Why Democratizing Cybersecurity Is Good for Business
Jochai Ben-Avie, Kayle Giroud, Chris Painter, Rob Sheldon, Erin Ceynar
RSA Conference 2025 · Day 1 · Policy
A panel from the Global Cyber Alliance's Common Good Cyber initiative made the case that uneven access to cybersecurity tools and expertise is not just a fairness problem — it is a systemic risk problem. With nonprofits representing ten percent of the U.S. workforce and more than half of healthcare delivery on the African continent, leaving mission-driven organizations unprotected creates exploitable gaps for every sector. The session argued that corporations, philanthropic funders, vendors, and policymakers each have concrete roles to play, and offered an unusually practical set of actions for attendees to take home. ---
AI review
An earnest and well-intentioned panel on cybersecurity equity that makes the systemic risk argument better than expected. The 50% of African healthcare delivered by nonprofits statistic is genuinely arresting. Chris Painter's diagnosis of structural underfunding of shared security infrastructure is the sharpest moment. Loses points for being a project pitch dressed as a policy panel and for lacking any empirical teeth — no data on whether democratization interventions actually work.