Elisity at RSAC 2025: From Zero Trust Hype to Real-World Microsegmentation Impact

Network Segmentation Takes Center Stage at Cybersecurity's Premier Conference

San Francisco's Moscone Center buzzed with AI-powered demos, cybersecurity celebrity sightings, and the latest trends in agentic intelligence. But while much of RSAC 2025 was focused on promises of what AI might someday do, Elisity stood out by showing what security teams could accomplish right now—with identity-based microsegmentation deployed in weeks, not years.

This year's conference theme, "Many Voices. One Community," was more than a tagline. It was a call to action. From packed speaking sessions to sidewalk conversations and after-hours socials, the mood was clear: security leaders are tired of complexity. They're looking for network security solutions that move at the pace of risk.

Main Line Health Takes Center Stage

Every year at RSAC, one customer story rises above the noise and captures the imagination of the crowd. In 2025, that story was Main Line Health.

Aaron Weismann, CISO of the Pennsylvania-based healthcare system, joined Elisity CEO James Winebrenner for a live discussion with theCUBE’s John Furrier. Their message? That zero trust network segmentation is no longer a theoretical framework. It's a practical strategy—and it works.

Weismann shared how Main Line Health used Elisity and Armis to contain ransomware risk, reduce lateral movement, and apply least-privilege access policies across medical and IoT devices—all in a matter of weeks, without installing a single agent or touching legacy VLANs. The audience was captivated by the results: rapid implementation, zero downtime, and meaningful resilience in an industry under siege.

This wasn't just a one-off moment. The Main Line Health story echoed across the show floor, through a companion blog post, a detailed microsegmentation case study, and a pre-conference feature in The Hacker News. It was even cited in SiliconANGLE's coverage as one of the most compelling zero trust microsegmentation use cases at the event.

Innovation Recognized: From the Stage to the Spotlight

RSAC 2025 also marked a breakout moment for Elisity as a company. On Tuesday afternoon, James Winebrenner, CEO of Elisity, took the stage at the NightDragon Innovation Summit for a high-stakes "Innovation Sprint" pitch. With only four minutes to make the case, he laid out a vision of network segmentation that's fast, frictionless, and identity-first. By the end of the session, the audience had spoken—Elisity was awarded "Best in Show."

That recognition was more than symbolic. It reflected the excitement we saw all week from CISOs, architects, and analysts looking for a modern way to enforce policy across hybrid environments. One that doesn't rely on box-heavy NAC deployments or multi-year re-IPing projects.

But rather than leaning on buzzwords or marketecture, James opened with a simple but confronting question:

"How many people in this room have successfully completed a segmentation project—meaning all of their zones are effectively mapped to the business risk, all of their policies are activated and deployed, and the auditors are happy?"

Ninety percent of the hands in the room went down.

"That gap represents a tremendous hundreds of millions of dollars of unnecessary exposure," James said.

He went on to tell the story of a major pharmaceutical design partner—one of Elisity's early customers—who inherited a segmentation project with a staggering price tag and little progress to show:

"Eighteen months in, after the board had approved £200 million to deploy segmentation across 74 manufacturing facilities, the new CISO looked at the project plan. They were less than halfway through one of 74 sites, with 3,500 change control windows mapped over six years to complete the project. And the feedback from that CISO was, 'I'll have been replaced twice by the time this gets done.'"

The room went quiet. The problem was clear. Traditional network segmentation wasn't just slow—it was broken.

Then James delivered the contrast: how Elisity helps customers implement their first least-privilege policies in just two weeks, with 83% of assets protected within two months. A sharp pivot from the horror story he'd just shared.

That clarity—blunt, urgent, and deeply relevant—resonated. By the end of the evening, Elisity was voted 'Best in Show' at the Innovation Showcase, validating both the message and the market need.

More than an award, the moment captured what security leaders were craving at RSAC 2025: someone willing to call out the complexity theater for what it is—and offer a way out. Elisity's identity-based microsegmentation platform was no longer just innovative. It was essential.

Backstage, that excitement translated into action. Our team logged back-to-back meetings with Fortune 500 security leaders, to explore the momentum behind our approach.

Across the City: Three Days of Demos, Deals, and Dialogue

While most RSAC attendees never strayed far from Moscone, Elisity's presence stretched across the city.

At the Club Claroty lounge—a rooftop meeting space just above the conference center—we welcomed guests for live demos and intimate conversations. With Claroty's IoT/OT/IoMT focus and our shared customer base, the synergy was obvious. From Tuesday through Thursday, we ran nonstop walkthroughs of our identity-based policy engine, showing in real time how security teams could visualize, simulate, and apply network segmentation policies without the overhead of traditional firewalls or ACLs.

A few blocks away, our InsightPartners ScaleUp suite at 111 Minna Gallery offered a different kind of environment: a quiet escape designed for deep conversation with enterprise buyers, Insight Partners investors, and long-time customers. There, we closed late-stage opportunities, scoped joint campaigns with go-to-market allies, and celebrated our latest product milestone: an integration with Armis that adds even more depth to our visibility across unmanaged and IoMT devices.

Awards That Validate the Mission

Of course, recognition came not only from our customers and peers—but also from the cybersecurity industry at large. At RSAC 2025, Elisity took home three Global InfoSec Awards from Cyber Defense Magazine:

• Best Medical Device Security
• Best IoT Device Security
• Best Microsegmentation Solution
  
  

Combined with the NightDragon "Best in Show" honor, these awards offered independent validation of what our customers already know: Elisity is redefining what microsegmentation looks like—and how fast it can work.

What We Heard, and What We Learned

Between speaking sessions and side chats, product demos and breakfast briefings, one theme kept surfacing: the rules of network security are being rewritten.

Zero trust, once a buzzword, is becoming a board-level mandate. Critical infrastructure—from hospitals to manufacturing floors—is under siege, but struggling with legacy systems that can't support complex NAC tools. And while AI continues to dominate the headlines, CISOs remain focused on pragmatic steps they can take today to reduce blast radius and eliminate lateral movement through effective network segmentation.

In a standout session on critical infrastructure defense, one speaker warned: "If everything is critical, then nothing is." That line stuck with us, because it echoes something we tell our customers every day—your crown jewels aren't everywhere. But if you don't have segmentation, attackers can go anywhere.

Our takeaway? Security teams are ready for tools that scale with their reality, not with theoretical frameworks. They want visibility now. Policies now. Results now.

That's the Elisity promise: real zero trust microsegmentation in weeks, not years.

The Road Ahead

RSAC 2025 was Elisity's most impactful conference yet. But in many ways, it was just the beginning.

Our mission remains unchanged: to help enterprises implement identity-based security policies across all users, workloads, and devices—without ripping and replacing their existing infrastructure. With each new deployment, each new integration, and each new customer story like Main Line Health, we get one step closer to a world where network segmentation is no longer a bottleneck—it's a baseline.

And if RSAC 2025 proved anything, it's that enterprises are ready for a modern microsegmentation solution.

If you didn't get a chance to see us in San Francisco, we'd love to show you what we shared there. Book a conversation with us or get a demo and see for yourself how we're helping organizations protect what matters, move faster, and reduce risk—without the drama.