The RSAC 2025 Swag Awards: The best of the best

As expected of the world’s largest cybersecurity event, this year’s RSAC Conference had a mountain of great swag to collect! (And yes, it's now officially "RSAC" instead of "RSA," making "RSAC Conference" technically accurate—if a little confusing for veterans.) As is tradition, Pluralsight was there to discover who had the coolest giveaways and crown the winner from the bunch.

After reviewing a whopping 450+ pieces of swag, here's a comprehensive list of what pieces really stood out. As usual, we’ve excluded ourselves from the running to give a fair and honest review. 

If we somehow missed your company on the expo floor and you want your company swag added to this post, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn and I’ll be happy to add it!

Our swag ranking method

Swag is ranked by five factors: originality, utility, number of hoops, brand obnoxiousness, and coolness. The best swag nails most or all of these categories.

Originality: Did the company just recycle last year’s swag or slap a logo on something generic? Or did they come up with something truly clever or unique?

Utility: Is this something I’ll actually use after the RSAC Conference? Will it live on my desk or in my backpack—or in the bottom of a drawer? Does it feel solid, or like it’ll break after one use?

Number of hoops: Did I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it? Was it a simple grab-and go, or did I sit through a 20-minute pitch or enter a raffle with 0.1% chance of winning?

Brand obnoxiousness: How loud is the logo? Is it absent, small and subtle, or big enough to be seen from space? For clothes, can I wear it without feeling like a walking billboard?

Coolness: Is it the kind of thing I’d show off to my coworkers? Does it have something—a fun design, clever function, or just a vibe?

Rubrik had custom-printed shirts and a chance to win a meet-and-greet with Tony Hawk. I didn’t rack up enough hours in the ‘90s on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater to feel deserving of this.

What was RSAC 2025’s official merchandise?

As is tradition at larger tech events, you get swag just for showing up, and RSAC Conference is no exception. These can be surprisingly quality items, and I was especially excited to see what this year’s backpack would look like. 

Since last year’s event I’ve been travelling with my extra-comfy RSAC 2024 backpack, which has been with me all around the world—even to other industry events! Even with two laptops and an ungodly amount of gadgets inside, I hardly feel the weight at all.

In comparison, RSAC 2025’s official backpack was, as the kids say these days, fairly “mid.” Here’s both backpacks side-by-side for comparison.

Unlike last year’s bag, the front pockets are practically ornamental. There’s also a weird flap: one attendee I spoke to said they wanted to “cut it right off.” The shoulder straps are also a bit too bulky to be comfortable, and the off-grey is less sleek. 

That said, there were a few improvements on last year’s model. There’s a chest strap, which is great when you’re carrying heavy items. The sponsor branding has also been moved to the side where it’s less intrusive, and the inner sections are larger. I wore the new bag for the first day of RSAC, then quickly switched back to the old model, much to the envy of a few attendees.

There were a few other items, such as a drink bottle which was enough for the event, but not as good as last year’s design. There were also less items, as last year there were also fidget spinners and a long-sleeve shirt. Overall, I was a bit disappointed with the official 2025 swag. I know, I know, I’m the kind of person who’d look a gift horse in the mouth*!

* That said, if someone mysteriously tries to offload a horse on you, you’re right to check its health. Taking on a horse is a big responsibility!

Now let's dive into the part you’ve likely been waiting for: Which company was giving out the best free merch? Just like with our other event rankings, we’ve broken it down into a few categories. Let's start with the best mascot!

RSAC’s best mascot giveaway: Webz.io’s ‘Dark Web Detective’

I’ll be honest—I don’t think mascot plushies make the best merch. They’re cute enough for you to put in your swag bag, but when you get home, there’s a 90% chance you’re going to offload them onto whatever younger children you know, donate them, or bin them.

Webz.io wins because they bucked the trend with a very cool ‘Dark Web Detective’ pop instead of a stuffed animal. It’s something you’d be likely to put on your desk, reminding you that you’re a cool keyboard warrior. 

The only thing wrong with it is that the branding on the laptop is kind of in your face, and will absolutely get covered up with a different sticker from the event. Sorry, Webz.io marketing team!

Honorable mention: CrowdStrike’s adversary figurines

After last year’s RSAC, I filled an entire shelf outside my home office with CrowdStrike figurines. They still sit there on a shamefully undusted shelf. Also, is it weird that we give hacker groups like Scattered Spider cool figurines? Isn’t that like owning a Thanos figurine in the Marvel Universe?

That brain teaser aside, at this year’s RSAC, CrowdStrike had two new adversary figurines on offer. One reminded me of Cad Bane from Star Wars, while the other was deliciously cyberpunk. But because you have to jump through a few hoops to get it—including a social post and demo—and it’s slightly harder to fit on your desk, this year’s mascot award goes to webz.io.

And because it’s tradition, they had a gigantic version of one of the figurines, Famous Chollima. You can’t take the big Chollima home, though*.

Or can you? I didn’t ask and now I’m kicking myself. This would look amazing in the front yard.

Honorable mention: Varonis’s Protector Robot

Did you know there’s awards for the most beautiful booths at trade shows? In fact, Varonis won last year’s RSA booth award with their stunning display, which featured their new “Protector” robot. Here’s the outstanding display they had up in 2024. 

This year, they’ve also been doing the rounds with a six foot statue of their mascot, which looks like it’s straight out of The Murderbot Diaries.

Much like at CrowdStrike’s booth, you could take a smaller mini-bot home with you!

However, I was personally a bit more impressed with the playing cards which had a cybernetic cat, called Pixel. Sadly, there was no figurine for Pixel, because if there had been, I’d be gushing about it right now. If anyone from Varonis is reading this, make a figurine of Pixel for 2026! I promise you that you’ll run out of stock on the first day because people would love it.

I do like the data encryption purr, though. My cats do have the ability to enter random strings on my keyboard.

Anyway, with all these cybernetic men on display, all I could think about on the floor was how cyberpunk robots are the hot thing this year. Maybe because everyone’s looking forward to Alexander Skarsgård this month?

Honorable mention: ESET’s Lego Figures

Normally, Lego kits don’t rank very well on our swag ratings. Even though Lego lovers are notoriously common in tech, your odds of actually getting that Millennium Falcon or Saturn V rocket are miniscule. For a Lego fan, it’s like dangling a carrot in front of our nose, but perpetually holding it just an inch out of reach.

That said, ESET had some very cool cybersecurity-themed kits on offer, once again themed after advanced persistent threat (APT) groups. 

There was still an element of chance involved, but the odds were much better than a raffle. You had to spin a wheel to get them. Unfortunately, I wound up getting socks instead, but they had a neat Zelda-ish design which I liked.

You haven’t been to a tech event if you don’t walk away with at least one pair of new socks.

RSAC’s best chili sauce: Bugcrowd’s Zero Dazed

RSAC 2025 was a spicy event this year—or that’s what I’d say, but the sauces on offer were actually quite mild! I guess you can’t go high on the Scoville scale for normies. Full disclosure, I have Blair’s Death Sauce on three meals a day, so my taste buds are probably deader than NFTs. 

Still, there were enough chili sauces on offer that we added a whole new category for them in 2025. Bugcrowd wins this newly minted character because the sauces were deployed with style, and had an incredibly clever name for a cybersecurity conference.

All of this gave me a wild booth idea: Instead of a regular demo, get customers to listen while getting them to eat ten hot wings, each doused with progressively hotter sauce. At the end, quiz them about what they remember, and if they answer everything correctly, they get a cool prize! Extra points if you get Sean Evans to do it. Not only will people be hyper-focused on listening to you, you get to quiz them on what they learned! 

RSAC’s best bag: miniOrange’s cyber sniper tote bag

If you hadn’t picked it up already, I have strong feelings about bags. At a conference, however, I just use the first bag I’m given, shove hundreds of pieces of swag inside, and ditch it after the event ends.

MiniOrange’s Yusuf Dikeç bag, however, was so charming I wound up taking it home with me. It will almost certainly make it into my grocery rotation. They also filled it with a nice leather notebook and water bottle, which was pretty cool.

RSAC's best printed swag: SquareX’s Hackers comic

Homemade comics are starting to become a fad at tech events. SquareX’s comic stood out because it wasn’t AI-made and, more importantly, had an actual story instead of just being a barely-veiled product pitch. 

The Hackers: Superheroes of a Digital Age actually dove into how hacks actually work, and the art is professionally done. In an interesting note, it was also made by Vivek Ramachandran, SquareX’s founder, who lists himself as the “Founder and Editor-in-Chief” of his own comic brand. 

No, I’m not jealous that he has his own company and comic book line. Not at all! 

RSAC's best T-shirt (and booth experience): Cy4 Data Lab’s Thunderdome

Normally, jumping through hoops to get swag is a bad thing. That said, I literally had to jump to get a t-shirt and party invite from Cy4—and it was an insanely fun experience. 

I noticed this incredibly weird contraption out of the corner of my eye, and stopped to take a photo. There was no obvious merch, though. I was about to walk away when one of the Cy4 team stopped me. After a back-and-forth, they finally caught my interest with:

“Would you like to meet Adam Savage from Myth Busters?”

I’m a big fan of mythbusting and critical thinking. I agreed, and suddenly a wad of legal documents were shoved in my hand. I was asked to sign away my right to sue in case of horrible things, such as dismemberment, crushing, or death. 

What?

“Wait here. Now we just need a few more people to sign up,” the booth member said. Wait, was I the first person who’d been crazy enough to sign up for this? And yet I stood there, staring at the Death Blender, wondering if it would be minutes or hours before they found someone as gullible as me.

Maybe they wouldn’t find anyone, and I’d get to leave, I thought.

“We found one other person!” They shouted. “Now, jump in and choose your team.”

There were four pedestals inside the Death Blender, but apparently they didn’t think they’d get that many suckers. I was instructed to stand on my team—Marketing, Engineering, Sales, and a fourth I can’t recall. This was a big choice for me, as someone who lives in the gap between engineering and marketing—like a half-elf who doesn’t quite belong to either side. 

I jumped on the former. Then, the Death Blender began to spin.

“Jump or duck!” They told me. God, the other guy looked just as athletically inclined as me (None). But I fell to my knees, then sprung up again. Even as I dodged, my opponent played dirty. Instead of ducking, he blocked the padded blades, then let go so they swung at me with maximum velocity.

I wouldn’t have it. In the end, I was the last left standing. Just when I sighed in relief, the staff said I needed to do it all again.

“That was a test run. Now, let’s do the real thing!” 

Nobody told me this was double or nothing! Still, I defended my title for a second time. As the (two time) winner, they shoved a bundled up shirt into my hands, as well as a lanyard with a VIP invite to meet Adam Savage the next day.

As I stared at it, I couldn’t help but smirk. It was almost certainly a shirt most professionals couldn’t wear in the office.

…In the end, I don’t have a great Adam Savage story to tell, though. One of the things about RSAC is it’s long and exhausting. Many people are so wiped after attending keynotes and seminars that they skip the after parties. The next day, I was so bushed that I collapsed into my hotel bed instead. 

In short, I was completely busted.

Ah well. Meeting a celebrity is like wanting to meet a chicken because you like their eggs. Maybe I’ll get to jump in the Death Blender again next year? 

Honorable mention: Saviynt’s sci-fi defender shirts

At the time I was at the booth, the middle shirt was the most popular item! However, Cy4 had the branding as a small logo on the arm instead of a large one on the front, and the material was softer, so this year they took the win.

Honorable mention: Torq’s metal merch store

Torq has the most metal merch at every RSAC Conference—you could dress yourself up from hat to socks like you’re a groupie for Iron Maiden. If that wasn’t metal enough, they also had a gigantic monster car behind them (That wasn’t merch on offer, though.)

Honorable mention: SafeBase’s women in trust merch

This was cool, because normally you only see this sort of representation from industry group stalls. All of these were items of merch I would easily share with my wife, who works in cybersecurity and with key concepts such as trust.

RSAC's best stickers: Wallarm’s holographic Pokemon fridge

Wallarm didn’t just have stickers—they had a whole LED fridge full of them! On top of variety, the stickers ticked all the right boxes:

• The branding was small or non-existent

• The art was skillfully done, and you could tell a lot of passion went into it

• The non-art stickers had witty sayings you’d wear on a t-shirt

• They were small enough that you could fit it on your laptop along with other stickers

• Did I mention they were holographic?!

Broken Auth was my favourite boy. He reminds me of an Umbreon. Yes, I’m a geek on many levels.

To be honest, this isn’t the first time Wallarm has knocked it out of the park with stickers. They made our RSAC 2024 Swag Post as well! What’s interesting is that each year they’ve brought an entirely different art style to the show, and both times they’ve been unique and interesting.

Whoever the graphic designer (or designers) are at Wallarm, someone should give them a raise.

Last year’s Wallarm stickers were hilarious, but they’ve actually improved them by reducing size and adding holographics.

Honorable mentions: Microsoft’s doggo stickers

They had dog stickers, and one of them was even wearing a tie. Do I need to elaborate?

Honorable mentions: GitHub’s wall of octocats

For those not in the know, Octocats are anthropomorphic cat-octopus hybrid mascots (which are somehow surprisingly cute.) At every event, GitHub offers a wide variety of cool octocat stickers for you to select from, and it’s always a hot item.

In last year’s Swag Awards, GitHub won the prize for best stickers. However, since this year they had exactly the same offering, they only made the runner-up list (I know! I’m sure their CEO and shareholders are agonized over this drop in my swag ratings.) That said, it’d be really cool to see GitHub offer a substantially different range of octocat stickers next year.

The RSAC 2025 Swag Awards: Overall winners

In fourth place: Webz.io’s ‘Dark Web Detective’

Having a cool cybersecurity-themed pop on your desk is just a winner. The only ways they could improve on it? Having a female pop as well and the logo on the base.

In third place: Fastly’s sleeping masks

I didn’t see anyone else at RSAC offering sleeping masks, and these ones came with some pretty cool prints on the front! Unless you live in California, most of the 43,000 attendees fly to RSAC, so an eye mask is an incredibly useful piece of swag for the way back. 

In second place: Hidden Layer’s San Francisco mug

Having a mug as swag doesn’t sound exciting on the surface. However, as a Melbournian, coffee is part of my culture, with fragments of arabica beans fused irrevocably into my DNA. Like most desk jockeys, I use a mug every single day, and so this is a highly practical item.

If it was just a mug, though, this swag wouldn’t stand out. What makes it exceptional is that it has illustrations all over it that remind me of San Francisco, the home of RSAC Conference, which is sure to give me fond memories whenever I refill it. On top of that, it’s got a cybersecurity flair, and enough size for a crunch day latte.

This year's RSAC Swag Awards Winner: CSA’s retro game boy

CSA went above and beyond this year, offering a working game boy with 400 classic games already installed (and batteries!). While you had to spin a gigantic roulette wheel to win it, it only took me two goes—one each day—to get this prize.

Most booths offer a draw for a Steam Deck or a Switch, which would be obviously great to win, but this was something that was relatively easier to win and I could play right away.

Other RSAC honorable swag mentions

Every year there’s so many great pieces of swag that deserve to be mentioned, along with the companies that were handing it out. This is the section for all those stand out pieces.

Exabeam’s turntable

This was a daily lucky draw so it didn’t make the merch rankings, but it was original and cool enough to be added to the merch post! 

Cyera’s astronaut ice cream

Feeling snackish? There were freeze-dried neapolitan ice cream sandwiches on offer at Cyera’s booth.

Silverfort’s custom nike shoes

These are already my favorite colors, though. Can I just get them as-is?

PlexTrac’s Amazing Spider-Man classic comic

You got a random code to enter into the lock, and if it was correct, you’d get the comic inside. Unfortunately, I had no such luck! Fitting for a cybersecurity conference, though.

Pluralsight’s cybersecurity career stickers

Okay, so Pluralsight removes itself from consideration for these swag awards because we obviously write them. However, this year we did a series of fantasy-themed stickers based on cybersecurity careers, and I’m very proud of how popular they were*! These stickers were connected to a “Choose Your Own Cybersecurity Adventure” quiz. While RSAC is over, you can still take this quiz online! 

The quiz is designed to help solve a very real issue. Most people only think of cybersecurity as SOC Analysts and Pen Testers, while in reality there’s a wide range of career options for nearly everyone. The quiz helps people discover what cybersecurity career might best fit their strengths and interests, all by asking a series of fantasy-themed questions.

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*The Gandalf-like “Cloud Sorcerer” was by far the most popular. People just couldn’t go past it.

…And the many, many Lego kits on offer

Honestly, there’s so many Lego kits raffled at these events, it all sort of becomes a blur. Here’s just a fraction of the kits at RSAC.

Dishonorable mentions

It shouldn’t be possible, but somehow I come away from every tech event with two dozen socks, and none of them are wearable. They’re normally made of wafer-thin material that tears at a moment’s notice. Worse, because the company offering them wants to use you as a billboard, they’re always so long that I feel like I’m slipping on a pair of knee-high compression socks. 

Would it kill someone to offer a pair of thick, tech-branded ankle socks? Yes, they’re harder to brand with pretty artwork, but I’m sure event-goers will love them. Plus, they’re sure to think fondly of your company whenever they slip their socks on in the morning. 

Feel you were missed? Reach out and let us know!

We're currently adding more photos and names to this post, but if you feel you were missed, reach out to me on LinkedIn and I'll be happy to add you to this article!

More swag articles from Pluralsight

If you just want to stare at more swag (And why wouldn't you?), you can check out these articles:

• The AWS re:Invent 2024 swag review: The best of the best

• The RSAC 2024 Swag Awards: The best of the best

• AWS re:Invent 2023 swag review

• AWS re:Invent 2022 swag review

And speaking of cool things, why not check out this article on what to get that tech lover or professional in your life (or, if it's you, a list of ideas you can send to people struggling to find a gift idea) The world of swag and getting free gifts are not so different, after all!