Activate Industry!: Moving Beyond Defense to Disruption and Active Defense
Sandra Joyce
RSAC 2026 Conference · Main Stage Keynote
In this compelling talk, Sandra Joyce, Vice President of Google Threat Intelligence, Google Security, articulated a critical shift in the cybersecurity paradigm: moving beyond traditional defensive postures to embrace **active defense** and **disruption**. Delivered at the RSA Conference, Joyce's presentation underscored the urgent necessity for the cybersecurity industry to proactively shape adversary outcomes rather than merely react to threats. The talk highlighted how increasingly sophisticated, coordinated, and AI-powered cyber adversaries demand a more assertive, collaborative, and systemic approach to defense.
AI review
Sandra Joyce is a credible operator with real intelligence background and Google has done genuinely impactful disruption work — the IPIDEA takedown numbers are real, GRIDTIDE is a real campaign. But this talk, as presented, is a strategic keynote dressed up as technical content. It's a polished call-to-action from a vendor VP at RSA, which is exactly what it is: a well-produced marketing keynote for Google's threat intelligence brand. The 22-seconds-to-handoff statistic is interesting but unverified in the transcript. 'HexStrike MCP' and 'APT31 agentic workflows' are dropped without…