become yet another point of failure—or worse, a new golden ticket for attackers if poorly secured? The crosstalk between data privacy, on-device decisions, and auditability is only going to get noisier.
The convergence between endpoint management and security presents just as many opportunities as headaches. For years, the greatest threats were often hiding in the gaps between teams; now, the hope is that unified tools will force cross-functional collaboration, or at least mediate blame via shared dashboards. But the jargon-laden messaging (“autonomous endpoint security,” “zero-touch management,” “hyper-converged blah-blah-blah”) can just as easily obscure practical realities. The proof will be in the incident response pudding.
And email? It’s the quietly terrifying foundation of most businesses, the single sign-on to chaos. The race to outwit AI-generated attacks calls for not just clever tools but equally smart users. Unfortunately, the law of averages—and a few too many “Reply All” disasters—suggests that humans will always be the weakest link. Training campaigns are multiplying, but so too are attacker tactics, in a classic arms race where defense often lags by a patch update or two.
Hidden Gotchas and Secret Superpowers
Here’s where we get real: For every bold prediction and overcaffeinated demo at RSAC, there are risks and quirks that rarely make the keynote.For AI in security, the hidden risk is “explainability.” Even as neural networks uncover subtle threats, try explaining your incident response to an auditor when your only defense is “the AI said so.” Regulators (and angry incident victims) don’t accept “it’s complicated” as an answer. Vendors who can deliver not just smarter AI, but transparent, auditable AI, may ultimately win the trust war.
With endpoint management convergence, the risk lies in “vendor lock-in by stealth.” If consolidating your tools means you hand the keys to a single platform, what happens when their cloud goes down? Or their pricing balloons at renewal time? The counterpoint: Companies who manage to pull it off without locking themselves in could achieve efficiencies and visibility that, let’s face it, IT pros fantasize about during long compliance meetings.
And email? The wildcard is social engineering layered with AI. Humans are endlessly creative, and AI models trained to exploit that creativity may soon surpass even the most paranoid admin’s imagination. The superpower here may be layered deterrents—the right blend of technical detection, user education, and (dare we say) incentives for people to “think before you click.”
Critique and Closing Thoughts: Skepticism as a Service
RSAC remains the best arena for security ideas to brawl in public. Yet, for every hope that this year will be “the year of practical AI” or “the dawn of frictionless convergence,” there are reminders of past security fads that fizzled as soon as the Moscone escalators stopped whirring. It’s easy to leave a conference buzzing with vendor hype, yet harder to sift out which trends—AI-enhanced endpoint tools, management converging with security, or next-gen email detection—will actually stand up to a real-world breach.Under all the excitement, a thread of skepticism is healthy. For IT professionals, the next six months will mean:
- Demanding evidence of AI’s value, not just promises of “learning” and “automation.”
- Insisting on transparency and auditability, especially in agentic AI implementations.
- Carefully piloting converged endpoint tools before betting the company on a new platform.
- Investing in continuing education (for both users and defenders), since the phishing arms race shows no sign of letting up.
Source: TechTarget 3 EUC security topics I'll be looking for at RSAC 2025 | TechTarget
