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  • Conference Whispers: Black Hat USA 2026

    Conference Whispers: Black Hat USA 2026

    Las Vegas, NV August 1-6, 2026

    Published: August 9, 2026                                                    ID: TBW2226

    Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
    Enjoy the related Computer Talk Radio and Computer Talk Radio.

    ABSTRACT

    Black Hat USA 2026 brought 20,000 cybersecurity professionals to Las Vegas, where researchers, vendors, and practitioners examined the evolving risks introduced by agents, AI, and increasingly complex digital environments. The event held over 100 briefings, 125 tool demonstrations and 120 sponsored sessions. Discussions across sessions and exhibits touched on agent security, threat hunting, governance, infrastructure resilience, device vulnerabilities, fraud prevention, and professional development.

    The Conference

    • A community of 20,000 verified cybersecurity professionals gathered at Black Hat USA. Over 100 briefings, 115 tool demonstrations, 120 sponsored sessions and 425+ Exhibits and vendors gathered across the 6 days.

    Cautions

    • Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.

    Sessions

    We were given an advance preview of the talk, “Promptward EOD: Skillful Agent Detonation” by Zenity’s CTO and Co-Founder Michael Bargury. Just by visiting the wrong website you could be compromised. They specifically demonstrate how an agent can jump from viewing a web site to gaining control of your bank account. Now that is scary.

    We were also provided an exclusive summary to the session, “Obscurize: Malware for Defense and Counter Offense”. As a response to recent malware, Aaron Beardslee, Manager of Threat Research at Securonix created Obscurize. Sitting above the EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response), it acts as an additional layer. Leveraging the malware’s own fingerprint, its psychology is studied and learned. This tool then makes a sandbox look like a bare metal system or a bare metal system look like a sandbox. This enables the hunter to trick the malware to kill itself or to run thinking it found the goods. The best part? Obscurize is free and publicly available for your to use during your threat hunting!

    Exhibits

    Fast track adoption of agents has organizations trying to keep up and stay safe. Sometimes in the chaos, the best laid plans go astray. Sometimes, guardrails are not enough. We have all read the horror stories of agents gone wild! Meet PointGuard AI the ultimate kill switch for agents. Avepoint aims to be your unifying trust layer for AI. Their focus is cloud security, safe data governance, and resiliency challenges across the AI stack.

    If you are Fortune 2000 and concerned about tracking agents, Zenity was looking to meet you! Softbank and other clients leverage Zenity to understand what data is being touched by agents and what that intent of those agents are. Not only that it will steer agents into the correct direction to help keep them on track. 

    Mission critical infrastructure for sovereign AI that is private to you. Cogl provides a knowledge graph and enables threat hunting and investigation in a transparent and secure manner. As you might expect, this technology is leveraged in environments ranging from the Department of Defence to banking.

    Focusing on the Security Operations Center, BlueVoyant brings what they like to call ‘holistic protections’. Their approach combines internal monitoring and ecosystem oversight. Traditional operating challenges are now assisted by AI driven agentic capabilities. The four risks they aim to mitigate include: data security and leakage, identity vulnerabilities, supply chain and vendor risks, and operational inefficiencies.

    Threat hunting is the ultimate game of cat and mouse in cybersecurity. Securonix was on site to share their tool with fellow threat hunters. Whether you want your sandbox to trap the threat or to let it run to so you may study it’s behavior, Securonix provides both options. They even have their own threat hunting team that regularly leverages the tool as they assist the clients security their own environments.

    One of our favorite areas is at the edge, connected devices and the Internet of Things – IoT. These devices span from connected vehicles to the simple fire alarms in your home. These devices often bring vulnerabilities. Due to the difficulty in updating their firmware, connected device firmware vulnerabilities become your environment’s weakest point and the point of failure. Finite State focuses on assisting companies reduce the noise as they test their products before shipping. This noise reduction enables their clients to find their vulnerabilities before they ship products to their customers. 

    Today, a wire money transfer is frequently still sent in plain text. Thus, it is not surprising it is a huge target of fraud. Introducing InoQlate! A Canadian non-profit providing a solution to your wire transfer security issues. Close that door to fraud and stop sending wire transfer information over plain text communication lines!

    Seeking a boutique penetration firm? Meet the white hats from Black Hills Information Security. They beg you to make their lives harder! They don’t want to succeed when they try to break into your infrastructure! Providing penetration testing, SOC operations, IR (incident response), and training. Perhaps the most unique thing coming out of Black Hills Information Security is their well known communication medium: Comics! Their security comic series titled, “The Future is ***” available at 750 comic book stores. Not only that, their wisdom is available via a game to make training even more approachable. The game Back Doors & Breaches boasts over 150,000 sales to date.

    Finally, the ultimate organization for security professionals, ISC2 was in expo hall. Known as the largest professional organization for cyber security professionals, there is likely a chapter near you! Providing certifications, community and advice with the goal to the make the world a safer place.

    Conference Vibe

    Cybersecurity specialists gathered on the Las Vegas Strip for Black Hat 2026 and it did not disappoint. Over 20,000 verified attendees gathered for over 100 briefings, 115 tool demonstrations, 120 sponsored session and over 425 exhibits and vendors. The only expected thing we didn’t hear much of is organizations preparing for the quantum impact to cybersecurity. You may recall last year we were the first ones given permission to video expo hall at Black Hat USA. This year, enjoy a first ever live Black Hat USA walkabout while expo hall its open. We once again live streamed from on site to share the experience. Be sure to catch coverage on my syndicated segment on the nationally broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.

    While at Black Hat, we conducted research for 9 additional forthcoming Whisper Reports. The playlists are unlisted but available with the video version to be distributed via YouTube Whisper Club upper tier membership area on our YouTube Channel first.

    1. Whisper Report: What cyber risk are we all ignoring?
    2. Whisper Report: What security advice is actually wrong?
    3. Whisper Report: If AI attacks get smarter, what fails first?
    4. Whisper Report: What’s broken in identity we still accept?
    5. Whisper Report: What attack will dominate headlines next year?
    6. Whisper Report: What cyber myth needs to die in 2026?
    7. Whisper Report: What security trend is mostly hype?
    8. Whisper Report: What breach changed how you operate?
    9. Whisper Report: What security problem can’t AI solve?

    Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: Black Hat USA 2026 Playlist in its entirety. The playlist will be cited in the end screen, description, and as a pinned comment of the video edition.

    The video edition will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending Black Hat USA live in Las Vegas?”.

    Next Year’s Conference  

    The Black Hat USA will once again return to Las Vegas and will be held at the Mandalay Bay on August 3-8, 2027.

    *When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

    Corporate Headquarters

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    Henderson, NV 89052

    Downloading, re-uploading, or redistributing this file is not permitted under any license.


    ©2019-2026 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, Whisper Club, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, Vegas Convention Library; Leading Professionals, Real Questions, Real Time, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • Conference Whispers: Ai4 2026

    Conference Whispers: Ai4 2026


    Las Vegas, NV August 4-6, 2026

    Published: August 9, 2026                                                                            ID: TBW2216

    Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    ABSTRACT

    “Ai4 2026 experiencing over 50% growth and welcomed more than 12,000 in the enterprise AI ecosystem to Las Vegas. Over 100 countries were represented amongst attendees and 400 exhibitors. Vendors, startups, and practitioners discussed what it takes to move artificial intelligence beyond experimentation. Conversations across the show floor touched on governance, deployment, security, agents, data accessibility, software delivery, and business process transformation as organizations continued evaluating paths toward large scale adoption.”

    Enjoy the related Computer Talk Radio and Computer Talk Radio

    The Conference

    • A community of over 12,000 came together in Las Vegas for the 9th annual Ai4 event. Attendance grew by over 50% at the 9th annual event. Vendors grew from 250 in 2025 to 400 in 2026.
    • Start-ups were also present growing from 25 last year to 66 this year.

    Cautions

    • Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.

    Exhibits

    It’s wonderful when an individual AI pilot works, maybe even delivers business value to a department. Getting that solution to deploy corporate wide is very different. Engineers that have worked in the largest organizations always smile when they see the demos and chuckle inside as looks great but what about at my scale. For those seeking industrialized AI delivery, ModelOp is a delivery engine meant to overcome frictions that occur during integration. It’s purpose is to enable those organizations to take the idea and realize it in production for the entire organization.

    Governance was on the mind of many. Actualyze AI was founded by repeat founders who have spent their careers in large scale infrastructure and transformations. They focused their solution on protecting data, models routing, financial spend, and the type of infrastructure a technology requires to become part of enterprise IT.

    For business work flows that make a difference, Evalueserve wants to remind you, don’t start with the technology to enable scale. Their organization focuses on business workflows that make a difference. They serve life sciences, healthcare, manufacturing and consumer good verticals. While many solutions leverage AI, many metrics such as cost and quality do not require AI. Never approximate when math can get you the precise answer.

    One critical aspect of reliability is the infamous undo button or some method of recovery. There is rule in cybersecurity to assume when not if; as such one must prepare for how to recover when it goes wrong. It may be quite wise to adopt this stance in AI as well. Rubik is all about deploying agents – safely.  They provide capabilities for agent monitoring, control, and something new – rewind agents. As one might suspect this includes the ability to back-up and recover from agent behavior. In their world, no agent permanently wiped out my database or the code we wrote – it can be recovered.

    When you have a complex web of services, models, or agents. Understanding the complex web of dependencies is critical for operations with any type of reliability. The infamous Solar Winds incident let everyone know that the software supply chain and its dependencies are critical for security and stability. The solution turned out to be something in the industry referred to as SBOM for software bill of materials – expanding on the shipping term. Now Lineaje has thought of this problem and created a solution for AI and AI agents. Their solution provides dependency crawler, checks and suggests upgrades for compatibility and provides what they like to call security layer for agent builders.

    Some environments are tougher than your average environment such as those that have required decentralization or compartmentalization of information such as government and military environments and related applications. Axonis was in expo hall to serve you. They also create a trail of decisions. Not about insights but rather save the final decision made by humans and AI. They like to think of it as a creating a feedback loop for audit and training models on past decision. They referred to it as metadata on data; we have shared this approach before. The hash of an image matched against the hash of what is in front of someone for authentication during our coverage of ISC West.

    Not all AI solutions involve Large Language Models or LLMs. Modulate is a voice ai platform that provides all your common conversational understanding requirements for any conversational need. Like the advice provided in Whisper Report: Which spatial computing use case will scale fastest?, Modulate is growing through a pivot to APIs. By leveraging an architecture of highly specialized models, each trained for a narrowly defined purpose, a given application can combine them in a manner that fits its environment. Their architecture leverages these specialized models to monitor conversational tone and provide insight into intent, meaning, emotion, and context. Together they refer to their architecture as an ensemble listening model to understand and identify user behavior. This AI architectural approach of leveraging several specialized machine learning models is one that provides a high degree of success and has a long track record of enterprise results at scale.

    If you have an enterprise software development team and are seeking an AI Powered DevSecOps Platform meet Digital AI. Their environment is specifically focused on regulated industries. They purported clients such as the Top 10 banks in N. America and Europe, and the top 5 Global airlines, top 4 N. American Insurance Companies. Their use of AI is very purposeful, is strictly to enhance delivery and planning capabilities to accelerate delivery. 


    Department strictly focused on marketing and customer data? Kana.ai marketing operating layer was designed for you. Kana provides an agentic End to end solution for marketing that moves to where the customer data’s resides offering a continuous agentic layer across marketing stack. The named elements of the marketing stack they service include: strategy planning, audience building, activation, and measurements such as MTA – multi-touch attribution and MMM Marketing Mix Modeling.

    Two hurdles frequently stand in the way of AI’s success. On one hand, corporations may have their history locked up on physical books. On the other hand, organizations creating models need data to train and a controversial method of scanning physical books is involved. One reason for the controversy is that the organizations are breaking the spines to digitally scan them. Both hurdles can be solved by ARC document solutions. Another hurdle for capturing data, particularly notes are notes on the go. If find yourself want to take notes on the go or for when you are not in front of your computer, Ninja Concepts AI note takers offer you different options to fit your needs.

    Conference Vibe

    This enterprise AI gathering focused on adoption, implementation, governance and business outcomes. This wasn’t about the clouds and sizzle, more about show us real impact. Attendance shot up more than 50% from last year’s crowd of 8,000 to more than 12,000 attendees this year! Over 100 countries were represented and expo hall exploded from 250 exhibitors to 400! Due to their explosive growth there were some growing pains. The registration lines for some attendees was reported in excess of 90 minutes. Navigation was a bit tougher than usual as the convention put the show carpet over a large majority of the navigational booth numbers making finding vendors very very difficult. I had not witnessed this error at other events at that location previously. In addition, perhaps due to the explosive growth, the connectivity was exceptionally challenging at the same level or worse than CES. At that same time, the energy and excitement easily matched and dare I say, exceeded CES this year. At one point I recall literally realizing I could not feel my face from so much smiling. Enjoy the walkabout to and through expo hall. We always try to bring you fresh vendors in our coverage but you will recognize many brands in the walkabout from our coverage of other data related events such as the Informatica World, or our coverage of Put Data First.

    We once again live streamed from on site to share the experience. Be sure to catch coverage on my syndicated segment on the nationally broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.

    We conducted research for Six additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available with the video version to be distributed via YouTube Whisper Club upper tier membership area on our YouTube Channel.

    1. Whisper Report: What’s the biggest gap between AI demos and AI in production?
    2. Whisper Report: What AI cost nobody warned you about?
    3. Whisper Report: What’s the most valuable AI use case that isn’t GenAI?
    4. Whisper Report: What AI result surprised your organization most?
    5. Whisper Report: Where will AI agents replace workflows first?
    6. Whisper Report: What AI promise won’t happen soon?
    7. Whisper Report: What AI capability is still mostly hype?
    8. Whisper Report: What AI assumption breaks first at scale?
    9. Whisper Report: What AI problem still needs a human?

    Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: Ai4 2026 Playlist in its entirety. The playlist will be sited in the end screen, description, and as a pinned comment of the video edition.

    The video will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending the Ai4 live in Las Vegas?”.

    Next Year’s Conference  

    The Ai4 will once again return to Las Vegas and will be held at the Venetian Expo on August 4-6, 2027.

    *When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

    Corporate Headquarters

    2884 Grand Helios Way

    Henderson, NV 89052

    Downloading, re-uploading, or redistributing this file is not permitted under any license.


    ©2019-2026 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, Whisper Club, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, Vegas Convention Library; Leading Professionals, Real Questions, Real Time, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • Whisper Report: What’s one casino innovation you wish existed today?

    Whisper Report: What’s one casino innovation you wish existed today?

    Published to clients: November 20, 2025                           ID: TBW2107

    Published to Readers: November 21, 2025

    Whisper Email Release:

    Public Release Date:

    Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Abstract:

    “This Whisper Report explores the most desired casino innovations identified at G2E 2025. Industry experts highlighted two key areas: operational improvements for casinos—such as seamless system integration and cross-platform play—and enhanced player experiences through biometric authentication, personalized VIP services, and engagement strategies. These insights reveal opportunities for transformation and differentiation in gaming technology.”

    Target Audience Titles:

    • Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Operations Officer (COO), Vice President of Gaming Technology
    • Chief Data Officer, Chief Technology Officer, VP of Gaming Technology, Director of Gaming Technology, Chief AI Officer
    • Casino Systems Engineer, Gaming Platform Developer, Security & Compliance Analyst

    Key Takeaways

    • Casino operators want seamless integration across systems, from cage operations to ERP, eliminating manual QA and enabling true plug-and-play functionality.
    • Cross-platform gaming—switching between land-based and online play without disruption—is a top innovation priority for industry leaders.
    • Biometric authentication is seen as critical for secure, personalized player experiences and streamlined identity verification.
    • Personalized VIP experiences for mid-tier players, including concierge-style services, could transform engagement and loyalty in casinos.

    What’s one casino innovation you wish existed today?

    We took the most frequently asked and most urgent technology questions straight to the operation engineers and technology professionals gathering at the Global Gaming Expo held in Las Vegas better known as G2E 2025. This Whisper Report addresses the question regarding one casino innovation you wish existed today? The innovations are divided into two categories. First those focused on the casino itself and second those focused on the player experiences as depicted in Figure 1.

    For Casinos

    The first group of desired technology applies to the casinos themselves. CCT’s Wanor Franca’s focus is on the money trail. “It’s the ability to track your cage operations all the way through a revenue audit into your ERP. No solution is connecting all the data sources.” This integration issue is a common issue as Druvstar’s Melissa Aarskaug highlighted, “One innovation I wish the industry had was simple integration. Everything was plug and play and as soon as it was in implemented, it just worked. We didn’t have to do any QA testing. It just plugs and plays.” Diving in further, Incisor’s Aaron Jones highlighted, “seamless play between playing a land-based game and being able to play that game online.” Sounds like the entire industry could use a significant transformation and standardization. TBW Advisors LLC provides significant first-hand experience on digital transformation so be sure to schedule your inquiries if those integrations are bogging you down.

    For the players

    Attendees at G2E also had ideas of much wanted technology innovations that directly affect players. For one, Seon’s Matt DeLauro believes, “A casino innovation that I wish existed today would be more biometric authentication for players.” Additional research concerning biometric identification and authentication can be located in our coverage of ISC West and Identiverse.

    Once the casino knows who the player is through advanced biometric authentication, Relay’s Chris Chuang believes more players could feel special. “I feel like uh there was a way that casinos could use technology to really bring the VIP experience to every gamer, right? People want to come to Vegas and feel like a VIP. Of course, they have that for the high rollers, but how do you personalize a VIP experience for the pre high rollers who are not quite there but maybe on their way.” But what exactly would that look like? Chris continues, “I think that that would involve different ways to welcome guests to make the check-in experiences more lux and personal. Maybe a personal concierge.” A personal concierge. Looks like Continent 8 Technologies’ Justin Cosnett was on the same page. “Making sure that players don’t have a bad experience. Yes, they’re going to lose money over the longtime lifetime, but the worst thing you could possibly see is players who will come, they’ll try a game for the first time or try a website for the first time, and if their experience is all loss very quickly over a short period of time. The thing that needs to really happen is people’s back offices making sure that players can actually enjoy themselves over a longer period of time rather than being short sharp .” Of course if you are going to dream of the idea casino innovation Plotline’s Erik Regan said what we are all truly thinking. “What’s one casino innovation you wish existed today? Unlimited free play!” That’s right unlimited free play – if you are going to dream – why not dream big!

    Related playlists and Publication

    1. Whisper Report: What’s the next gaming tech that will change how we play?
    2. Whisper Report: What’s one casino innovation you wish existed today?
    3. Whisper Report: What’s the biggest risk in iGaming no one’s talking about?
    4. Whisper Report: What’s the best part about attending G2E live in Vegas?
    5. Conference Whispers: G2E 2025

    Corporate Headquarters

    2884 Grand Helios Way

    Henderson, NV 89052

    Downloading, re-uploading, or redistributing this file is not permitted under any license.


    ©2019-2026 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, Whisper Club, and One Change a Month, Vegas Convention Library; Leading Professionals, Real Questions, Real Time, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • Whisper Report: What are the latest advancements in decentralized identity and verifiable credentials?

    Whisper Report: What are the latest advancements in decentralized identity and verifiable credentials?

    Published to clients: July 30, 2025                                        ID: 2085

    Published to Readers: July 31, 2025

    Whisper Club: December 15, 2025

    Public: January 20, 2026

    Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Abstract:

    “Recent advancements in decentralized identity include passwordless authentication, time-bound credentials, and dynamic identity chaining. These innovations reduce risk, improve privacy, and enhance user control. Separation of authentication from authorization enables more precise access management. One-way functions protect biometric data in cloud environments. Emerging standards like SPIFFE and CSA’s agentic identity frameworks offer scalable, interoperable solutions. Together, these developments support secure, flexible identity ecosystems without relying on centralized authorities.”

    Computer Talk Radio coverage of document.

    Target Audience Titles:

    • Chief Information Security Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Privacy Officer, Chief Product Officer, Chief Data Officer
    • Identity and Access Management Engineers, Security Architects, Cloud Infrastructure Engineers
    • Privacy Engineers, Standards and Compliance Analysts

    Key Takeaways

    • Passwordless authentication removes friction and improves security.
    • Time-bound credentials limit exposure from compromised access.
    • Identity chaining enables dynamic, temporary access provisioning.
    • Authentication and authorization are increasingly separated for clarity and control.

    What are the latest advancements in decentralized identity and verifiable credentials?


    We took the most frequently asked and most urgent technology questions straight to the Technologists gathering at Identiverse 2025 held at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. This Whisper Report addresses the question regarding the latest advancements in decentralized identity and verifiable credentials.  But what is a decentralized identity. Panini’s Jim Harris explained, “identity – being able to capture that information using nearfield technology and then verifying that issue issuing information with the agency that issue it to certify that customer is legitimately who they say they are so we believe that’s one of the ways we can support authentication in a digital decentralized environment.” Let’s dive into six advancements in decentralized identity for you to add to your environment as depicted in Figure 1.

    six advancements in decentralized identity 1 .passwordless 2 time bound credentials 3 identity chaining 4 separate authentication and authorization 5 one-way functions for storage 6 leverage standards

    1. Passwordless

    Frequently involved in moving authentication from something you know to something you are, Passwordless takes those pesty passwords out of the equation. As Simeio’s Octavio Lopez observed, “I’ve been seeing a lot of a lot of organizations are pushing towards passwordless.” For vendor examples that provide biometric identity options see Conference Whispers: Identiverse 2025 and Conference Whispers: ISC West 2025.

    2. Time Bound Credentials

    A favorite tactic to limit any damage from stolen credentials is to time bound them. As GitGuardian’s Dwayne McDaniel explained, “How do we not store a long-term credential but instead expose only the bit of the credential you need to verify that entity should be doing that thing and then issue a very short live jot or 509 Cert (X.509 certificate) that will expire immediately.” Any compromised short-lived credential is useless thereby limiting the blast radius in the system.

    3. Identity Chaining

    Related to time bound credentials is the dynamic identity chaining. As Apono’s Ofir Stein revealed the key to decentralization of identities is, “it’s the ability to create dynamic changes in the identity that exist in the environment. Meaning by that we keep what we call identity chaining while if I need access to some resources let’s say in cloud we create all the identities that needed for me to work and then we revoke them so dynamic approach to decentralized identity in a panel the dynamic approach is the decentralized identity when we create identity when needed and we work them when they when they don’t need them.”

    4. Separation Authentication and Authorization

    “Although commonly associated together, as the namespace identity and access management imply, the decentralized identity world is seeing a separation. Authentication — the verification you are who you say you are — is being distinguished from authorization — the granting of some authority to some resource. As GitGuardian’s Dwayne McDaniel highlighted, “we’re going to see some major advancements with this idea of I can prove on me but that doesn’t automatically authorize me for things the authorization is starting to be separated from authentication in a way that should have probably done in the first place.”

    5.One-way Functions for Storage

    As one might suspect, many identity solutions involve the cloud. The concern becomes, how to store the data in such a way that even if the data stored is compromised – the identity information is not?  Keyless’ Alex Jones elaborated on the use case. “when you’re talking about privacy in the biometric space it’s all about where your biometric data goes does it stay on the device does it stay on the cloud so within cloud-based biometrics which is what Keyless does,  there’s different ways of making sure that the biometric data on the cloud is kept really safe and this is where a decentralized biometric system come in it’s basically transforming the biometric data when it goes on the cloud so that when it’s there it is completely unrecognizable so even if the cloud server is compromised the biometric data or the data that’s stored there is kept safe.” This is the same approach we saw leveraged during our coverage of ISC West. A hash of the data is stored not the data itself. This hash function can be used against new data presented to see if the two results match properly. There is no reverse of this hash function thus the original data cannot be disclosed even if the resulting hash is compromised.

    6. Leverage Standards

    Finally, when you are creating your roadmap or architecture you do not have to reinvent the wheel. As GitGuardian’s Dwayne McDaniel denoted, “we’re seeing the standards emerge right now about 7 years ago we saw SPIFFE the secure production identity framework for everyone emerge and that came out of what Google was doing internally. Number of working group that sprung up at Netflix and they wrote a beautiful book on it called solving the bottom turtle. The CSA has just put out a new paper May 25th on how dissolve this multi- agent system problem and introducing concepts like agentic name spacing and a distributed ID like as name spaces and it’s just a fascinating time now.”

    Final note

    For those wishing to see a case study about how to bring a massive, decentralized identity solution to life, Identiverse had a keynote for you. Specifically,  a case study of the UK mobile identity deployment featuring Hannah Rutter, Deputy Director, Digital Identity of the United Kingdom. If your organization is on the decentralized identity path, there is no reason to go alone. Reduce the risk and increase your chances of success by working with TBW Advisors LLC. Schedule an inquiry at the beginning of the process and each critical step to stop missteps.

    Analysis available only to clients at this time. Join the YouTube Whisper Club at the Whisper Club Level to get access to the video edition today.

    Related playlists & References

    1. Whisper Report: How can organizations implement zero-trust security without disrupting user experience?
    2. Conference Whispers: Identiverse 2025
    3. Conference Whispers: Identiverse
    4. UK Identity Case Study Keynote
    5. CSA’s Publication, “Agentic AI Identity and Access Management: A New Approach”
    6. Conference Whispers: ISC West 2025
    7. SPIFFE

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    ©2019-2026 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, Whisper Club, Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • Conference Whisper: Identiverse 2025

    Conference Whisper: Identiverse 2025

    Published to clients: June 10, 2025                                       ID: TBW2083

    Published to readers: June 11, 2025                      

    Published to Email Whispers: August 18, 2025

    Publicly Published with video edition: August 18, 2025

    Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photojournalist(s): D. Doreen Galli

    Abstract:

    Identiverse 2025 welcomed 3,300+ attendees to Mandalay Bay – nearly a 20% gain over 2024. Featuring 250+ sessions and 150 exhibits all on one floor, the event was smooth and accessible. Keynotes and sessions emphasized teamwork, resilience, and collaboration, while exploring AI in identity, decentralized credentials, and zero-trust implementation. Exhibitors showcased innovations from selfie-based authentication to intelligent access control and secrets vault cleanup. The shift from Aria to Mandalay Bay marked a new chapter for the expanding event, which returns to Mandalay Bay in 2026.

    The Conference

    • Identiverse 2025 was held at Mandalay Bay Convention Center, a move from Aria in 2024. It hosted 3300 attendees, 250 sessions and 150 exhibitors.

    Cautions

    • Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.

    TAGS

    Identiverse 2025, digital identity, identity security, zero trust, AI in cybersecurity, decentralized identity, verifiable credentials, identity governance, privileged access management, IAM, IGA, cybersecurity conference, Mandalay Bay, authentication, biometrics, secrets management, SSO, MFA, ITDR, access control, enterprise security, digital trust, identity trends, identity innovation, conference highlights, tech expo, identity tech, identity solutions, cybersecurity trends, identity keynote, identity management

    Conference Vibe

    After over 53 videos, almost 200 minutes of content only 2 escalator rides, 30,000 steps and over 25 fact checks, our coverage of 2025 Identiverse ends. The event spanned 4 days, had over 250 speakers, 150 exhibits and with over 3300 attendees – 700 more registered over last year. Registration went very smooth with rarely any waiting time. Interestingly, we were informed many registered late. Executives realize that reducing risks and therefore related losses is a viable path to protecting profits in uncertain times. This year’s event took place at Mandalay Bay Convention Center, a change from Aria last year. Most enjoyed the conference taking place all on the same floor. It was great to see the conference grow and expand. Like all changes, there were the old timers yearning for the days when they all packed into too small rooms at Aria. Unfortunately, some of the sessions located physically further from Expo Hall reported some in person attendance challenges from those too tired to walk to the room. The event featured a full collection of meals. We were able to capture the Tuesday Seminar’s Lunch and the lunch on Wednesday in Expo Hall.

    While at Identiverse, we conducted research for three additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.

    1. Whisper Report: How can organizations implement zero-trust security without disrupting user experience?
    2. Whisper Report: What are the latest advancements in decentralized identity and verifiable credentials?
    3. Whisper Report: How can AI and behavioral analytics enhance identity security?

    Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: Identiverse Playlist in its entirety. Once the video edition is available, the playlist will be sited as a pinned comment on the video edition. It is also easy to locate any previous Conference Whispers playlists through TBW Advisors Website under Subscribers research/Conference Whispers.

    Keynotes and Sessions

    Identiverse is absolutely one of those events where regardless of the amazing session you choose, you are aware you are also missing an incredible session – or two. Fear of missing out was rampant. Fortunately, we were able to capture 53 videos for our clients and subscribers. The first Keynote featured John Pritchard, CEO of Radiant Logic. Titled, “Identity isn’t a solo Game” it drove home the message that one cannot succeed in identity without collaboration with the professionals around you throughout the organization and with others in the industry.

    Another frequently referred to keynote featured the UK’s Hanna Rutter who is realizing their government digital identity solution. In her talk she spoke about the challenges of such a decentralized digital identity solution and how she is overcoming roadblocks on her path to success. A much in demand topic regarding identity challenges in the realm of AI was presented by Richard Bird. A tech talk held in the expo hall was hosted by Microsoft. Their tech talk covered the hot topic of ITDR, Identity threat detection and response.

    Exhibits

    Identity is a topic found not only in the expo halls of Identiverse, but was also seen in the halls of HIMSS, Fintech Meetup, Money 20/20 and ISC West just to name a few. What is interesting is the different manners of vendors describe their technology. At ISC West, vendors in the expo hall spoke in terms of a solution. They would always emphasize the PII information is not on the badge, rather a hash of the biometric data which enables verification is provided instead. While this was not clarified on the videos at Identiverse, the vendors later disclosed the same technical approach that was taken on the technology captured at Identiverse. If you are seeking a tap-in to sign-in on a shared device for your organization, Imprivata was in the expo hall with their solution. If you would like to verify the customer requesting the high-risk transaction is the same customer who signed up for the account, Panani shared their technology. Keyless offers a solution to authenticate high risk actions with a selfie. If you are an engineer developing a solution and need the capability to onboard customers, no need to start at square one! PropelAuth provides an out of the box identity capability you can add on to your solution to onboard customers! Seeking to manage your remote teams and seeking a cost effective out of the box solution to provide SSO and MFA? Cubeless shared their free and easy SSO and MFA solution made for you. 

    Is managing privileges gotten to be too much for you and your organization? Apono Unified Access Management is an intelligent solution that aims to provide just enough just in time privilege for human and non-human-identities (NHI). Oasis goes one step further in managing AI Agents’ Identity, provisioning, deprovisioning and cleaning up stale accounts. Are your coders overwhelmed trying to identity what secrets vault to use so they land up hardcoding the secret? Is your organization suffering from identity vault sprawl? GitGuardian was on hand with their solution that can assist you in identifying and remediating secrets vault sprawl.

    Expo hall also featured quite a few IGA (identity governance and administration) and PAM (privileged access management) platforms. Omada captured their 25-years’ IGA experience into a free best practice framework. This framework includes use cases and related configuration recommendations for their platform, Omada Identity Cloud. Lumos shared their agentic AI autonomous IGA solution. This solution can even recommend what privileges a new employee should get based on their role and department. If you have a small but complex environment, Clarity Security has an IGA solution targeted at your organization.

    Keeper Security shared their zero-knowledge identity solution for endpoints. Their solution is referred to as zero knowledge as the customer’s data is encrypted on the endpoint with the customers key; meaning, Keeper Security has no access to customer data whatsoever. Bridgesoft shared their complete identity platform that also can adapt and include any components that may already exist in your environment. Specializing at the start of the process, CyberSolve helps organizations commence new identity programs. Looking for IAM services across the portfolio? Simeio was on site there to offer guidance. Clients are reminded to schedule an inquiry to review the current state of your identity program. If you are seeking to expand it or modernize it, we will produce an inquiry plan to guide you along the journey even if you are working with an outsource provider or consultant.

    Next Year’s Conference  

    Identiverse will once again be held at Mandalay Bay Convention Center June 15-18, 2026.

    *When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

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  • Whisper Report: How can AI and machine learning transform media and entertainment?

    Whisper Report: How can AI and machine learning transform media and entertainment?

    Published to clients: May 29, 2025                                                    ID: 2076

    Published to Readers: May 30, 2025

    Published to Email Whispers: July 7, 2025

    Video edition: July 7, 2025

    Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Abstract

    AI is transforming media and entertainment, reshaping workflows and automating the tedious. This shift isn’t new—it’s an evolution already well underway. While concerns about disruption persist, AI is proving to be a powerful tool that enhances efficiency, making content more accessible and refining quality. From metadata enrichment to streamlined production, AI empowers professionals by eliminating the mundane and allowing more focus on creativity. Rather than replacing jobs, it shifts how work gets done, seamlessly integrating with existing processes to unlock new possibilities in storytelling, production, and distribution. The industry is adapting, and AI is at the heart of that transformation.

    high strategy rating, low technical rating

    Target Audience Titles:

    Chief Technology Officer, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Chief Digital Officer

    Chief Data Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Content Officer

    Head of AI and Machine Learning, Data Scientists

    Product Managers, Content Managers, Sound Engineers, Distribution Engineers

    Production Technologists, Streaming Platform Developers

    Chief Technology Officer, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Chief Digital Officer

    Key Takeaways

    • AI is transforming workflows, automating the tedious, and reshaping media and entertainment.
    • Efficiency gains let creators focus on storytelling while AI enhances accessibility and searchability.
    • AI isn’t replacing jobs—it’s evolving how work gets done, integrating seamlessly into production processes.

    How can AI and machine learning transform media and entertainment?

    We took the most frequently asked and most urgent technology questions straight to the Technology experts gathering at NAB Show 2025. This Whisper Report addresses the question regarding how can AI and machine learning transform media and entertainment?

    Setting the Stage

    As DeepDub’s Oz Krakowski stated, “We see is a lot of the work that was done before is now done in different.” These changes have already hit the headlines for as Dell Technologies’ Tom Burns pointed out, “Everybody’s all concerned with Gen AI but of course the writers and actors strikes were all about that.” Thus this AI transformation is not new but rather is currently underway. Latakoo’s Jade Kurian offered this perspective. “The question now is how do we do this thoughtfully? How do we do it in a way that we don’t compromise ethics – where we don’t compromise people’s jobs? How do we make it flow back and forth where we take advantage of AI and machine learning to make our lives easier, make our lives better, and make entertainment and media better.” Cinnafilm’s Dom Jackson suggests we take another step back to gain a larger perspective, “There’s a lot of fear around AI and those technologies and in that sense, I see those as part of a continuum of ongoing automation processes that have been going on since the industrial revolution. Everyone’s always scared when something new comes along and then very quickly it becomes normal and it empowers us to work in new and different and usually more efficient ways.” See Figure 1 for the Cornucopia of AI use cases suggested. Let’s explore some of those new, and different, more efficient ways.

    AI Use Cases in Media

    One thing is for certain, there is no shortage of opportunity for AI to positively impact the media and entertainment sector. The favorite use case among all users, as Strada’s Michael Cioni put it, “AI is best for our industry as a utility form to do the mundane tasks .. we need AI that automates mundane tasks like color correcting sound noise reduction, video audio noise reduction, face tagging, locations, objects, emotions – those are all the things that no one wants to sit and log footage. AI can log it for us.” Or per Ross’s David Green, “AI is going to make us more efficient and more effective and let us focus on what we love doing which is creating amazing content.” No matter which perspective you prefer – the elimination of the mundane or the freeing up to do the fun parts – AI is here to stay in media workflows. As Dell’s Tom Burns observed, “Machine learning has already transformed media and entertainment in so many invisible ways from security to fixing single pixel defects to all kinds of low-level network functions and automated provisioning.”

    When it comes to all that stored media, there are plenty of suggestions of how AI can assist as well. Per SNS’s Alex Hlavaty, “It actually can be an incredibly helpful buddy to sort through the stuff we don’t want to do parse through petabytes worth of information. Help us find assets more quickly and just interact with our data in a much more meaningful way while reducing man hours doing things that are laborious.” . Eon Media’s Greg Morrow observed, “our customers have large libraries of video files that only have a file name or have just a a small title. We really enriched those assets with information to make those assets more usable by identifying people places things emotional sentiment um ethnicity as part of those assets.” Dell Technologies’ Tom Burns denoted, “One of the GEN AI things that is proving to be useful is for companies that have large archives or studios that have that have the rights holders to a lot of content,  using AI to extend the metadata and inform them of what they actually have in their archive allows them to make that more searchable and therefore more monetizable on.” Increasing metadata for the purpose of search and the related business cases that come from having truly searchable content is a common theme. As Axle.ai’s Sam Bogoch simply stated, if, “they can’t find it they can’t reuse it.”

    In some of the use cases such as sound editing, it has completely transformed the task at hand. As DeepDub’s Oz Krakowski observed, “just like you cannot imagine a graphics designer not using Photoshop it’s unheard of right however 20 years ago this was extremely questionable nowadays thinking of doing voice design and editing dialogues without using AI.” Ross’s David Green offers additional suggestions, “things like camera tracking so instead of having to every single second manually figure out where things are and do manual keying you know markers and those sort of things we can use AI to automatically be able to do those things .. instead of having to flip through a manual.” Dell’s Tom Burns observed, “when you render your VFX AI upsampling has gotten so good now that you can render at 2K and up to 4K and it looks better than if you rendered at 4K in the first place.” Wow! Upsampling rendering better than if it was 4k in the first place – now that is an improvement – by definition. Localization is another area that has been drastically impacted by AI. Today, with AI tools such as Yella Umbrella are, “making content accessible to users that wouldn’t have access to it normally either because there’s no one to localize that content or just because the content that they want to access is not available in the accessibility form that they prefer.” If the form you prefer isn’t about language but more about duration, Magnify’s Ken Ruck shares today one can, “edit automatically (and) create clips automatically.” Clients may recall our coverage of Conference Whispers: NAB Show 2023 when automated shorts were first highlighted.

    One of the most treasured advancements is that of workflow automation. As Eon Media’s Greg Morrow stated, “workflow automation to improve the efficiency of a media organization in order for the people in the organization to create higher value content and less of the drudgery work.” In other words, AI can transform Media and Entertainment by enabling all to do more with less. But if you are worried about your job, Cinnafilm’s Dom Jackson assured, “strangely ultimately people always end up having jobs they’re different jobs but people always end up with plenty of work.”

    Related playlists

    1. Whisper Report: How can AI and machine learning transform media and entertainment?
    2. Conference Whispers: NAB Show 2025
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    ©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • Conference Whispers: Customer Connect Expo 2025

    Conference Whispers: Customer Connect Expo 2025

    Las Vegas, NV April 16-April 17

    Published to clients: April 22, 2025                ID: TBW2078        

    Published to readers: April 23, 2025

    Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Abstract:    

    After over 200 minutes of recording, 6 flights of stairs, and over 30 factchecks, our coverage of the rebranded Customer Connect Expo 2025 or CCE25 closes. The event featured over 43 keynotes and seminars and over 200 vendors exhibiting. Keynotes included discussions on customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, data-driven personalization, and AI in customer experience. A seminar focused on enhancing call centers with AI agenst is also included. Exhibits ranged from technology supporting customer experience and call centers, data consolidation and customer 360, to entire platforms and BPO services.

    The Conference

    • The event featured over 43 keynotes and seminars and over 200 vendors exhibiting.
    • Technologies covered include telephony, networking, SIP, call blocking, data, data management, data fabrics, customer 360, AI, LLMs, agentic AI, conversational AI, and bots.

    Cautions

    • Just because a solution ‘works’ doesn’t mean the product was designed with customer privacy in mind.
    • Platforms that combine multiple functions can look like a quick win unless you already have installed components or desire to switch a specific function to a best in class. Ensure any ‘platforms’ leverage standards for any components. By adhering to standards, customers can avoid vendor lock into the platform and keep the door open for maximum architectural flexibility.

    Conference Vibe

    After over 200 minutes of filming, 6 flights of stairs, over 30 fact checks, our coverage of the rebranded event, Customer Connect Expo 2025, or CCE25, comes to a close. CCE25 opened with a grand ribbon cutting ceremony featuring the Global Voice of Customer Experience, Dennis Wakabayashi. TBW Advisors LLC’s clients and subscribers may recognize Dennis from last year’s AMA Industry Whispers event with Dennis. Admittedly, this event is one we always look forward to having covered it in 2023 and 2024 under its previous branding of CCCLV for Call & Contact Center Expo Las Vegas. The event features 4 stages hosting a total of 43 keynotes and seminars. The theaters for the speakers were mixed amongst over 200 exhibitors in expo hall. The keynotes and seminars were full coming in just under maximum capacity. The last two years, there were notable audio issues for the speakers. This year they had a dual audio set up with headphones and speakers. I only heard one major feedback sound the entire event. In fact, the sound worked so well that it kept the audience enthralled preventing them from walking around as much as in previous years. This led exhibitors to politely describe foot traffic as a “slow”. While the total booth traffic was light, the exhibitors did admit that the leads they obtained were rock solid with most easily covering the expenses. In other words, everyone was there was serious about conducting business with not much fluff. Food was also available within the expo hall itself.

    While at CCE25, we conducted research for three additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.

    1. Whisper Report: How can we integrate AI-driven customer service solutions with our existing IT infrastructure?
    2. Whisper Report: What are the most effective strategies for ensuring data security and privacy in customer interactions?
    3. Whisper Report: How can we leverage customer interaction data to drive business insights and innovation?

    Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: CCE25 playlist in its entirety. Once the video edition is available, the playlist will be sited as a pinned comment on the video edition. It is also easy to locate any previous Conference Whispers playlists through TBW Advisors Website under Subscribers research/Conference Whispers.

    Sessions

    During our coverage at CCE25 we were able to catch 4 keynotes and one seminar. The first keynote we captured was by Pfizer’s Wayne Simmons. Wayne reminded all that customers want companies that are interested in partnering for life when possible. In many domains such as banking, it is very inconvenient and takes significant effort to switch companies. One a customer is lost – it is expensive to reacquire that customer if at all possible.

    Ford’s Dr. Kalifa Oliver drove home the obvious but too often overlooked point. If an employee is miserable and being treated horrible, how do you think they will treat your customers? A company should not be worried about an employee being happy but rather ensuring they have the tools and support to do the job. The development of employee satisfaction tools tend to be behind customer satisfaction tools but they need not be separate tools. It’s simple, data shows a satisfied and empowered employee is more likely to provide a positive customer experience.

    The second day keynotes kicked off with Macy’s Siva Kannan Ganesan on the power of data. Siva highlighted the importance of capturing customer data including every click. A customer experience must be engineered. The two-tower approach was recommended for one’s digital strategy the achieve the ultimate in personalization.

    Ring Central’s John Finch was on the Keynote stage to talk about Agentic AI driving the next generation of customer experience. The presentation went beyond revealing the next generation of customer experience tools. Context for the value contributed by conversational AI, generative AI, bots as well as the power of agents and personalized assistants was also provided. Expanding on that agentic AI theme was a seminar on expanding your call center with AI agents. Mitrol’s Francisco Trojano shared their approach to improve contact center’s impact. This seminar included various success stories.

    Solution components

    The exhibits had a large variety of vendors including various components of solutions to create the ultimate customer experience. To the surprise of some, fax usage has risen 23%. Faxsipit shared their solution that won’t create a chain of mis transmissions and errors even for 1400-page documents! Perhaps, like many of the exhibitors, you are meeting and speaking with your prospects at a conference and don’t want to miss any of the potential leads. Claritiv shared their solution to capture and enable your ability to analyze these interactions. Need a method to see what the customer is experiencing first hand? With Blitz you can send a quick link that allows them to share their camera view without downloading a mobile application. Perhaps you interact between the physical and digital world and want a vendor that can help you? Put Unified Direct Solution on your radar who specialize in optimizing such a scenario including balancing needs based upon conditions. If you are short of staff and are thinking about outsourcing but not sure you want your customers to deal with outsourced agents, you might want to evaluate Kongusto. Now that you have all this staff, you’ll want them to feel like a team even if they are spread around the world. To that end, Nexgen virtual office shared their next generation of leveraging technology to create the ultimate in virtual office. Regardless of your technology, if you were seeking to market your solution, Greenstar Marketing was there with their services.

    Data Centric, Platforms, and BPOs

    There were exhibitors with products focused on bringing your data together and providing insights. Maprehend focused on the expertise of your very best employee and empowering all. Likewise, if you wanted to clone your best sales agent, Verse.ai focuses on the best message on the right channel to deliver results. Enthu.ai connects and consumes all your customer interactions with a side of automation to provide useful customer insights. Diabolocom leverages a proprietary AI solution that is trained exclusively on your data for your private model. Zaon’s approach is to start with the problem or use case and connects the subject matter experts to create solutions.

    If you are seeking a contact soluton provider beyond the data and perhaps a solution that is actually a carrier, Nobelbiz is a telephony carrier and can assist if your calls are not getting connected correctly. Assembled is a support operations platform with three pillars. One pillar handles AI agents through all forms of contacts, second is vendor management offering including handling billing, and third workforce management to increase productivity. A platform for omni channel communications highly integrated with AI agents is available through Mitrol as described earlier in their seminar. If you are looking for a platform with a side of business process outsourcing (BPO), Etech harnesses the power of AI to drive your customer experience through calls, chats and all customer interactions. The three focus areas include contact center services, Quality and analytics and customer development. ValueLabs leverages its own generative AI platform built leveraging various LLMs. ValueLabs focuses on four areas: outsourced product development, quality engineering, data engineer and process automation. ProntoBPO offers shared services, rental stations, BPO as well as software development. ProntoBPO specializes in verticals such as Pest, Lawn and HVAC services.

    Next Year’s Conference

     CCE conference will unfortunately move to Atlanta, GA for 2026.

    *When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

    ©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2025

    Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2025

    Las Vegas, NV March 3-6

    Published to clients: March 10, 2025

    Published to readers: March 11, 2025                   

    Published to Email Whispers: June 18, 2025

    Publicly Published with video edition: June 19, 2025

    Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photojournalist(s): D. Doreen Galli

    ABSTRACT

    The gathering of Health Information and Management Systems Society, 2025 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition or HIMSS 2025 allowed over 28,000 attendees from 88 countries to gather. Discussions revolved around the pursuit of global health equity, the impact of digitization on revenue growth, and the importance of security in healthcare technology. Thought-provoking questions were raised about common household medical devices, and innovative solutions to improve patient access and operational efficiency were highlighted. The event centers on the intersection of technology and healthcare, emphasizing the need for secure, efficient, and patient-focus approaches to modern medical challenge.

    The Conference

    • The 2025 HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition or HIMSSS 2025 saw over 28,000 attendees gathered with a net gain of over 2,000 attendees from the previous year.
    • The event spanned the Sands convention center at Venetian as well as leveraged the connector bridge and all of Caesars Forum.
    • Attendees titles spanned clinician, IT director, Chief Medical Officer, founder, investor, security analyst, to Chief Privacy officer.

    Cautions

    • At HIMSS the entire expo hall is treated as a patient operating room from a privacy perspective. Thus, if you want press coverage of any type, one must have executed all planning before the start of HIMSS. Press was not allowed to walk up and film attendees without prior authorization. Many first timers at HIMSS were caught off guard by this aspect.

    TAGS:

    ACH payments, aries fraud, aries fraud solutoins, consumer finance, drivers license, fintech, FM25, Fraud, Gitlab, Identiverse, Incentive.ai, Intellicheck, Interface.ai, Money 20/20, MoneyLion, Onbe, OnFido, payments, phone intelligence, Provenir, risk decisioning, Security Metrics, socure, Thetaray, Wysh

    Conference Vibe

    Every event has their own personality and HIMSS 2025, the conference for Health Information and Management Systems Society or HIMSS annual gathering is no different. In Healthcare, data privacy is not just about protecting data. As attendees regularly shared, health data represents a patient’s whole body, a patient’s being, a patient’s life history, the data represents the patient’s life – not to mention individuals can be fined for making mistakes. Thus, one might expect, HIMSS25 was a very, very private conference. A huge no cameras sign welcomed all to the expo hall and Press were required to be prebriefed and reminded multiple times, no advance permission, no video. As a point of comparison, our video to time on site ratio was 50% of what we were able to achieve at CES. Nonetheless, we were able to work with the system and bring you a whopping 37 videos and over 110 minutes of video, endless shorts to enjoy, and research for 4 different research documents including this one. The Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2025 playlist is available on our channel for you to enjoy.

    HIMSS welcomed 28,000 attendees to see more than X exhibits and y sessions with over Z startups represented. The energy was quite high as all awaited the show’s opening and the registration lines moved quickly. The Sphere, right next door, even put on a wild psychedelic show to welcome all. Finally, the moment arrived all were waiting for when the Expo Hall Opened. Food could be found for purchase at both locations. The Venetian had their Bistro open with multiple locations throughout the event. Much like SEMA, the Venetian Expo leveraged the bridge connecting it to Caesars Forum which also hosted HIMSS. For those that were at Caesar’s Forum, food was available at the café known as cash-concessions.

    We were able to conduct research for three forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.

    1. Whisper Report: How can AI be effectively integrated into healthcare systems?
    2. Whisper Report: What are the best practices for enhancing cybersecurity in healthcare?
    3. Whisper Report:  How can telemedicine be optimized to improve patient care?

    Sessions and Deep Dives

    Due to the restrictive privacy nature of the conference, we could not record any keynotes and sessions were limited but we were still able to capture great research. First, enjoy the press Q&A session held by HIMSS very own President and CEO Hal Wolf. This session covered the gambit including HIMSS instrumental role in ensuring citizens around the world achieve health equity. Their mission is independent of any specific government. He has high hopes that private organizations will step in to compensate for any globally shifting landscapes. TBW Advisors was excited to say that we were able to secure HIMSS President and CEO Hal Wolf’s answer for the Whisper Report based on Question 1 and Question 2 above. These answers are presented separately from the primary session video. Hal Wolf’s answers to Question 1 and Question 2 are in their respective playlists.

    The Alexander Group provided their framework in the session titled, “From Strategy to Success: Rel World Go To Market Studies”.  This session provided their framework for revenue growth in healthcare through digitizing. The framework nicely summarizes the primary objectives of current investment areas that are occurring within healthcare to grow revenue. The session included a specific case study to drive the point home. The session, “Revolutionizing Healthcare: The AI Powered Stethoscope? During this session, Minttihealth CEO Xiaong Zou left attendees with one important question. “Why is there a thermometer in every home but not a stethoscope!?” For those seeking to secure and extended resilience across endpoints used to manage care and smart technologies, Absolute Security provided a session on a model to secure the health enterprise. Specifically, they leveraged a healthcare model to minimize risk into IT Security.

    Front Office AI Applications

    In healthcare, standard business operations are separate from technologies leveraged to provide healthcare. While both may deal with health data, health operations are significantly riskier and more restrictive. There were innovations serving both aspects of the healthcare system at HIMSS. On the front office side, we found one of those technologies you hope the next doctor you see with has deployed. Relatient’s focus is on enabling patient self-scheduling, even for new patients without using the Patient Portal. No more hold time and spending hours trying to get into the doctors’ office. Relatient purports Practices leveraging the technology have realized 70% of self-scheduling are brand new patients with 30% making their appointments after hours. Xcaliber shared their agentic AI solution for healthcare which can anchor to any of your organization’s data stores. Problems they solve include prior authorization and discharge summaries. Aisera is another agentic AI solution for Healthcare with three separate fully developed ontologies for healthcare ready to go. Aisera purports it is designed to leverage agentic AI to build out new workflows opening the doors to endless possibilities.

    Healthcare Support Applications

    When you move from the front office of healthcare to the back office, many things change. Even the keyboards and mice must be different so they can be sanitized. Fortunately, Man & Machine has waterproof and washable keyboards and mice available. The mice can even be dipped in 10% bleach! Warning, do not try that at home with your equipment!

    Keyboards are not the only devices to support providing health,  doctors leverage many handheld devices. Stethoscopes, blood pressure meters, glucose meters and the likes. Telemedicine and AI are also impacting these medical devices. In turn, these medical devices are also becoming more intelligent and capable of provide remote and real-time data such as those now available by Minttihealth. For those in cybersecurity, at this point your head might start to spin at the possibilities of it all. Have no fear, there were many providers on hand to help including Absolute Security. Absolute Security solutions aim to ensure those end points such as tablet and PC’s in use are secure and resilient.

    Some of those endpoints are more expensive than others. Some may be huge expensive machines. Keeping track of all those assets and ensuring the safety of staff require an intelligent location solution. Cognosos provides an infrastructure light, location intelligence solution for your assets – man or machine.

    Moving on to the care side and practitioner support, Evidently provides clinical summarization and decision support created leveraging actual clinicians. Notice it is a decision support tool as the clinician is ultimately responsible for taking care of the patient. We often refer to this as Human in the Loop or HIL. One interesting capability of Evidently is to provide a very clear line where facts originated. This makes it easy for the clinician to decide to agree or disagree with the technology’s suggestion, ultimately building trust.

    Next Year’s Conference  

    HIMSS 2026 conference will once again be held in Las Vegas, Nevada. The announced dates are March 9-13, 2026.

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