TBW ADVISORS LLC

Tag: Computer Talk Radio

Conference Whispers: Commercial UAV Expo 2026
Las Vegas, NV September 1- September 3

Published: September 5, 2026 ID: TBW2243

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Enjoy the related Computer Talk Radio episode.

ABSTRACT

Commercial UAV Expo 2026 brought operators, manufacturers, pilots, software providers, and data specialists to Las Vegas. Discussions focused on autonomy, navigation, endurance, geospatial intelligence, fleet management, infrastructure inspection, public safety, and industrial operations. Exhibitors showcased technologies supporting drone missions from planning and deployment through data processing and operational execution.

The Conference
- A community of roughly 3500 industry professionals gathered in Las Vegas for the Commercial UAV Expo. The event was held at Caesars
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

Forrest fires across Europe and North America are constantly in the news as of late. Technology exists to put across your forest to immediately identify when a small fire starts to attempt to mitigate massive fires but what tools exist to actually stop it from spread? Meet Ponderosa.ai creating an advanced stationed drone system for fire fighting drone swarm. Key features include autonomous swarm operation, rapid response, suppressant capacity of 50-100 gallons per swarm, and cost effectiveness with an aim of $10,000 per drone per year. The goal is to reach any ignition point within 5 minutes. Another special use case, Think Power Solutions specializes in partnering with utility company’s power, gas, or solar. Their specialty involves infrastructure inspection.

Inertial Labs was on site to empower drones to find and reach their targets – even in the toughest circumstances. Note Inertial is a physics term derived from the word inertia. As you might suspect, it is all about an object’s resistance to change in motion or movement – at land or sea. They featured three-axis accelerometers, Magnetometers or digital compasses, GPS-aided navigation systems, Navigation if GPS is denied via gyroscopes, IMUs (Inertial Measurements Units), Let’s just say, they have the technology to ensure you find your drop zone no matter the obstacles.

If your drone’s end destination is moving, the landing can be quite difficult without the right technology. SixdofSpace Optical tracking for landing drones on any surface even those moving. This task requires high-speed optical tracker paired with IR or infrared beacons at the landing zone. They have been able to achieve accuracy within 1/10^th of a degree.

Sometimes the primary concern when looking at drones is endurance. On that front, Skyfront shared their product capable of 5 hours or 10 kilos payload for 1 hour. It has flown in over 30 countries, and is integrated with Starlink. They noted that due to the distance they fly, they found Starlink to be their preferred communication link. Golden Feather exhibited their all solid state power supplies. Specializing in high energy density batteries they achieved 550 Wh/kg or watt-hours per kilogram and700 Wh/L or Watt-hours per liter of volume of battery.

If you are dealer seeking to find a supplier, Almo is a master distributor for drones plus many other areas of technology for enterprises including telecommunications. Almo is known for its solution based selling vs box selling as could be evident by the in booth featured vendors. For monitoring drones, they had Pierce Aerospace. Same feel as one you may have seen in countless movies in the context of air traffic control. For RTRobotics, there are three numbers you need to know. 1, 4 and 30. Their drone completely fits inside 1 backpack. It allows 4 payload mounts showing off its diversity. Finally, 30 – it can life as much as 30 pounds. Finally, blue listed drone pilot training by SensorOps. SensorOps simulations immediately feel familiar to anyone who watched the latest Top Gun movie. SensorOps enables critical mission training and development of muscle memory are for tough operations. This applies to potential flights to rescue or provide aid via a drone in subway system like NY City or the Vegas Loops Tunnels. In life, there are simply events you cannot practice for in the actual space you may need to fly. Realistic simulation leveraging same controller, same dials, same everything is the best preparation possible and what they strive to provide to drone operators.

For those wondering where the open source in the drone space, ArduPilot non-profit out of Australia has a few hundred partner companies. ArduPilot created a product that is quickly filling in for DJI absence. Meet CubePilot that came out of ArduPilot some 10 years ago. CubePilot is distributed by NWblue.com and is in over 3 million aircraft. It bridges the gap between community projects and professional-grade hardware.

The point of many drone flights is data collection. Understanding that data, no matter what drone type collected it is thus the entire point of the drone program. To that end, GeoCue LP360 has been fine tuning their solution for ethe complete lifecycle of ingestion process. In a Session summary by Darrick Wagg, he shared that the product updated its AI Classification tools, expanded sensor support, added tools to make interoperability easier and introduced lower price NDAA compliant model. NDAA stands for National Defense Authorization Act. Together they focused on increasing automation to make it easy for anyone to evaluate their data.

Regardless of the drone, many leverage a payload with LiDar. The problem with LiDar isn’t getting the imaging, it is getting the image processed. Meet YellowScan – easiest LiDar soluton – just press the yellow button. Super easy user experience to get LiDAR data out and processed.

Conference Vibe

Commercial UAV Expo brought together approximately 3500 industry professionals across the UAV commercial space. This year’s expo took over the entirety of Caesars Forum as they welcomed over 220 specialized vendors spanning platforms, LiDAR technologies, autonomous systems, landing systems, navigations systems, energy options and payload solutions. The event presented attendees with the opportunity for training and also featured demonstrations. Registration was quite efficient and easy to find. Enjoy the walkabout to and through both expo halls. We always try to bring fresh coverage each year. For those interested in additional research regarding Commercial UAVs should also refer to our previous coverage of the event in 2025 and 2024.

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 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.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: Commercial UAV Expo 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 concludes with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending the Commercial UAV Expo live in Las Vegas?”.

Next Year’s Conference

The Commercial UAV Expo will once again return to Las Vegas and will be held at the Caesars Forum in September. The exact dates are not released at press time.

^*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 of 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, 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.
September 5, 2026
Conference Whispers: All Wireless & Prepaid Expo 2026
Las Vegas, NV August 18- August 19

Published August 22, 2026: ID: TBW2236

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Enjoy the related Computer Talk Radio episode.

ABSTRACT

“The All Wireless & Prepaid Expo brought together wireless dealers, carriers, MVNOs, distributors, repair providers, and telecom suppliers as Las Vegas hosted conversations around channel economics, customer acquisition, fraud prevention, eSIM adoption, dealer enablement, wireless retail operations, and the evolving business models supporting growth across the wireless ecosystem.”

The Conference
- A community of the wireless retail ecosystem including dealers, carriers, MVNOs, distributors, and service providers
- 67% of attendees are retail-focused spanning dealers, repair shops and electronic merchants.
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

Have you ever thought, I would like to start my own wireless network service and become an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator). MVNO doesn’t have to worry about the spectrum, as the physical network infrastructure and spectrum is procured from a MNO (Mobile Network Operator) – like Verizon. If you are thinking of creating one based on Verizon’s physical infrastructure and spectrum, Supersonic Mobile was in expo hall ready to help you. Supersonic Mobile is what’s referred to as an MVNE – E for enabler. They provide technical and operational support to MVNOs such as sim card set ups, billing and customer relationship management, and regulatory compliance and legal reporting. Supersonic Mobile’s customers can access their services via API or a platform.

With over 20-years in telecom by their own account and a relationship with multiple MNOs, Telgoo5 is focused on growing your business. To them, you are more than a number, you are a partner. They understand a MVNE must provide support from the beginning all the way until the solution is live in the field and thriving. BeQuick was on site. They are not a full MVNE but instead focus on best of breed business and operational support systems (BSS/OSS). BeQuick is 100% software based and the solution is a software platform that is carrier agnostic with guaranteed four 9’s uptime. Within the BSS/OSS stack is a requirement to manage customer fraud risk and charge backs. Vesta was in expo hall to not only satisfy that requirement but to remove some of the risk for operators. Vesta manages digital payments and assumes the risk of fraud and charge back liability for carriers and MVNOs alike.

Moving to the customer side of wireless solutions, there are Master Agents also called Master Sales Agents. Unlike the network stack, Master Agents handle things like sales volumes, commissions, training and support downstream. Agents focus on dealers to distribute MNOs and MVNOs networks. Perfect Vision is a Master Agent that provides marketing experts, sales agents and client experts to protect your business. A Master Agents specializing in Verizon, Wireless Masters would like to help you open your very own phone shop! Dreaming bigger? Maybe you want a store to offer wireless and Fiber? Unwired was on site offering access to AT&T, Ultra Mobile, Cricket, Joi and MobileX plus the ability to resell fiber!

In addition to network operators, enablers, agents, the event also featured many accessory providers as well as support functions such as marketing, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and human resources which we cover in their individual domain events. In addition, organizations to support those attending. NWIDA or the National Wireless Independent Dealers Association was on hand. Described as the AAA for wireless dealers, on average they help dealers save about $25,000 a year. This savings comes through 10-20% off of credit card processing, payroll processing, accessories, devices, business and health insurance. For those who specialize in phone repair, Tech Care Association was there for you! Their resources include a where to repair list for all its members as a public service to those needing repairs. They provide training, shop tools, and evaluate web pages ensuring your repair business has what it needs to succeed.

Conference Vibe

An energized gathered of wireless dealers, repair-shop owners, electronic retailers, MVNOs, carriers, distributors, and telecom suppliers gathered at Caesars Palace in the Julius Ballrooms for the All Wireless & Prepaid Expo. Registration was fairly efficient with an expedited line for exhibitors. Enjoy the walkabout to and through expo hall. You’ll notice a lot of accessory providers and vendors for general support were also on site. General support vendors include those for marketing, managing customers and human resources. 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.

It may be helpful to understand some of the acronyms used in the room like MNO’s (Mobile Network Operators eg. AT&T and Verizon) own the network infrastructure. MVNO’s (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) offer wireless despite not owning any spectrum or tower/network infrastructure. In addition, MVNE (Mobile Virtual Network Enablers) provide technical and operational support to MVNOs such as sim card set ups, billing and customer relationship management, and regulatory compliance and legal reporting. Master agents aggregate sales volume, handle commissions, provide training and support, and take an override on what their downstream sells.

We conducted research for six 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.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: All Wireless & Prepaid Expo 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 the All Wireless & Prepaid live in Las Vegas?”.

Next Year’s Conference

The dates for next years’ All Wireless & Prepaid Expo have not been announced a time of press.

^*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, 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.
August 22, 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.
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

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.
August 9, 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 9^th annual Ai4 event. Attendance grew by over 50% at the 9^th 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.
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.
August 9, 2026
Conference Whispers: NAB Show 2026
Las Vegas, NV April 19-22

Published: April 25, 2026 ID: TBW2177

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Computer Talk Radio Edition

ABSTRACT

“NAB Show 2026 in Las Vegas convened over 58,000 media and broadcast professionals across production, distribution, and operations. On the show floor, conversations centered on evolving broadcast stacks, asset management realities, creation workflows, and physical infrastructure. Examples on display reflected shifts toward flexibility, scalability, and integration without consensus on where standardization ultimately settles across the industry today.”

The Conference
- A community of over 58,000 media and broadcast professionals gathered at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
- 70% of the attendees were buyers with 48% were first-time registered attendees.
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.
- Just because a technology can do something in general doesn’t mean it will work in your environment. It is critical to validate a technology including its false positive and error rates.
Modern Broadcast Stack

The Lexi Language Layer by AI Media acts as a secure regulated gateway for major broadcasters ensuring captioning and language services meet strict broadcast standards. With an incredible 80% market share, this platform enables AI native tool integration at the final point of broadcast distribution. This in turn enables the capture of valuable viewer and content insights. All of this capability has been moved from a traditional Capex model to an Opex model enabling broadcasters to quickly update their equipment.

Brightcove is all about scale achieved through strategic innovation and investment. In fact, Brightcove was acquired by Bending Spoons resulting in over 20 new major features and capabilities since the closing a year ago. Brightcove brings their end-to-end solution to Broadcasters, Media Networks, Sports Networks, and Publishers.

Moving coverage from the platform to networks, one of the longest desires in broadcasting is the ability to leverage Internet-based flexible workflows. Zixi started with this goal in mind and delivers a dynamic protocol translation including IP. They are excited about the ease with which they enable their customers to create regional variants for thousands of events at once. This enablement spans language, cultural, and local requirements without physical hardware in every market.

WOWZA provides media infrastructure that can run on your laptop, avoiding monthly cloud fees. Their claim to fame is the ability to connect users to live video feeds. Since it can run on a laptop, they are able to operate behind firewalls to provide a video intelligence framework or the plumbing to apply AI. This AI can be applied to live video in real-time. Furthermore, this solution runs on a Java stack enabling portability across Linux, Windows, macOS, and containerized laptops.

Manage What You Create

Many in media have mountains and mountains of data but have no idea what they have or more importantly cannot find what they want on demand. Axle AI enables semantics search over all your videos. Thanks to an acquisition since we last covered them, they now feature extensive capabilities for photographs as well. If your organization insists data must remain localized for security and data control reasons, Axle AI has you covered. Finally, the solution runs in a browser.

One of the more difficult tasks in media workflows is how to ensure everyone has access to what they need without extensive delays. The IT team worries about the network costs of constantly moving massive amounts of data. In the meantime, legal is terribly worried about having the organization’s IP spread everywhere. Lucidlink prides itself on enabling global instant access to media teams from centralized storage without massive, constant file movement.

Planetcast provides an end-to-end broadcast ecosystem powered by 100% Planetcast intellectual property and code. This ownership enables full control over the infrastructure enabling flexible, hybrid, workflow operations. A key focus today is empowering customers with searchability and meta indexing for asset management.

Create Faster, Smarter

Endless sessions run throughout the event. For example, here is a quick peek at, “How fortune brands are betting on Creatives”. In this session, it was emphasized that organizations should develop ecosystems and relationships as opposed to strictly transactional. The best relationships have the most impact over time, not just a one-off advertisement hit piece.

So how can one create these wonderful assets? Coming soon to a Library, Media Room, or Shared office space near you is Studiomatics’ One-button Studio Go recording kiosk. Enjoy the demo to understand how easy this sophisticated system is to operate. From auto user detection to integrated digital lightboard, whiteboard, and easy content sharing, everything is automated right to the delivery of the created video.

A software solution that aggregates asset libraries, collaboration tools, enterprise features, Freepik enables IT and security over all AI models. Furthermore, their complete creative studio enables real-time collaboration and offers support and training.

Human & Physical Layer

Backpacks are an asset in any industry, but in media many carry sensitive, heavy equipment, particularly cameras and related gear. The Wandrd backpack shared their solution that provides 3 different sizes and 7 colors portfolio. Each pack works with a series of modular interior camera cubes. This flexibility alongside their designs with zippers anywhere you might need one, it’s a fun product to evaluate for your needs if you’re in media or simply want a highly useful, flexible, backpack system.

A common required asset in the media, commercial, LED displays, unlike those of consumers’, are specifically designed for long, often continuous operations. GCL was excited to share that they have a warehouse full of inventory in Dallas, Texas. Their inventory is ready to go them with 3-year local support. GCL has been manufacturing LED displays for 27 years.

Conference Vibe

After over 50 videos including two livestreams and over a dozen fact checks, our coverage of NAB Show 2026 closes. Registration was quite efficient and was available at every hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center sans South Hall that hosted another event – Wrestle Mania Fan Fest. West Hall featured the AI Innovation Pavilion, Start-Up Pavilion, and Sports Theater. Central Hall hosted the Creator Center, TV and Radio Headquarters as well as a massive networking lounge. North Hall hosted the Main Stage and vendors related to production workflows. The standard transportation options were available at the Las Vegas Convention Center be it the Vegas Loop or taking the West to North Hall connector bridge. Likewise, the standard eateries across West Hall and Central and North Halls including their shared food court.

We always try to bring you fresh vendors in our coverage, but you will recognize many brands in the walkabout from our coverage of prior NAB Shows in 2025 and 2024, as well as InfoComm.

We once again live streamed from on site. On Sunday from North Hall and Monday from West Hall. Specifically, we request those attending to find me to answer Questions 1-6, to introduce all to TBW Advisors LLC, and request assistance. Specifically, I requested assistance on your favorite videos for my syndicated segment on the April 25th 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.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: NAB Show 2026 Las Vegas 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 edition will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending the NAB Show live in Las Vegas?”.

Next Year’s Conference

The 2026 Vegas NAB Show will once again return to Las Vegas Convention Center on April 4-7, 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 of products in the same category may have also been on display.

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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, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking, Whisper Club, Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Vegas Convention Library, 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.
April 25, 2026
Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2026
Las Vegas, NV March 9 – March 12

Published: March 15, 2026 ID: TBW2157

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Computer Talk Radio Coverage

ABSTRACT

“HIMSS26 in Las Vegas spotlighted healthcare’s shift toward real‑time data, patient‑driven insights, and quietly automated workflows. Printers, paper bottlenecks, and cyber hygiene revealed how much unstructured data still shapes care. The through‑line: trusted data powering emerging AI. A community‑driven push toward interoperability and smarter infrastructure defined this year’s experience on the ground.”

The Conference
- The 2026 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition brought together roughly 25,000 attendees from across the global health ecosystem, hosted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) at the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas.
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

Have you ever found yourself trying to figure out what is wrong with you or a loved one? Every doctor running their own test but no one is communicating and you are left in the dark with no answers? Thanks to b.well consumers can now control and manage their own health data and get the answers they need. Coverage includes most medical practices in the US, Apple Watch, Samsung Watch, Aura Ring, Walgreens, Samsung phones, Google apps, and ChatGPT.

When you have an emergency, you want your EMS attendant to have the best possible information. Furthermore, you want the information created in the ambulance given to those in the hospital treating you. Good news, ImageTrend is focused on closing that exact gap enabling true continuum of care.

For anyone who has ever used an auto feed on a copier or scanner, you know they can be finicky. Successful execution has been considered an art form – for decades. Witness this Ricoh demonstration. Very quietly and with one push of the button, these scanners digitize hundreds of pages in seconds. They scan all types of hospital paperwork -forms of varying size, thickness, orientation, black and white or color. Today, auto size, auto orient, auto color detect, silent enterprise document scanners are realized.

Symphion provides turnkey services for establishing, maintaining and proving cyber hygiene of edge devices including printers. Protections include inventory management, detection and response, firmware security and password management. Focusing on healthcare native protocols including DICOM (an international standard for printing data storage, transmission and retrieval of medical information) and HL7, SecurITe (pronounced secure IT) protects networks by analyzing and securing its healthcare-related traffic.

At this point, you may be noticing a trend we also encountered in distribution during our coverage of Manifest and Retail, Supply Chain and Logistics Expo – a lot of discussion on printers. That means physical, unstructured, not digitized data. This causes problems on a few fronts. How are medical practices going to get reimbursed – paper is not part of the FHIR standard (pronounced FIRE standard) required to get paid. Interestingly the answer for this technology challenge comes from eFax from Consensus Cloud. They literally have transformed the old-fashioned traditional faxing into intelligent digital processing.

Behind every credible clinical AI, there’s one non-negotiable: data you can trust. Expo hall featured Drummond that explicitly focuses on the accuracy and completeness of the data once digitized, providing data validation for health care data. Many are also trying to create such intelligent products to serve the health care sector. The first requirement is that of data to train and create their models. For those seeking to depersonalize their healthcare data for training OR create fake data, Tonic.ai was ready to meet your needs. For organizations creating healthcare products requiring not just privacy and governance for their data but the ability to run really, really fast AI, OneSource Cloud was looking to meet you. As a dedicated cloud provider, they gain priority access to GPUs ensuring they can meet your needs. Their architecture is optimized for speed by optimizing the storage compute connection with an IB Switch or InfiniBand switch. For those not familiar, IB switches are designed for Ultra-low latency, very high throughput, RDMA (remote direct memory access for zero-copy communication) and offer high scalability. This is a feature one cannot directly request and manage in public clouds today.

Hospitals are some of the most high-tech buildings one can come across. Penetrating 40% of healthcare facilities, Schneider Electric is there to support the industry. Schneider Electric specializes in digitizing physical infrastructure for operational efficiencies. Hospital efficiencies start with smart, efficient infrastructure.

HIMSS Hal Wolf Press Q&A

With the exhibits covered, we now shift towards the bigger picture shaping healthcare’s future. Admittedly as a member of the press, one of the highlights is when HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) President and CEO, Hal Wolf, hosts the press for a round of questions and answers. Hal truly emphasized the last S in HIMSS for society. It’s that society that is going to enable healthcare to evolve with the injection of AI. He emphasized the impact AI is having on operational efficiency from supply chain management to bed utilization. Moving towards a translational AI Ecosystems, his hopes lie in seamless connectivity and true interoperability being achieved. One final message was the direct correlation and causation relationship between health and the economy. Specifically good physical health and well-being is required to drive a strong economy.

Conference Vibe

After 48 videos including a livestream and over a twenty fact checks, our coverage of The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2026 Global Health Conference and Exhibition or HIMSS26 for short, closes. HIMSS26 brought together approximately 25,000 healthcare technology and systems professionals from around the world. Exhibitions expanded and covered the entire upstairs expo hall at the Venetian Expo as well as the entire downstairs. Downstairs exhibitions were also known as, “The Park” also featured private meeting and demo spaces. One could buy food at the Venetian’s Café Press or at any of the Bistro locations. In addition, The Park featured snack time ranging from home made cookies you could smell a mile away on Tuesday. Wednesday attempted to top what Tuesday brought to the table with homemade scones.

We once again live streamed from on site. We let everyone know we were at HIMSS on the ground covering it as well as requesting assistance. Specifically, I requested assistance on your favorite videos for my segment on the March 14, 2026 broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.

We conducted research for twelve 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.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: HIMSS 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 edition will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending the HIMSS 2026 live in Las Vegas?”.

Next Year’s Conference

Unfortunately, next year’s conference will be in Chicago so we are not scheduled to attend or cover the event unless our coverage is sponsored. HIMSS27 will be taking place April 5-8, 2027. We look forward to its return to Vegas in the future.

^*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

©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, Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Vegas Convention Library, 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.
March 14, 2026
Industry Whispers: AMA with Computer Talk Radio’s Benjamin Rockwell

Join us for an exciting Ask Me Anything session featuring Benjamin Rockwell, the seasoned host of Computer Talk Radio. With decades of experience navigating the ever-evolving world of technology, Benjamin brings a unique blend of expertise and approachable insight to help you tackle your tech challenges. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage directly, learn from the tech nerd who makes complex topics understandable, and get your questions answered live. Register today to submit your questions and be part of this interactive tech conversation!

Research Code: TBW2088

Cannot make it live? Register and submit your question. The answer will be in the video on TBW Advisors’ YouTube Channel.

NO AI note takers allowed. Event copyrighted by TBW Advisors LLC All Rights Reserved.

Benjamin Rockwell, host of Computer Talk Radio, has worked with computers professionally for decades.

He began exploring computers as a pre-teen, starting with a Commodore Vic 20, and quickly became proficient with Apple II, TRS-80s, and other early systems. His passion grew when he discovered Bulletin Board Systems, eventually launching his own BBS. In 1990, he began his professional journey as a field technician.

Though he calls himself a computer nerd, Benjamin breaks the stereotype. He’s approachable, eager to help, and deeply experienced—from field support and help desk roles to over 15 years as an Information Services Manager and consultant for hundreds of clients.

Benjamin thrives on learning and teaching. His calm, friendly demeanor puts users at ease, and he’s known for making technology work—whether it’s building systems, troubleshooting networks, or developing websites. He specializes in solving problems and making computers work for people, not the other way around.

Corporate Headquarters

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Henderson, NV 89052

©2019-20204 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Vendor Whispers, Technical Business Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Rankings and Fact-based Research and Advisory 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.

August 22, 2025
Conference Whispers: Black Hat USA 2025
Las Vegas, NV August 2- August 7

Published to clients: August 11, 2025 ID: TBW2089

Published to readers: August 12, 2025

Published to Email Whispers: TBD

Public with video edition: TBD

Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist(s): D. Doreen Galli

Abstract:

After 61 videos including 4 first ever onsite livestreams, 150 minutes of recording including multiple exclusive shots – our coverage of Black Hat USA 2025 closes. Black Hat USA 2025 featured over 100 briefings and 120 sponsored sessions, with coverage spanning keynote presentations, technical sessions, and exhibit hall innovations. Topics ranged from AI-driven threat detection and agentic SOC platforms to identity verification and proactive risk management. Trends in cybersecurity regarding defence, use of AI agents, and focus on resiliency continue to grow.

Coverage on Computer Talk Radio August 2, and August 9.

The Conference
- Black Hat USA 2025 featured over one hundred briefings and 120 sponsored sessions. Attendance numbers are forthcoming. 2024’s edition featured over 20,000 in person attendees.
Cautions
- Black hat is not a conference to attend without preparation. All of one’s technology should be up to date. One should ensure they are leveraging a VPN and a RDID wallet when intentionally going around black hat. If not using one’s phone, a portable faraday pouch is always beneficial.
- 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.
Conference Vibe

After 61 videos and related fact checks, over 150 minutes of recording including for the first time ever – four onsite LIVESTREAMS – our coverage of Black Hat USA 2025 closes. Black Hat featured over one hundred briefings and 120 sponsored sessions. Clients may recall the expo hall restrictions during our coverage of HIMSS which treated the entire expo hall like a surgical operating room from a privacy perspective. Guess what? It was even tighter at Black Hat. Nonetheless, we were able to capture the energy as Expo Hall was opening. Not only that, for the first time ever, Informa (who owns Black Hat) gave permission to someone to do a walkabout in Expo Hall prior to its opening for the day. That’s right – enjoy your exclusive look at Black Hat USA 2025 Expo Hall. Not only that, we were able to capture the mouthwatering lunch served on Wednesday. Once again, unlike most events, the What’s To Eat? Video does not include any attendees enabling us to really get a great shot of the food! A first for TBW Advisors LLC – we did four livestreams while on site. One live stream on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning. One final livestream went out on Thursday as I requested assistance on your favorite videos for my segment on the August 9^th broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.

While at Black Hat USA 2025, 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.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: Black Hat USA 2025 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 LLC corporate website. Additional cybersecurity conference research is available via Conference Whispers: Identiverse and Conference Whispers: ISC West.

Keynotes and Sessions

Kicking off in dramatic fashion, the conference kicked off with an amazing keynote from non-other than the most famous virus hunters – Mikko Hypponen and father of the Hypponen law of IoT security – one of our favorite coverage spaces. Specifically, Mikko said that if a device is smart, it is vulnerable. It was amazing to hear his story.

On the bleeding edge of things, we received two session summaries from Microsoft’s Thomas Roccia. The first session was his Black Hat session on NOVA – Prompt Pattern Matching regarding a new type of threat gaining traction. The second session is actually at DEFCON – the sister conference where no one would be ignorant enough to bring in modern technology outside of a faraday cage. Fortunately, we caught Thomas while at Black Hat. IN this talk Thomas shared that they are releasing an AI Agent to track crypto currency’s movements including visualization to combat crypto money laundering. The final Microsoft session itself that we captured is the Unmasking of Cyber Villains. I always love when engineers get a very loud boastful ovation from the audience. This stage featured the heroes of MISTIC and Dart who shared how they leverage each other’s strength. MISTIIC stands for Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center while Dart stands for Microsoft’s Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset. In this session, the Microsoft team emphasized that incidents require empathy, speed, and precision. The Darth team is on the ground delivering the empathy and getting the data to MISTIC. MISTIC in turn, provides the cheat codes to the Darth rescue team to quickly combat the incident.

On the topic of using AI Agents on a team of humans in wish SOC, James Spiteri from Elastic Security shared a summary of his session. “AI without Borders: Extending analysts capabilities in a modern Soc” dove into details how Agents and humans can successfully interoperate in a SOC. James also covered critical questions you need to think about in order to truly operationalize this type of situation.

Exhibits

As with many events, some exhibits span outside of the formal expo hall. We were invited to the Dune Security Command Center on site where we heard about their solution. Their adaptive training uses a personal credit risk scoring model. It targets each employee’s risky actions and knowledge gaps with customized, targeted, proactive program. The goal is to elevate them to meet corporate standards. This theme of preparation, training, and doing things up-front was definitely a theme. Cumulated shared how their solution focuses on resiliency. Given that the proper way to discuss it is always when and not if, it is wise to ensure a quick recovery when it occurs. This preparation and looking out for the threat aligned with Qualys’s Risk Operations Center. This center is focused on assisting organization proactively identify, prioritize, and finally remediate identified risks. Covering all five personas in a SOC (alerts, vulnerabilities, threat intel, case management and DFIR (digital forensics/incident response )) StrikeReady’s platform integrates with 800 tools and is focused on removing each role’s pain points. Continuous Threat Exposure Management or CTEM is the area addressed most recently by Safe Security. Booli also moves things earlier in the process, in their case identity stitching. Specifically at the very beginning of the process including score carding the identity and providing the information back to the identity service. Ensuring stolen credentials are changed once they have been phished and the criminals attempted to leverage them, Mokn was on site to tell attendees about their solution.

If your organization would prefer to fix vulnerabilities instead of the common security software composition analysis, Heeler Security was the booth to visit. Feeling overwhelmed, by cloud configurations in your organization? imPac Labs was on site talking about their expertise. Admittedly, given my Microsoft Patent application on Policy Profiles, cloud configurations is a problem space on our radar at TBW Advisors. Speaking of high availability environments, HAProxy Technolog exhibited their platform that brings enterprise security performance and configurability into packaged software.

An area we have discussed in Conference Whispers: Money 20/20, Conference Whispers: HIMSS 2025, and Conference Whispers: Fintech Meetup 2025 – verifying the hardware device is a valuable defence vector for fighting fraud. At Black Hat USA 2025 we met SmallStep that enables device identity with cryptographic identity ensuring corporate devices are used to perform work. Leveraging device identification to eliminate deepfakes within a corporation, Netarx leverages multiple models to ensure your corporate communications are safe from deep fakes. Elastic Search – an open-source project known for search – found itself building native security and analytics due to popular demand.

Moving into the agentic side of things, Microsoft’s AI Agent Challenge was a big hit. Their booth had plenty of specialists on site to answer any of your questions. Focusing exclusively on AI Agents for the Red Team, Mindgard’s solution keeps probing to find vulnerabilities, filters through them based on your target and context. Finally, remediation advise is dispensed. Cyata built a built a control plane for Agentic Identity and includes policy enforcement. Addressing the full lifecycle above and beyond triage, Exaforce shared their Agentic SOC Platform. A demo of Exaforce was also captured. Finally, if you are unfamiliar with the current state of agents or have never seen an agent in action, enjoy the video with Ralph. Ralph comes from Cyber Innovate; a think tank focused on stopping threats from AI Agents themselves.

Next Year’s Conference

Black Hat USA 2026 will once again return to Las Vegas and will be held at Mandalay Bay Convention Center in August 2026. The exact dates have yet to be announced at time of publication.

^*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

©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.
August 12, 2025