ASHLEY ROSE
The Pioneer of Human Risk Management
Keynote
CEO and Co-Founder, Living Security
Raised over $20 million in funding since founding the company in 2017
Austin Technology Council First-Time Founder Award (2024)
Board Member and Chief Advisor, Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) Austin
Contributor, Forbes Technology Council
Friday
4:30 PM
Keynote: Human Risk Management
For years, the cybersecurity industry treated employees as "the weakest link," a liability to be trained around rather than an asset to invest in. Ashley Rose, CEO and co-founder of Living Security, has spent nearly a decade arguing that framing has it backward. In her Keynote, she makes the case for Human Risk Management: a model that treats people not as a vulnerability to patch but as an organization's most adaptive line of defense. Drawing on the journey of building Living Security from a scrappy "Cyber Escape Room" startup into a platform trusted by Mastercard, Verizon, and JPMorgan, Rose explores what it actually takes to turn security awareness into measurable, lasting behavior change, especially as AI reshapes both the threats organizations face and the workforce defending against them.
Ashley Rose is the CEO and co-founder of Living Security, a Human Risk Management platform she launched with her husband and co-founder, Drew Rose, in 2017. What began with game-based security training tools, including the company's well-known "Cyber Escape Room," grew into a platform trusted by organizations like Mastercard, Verizon, Biogen, and JPMorgan, raising more than $20 million in funding along the way.
Rose has built her career, and Living Security itself, around a simple but contrarian idea: employees aren't the weakest link in an organization's security posture, they're one of its greatest assets when given the right context, tools, and support. That philosophy has helped shape Human Risk Management into one of the fastest growing categories in cybersecurity.
Before founding Living Security, Rose worked as a product owner building internal enterprise tools and had earlier launched her own children's swimwear company, funded through Kickstarter. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Michigan, serves as a board member and chief advisor for Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) Austin, and contributes to the Forbes Technology Council. In 2024, she received the Austin Technology Council's First-Time Founder Award.