I will be attending the RSA conference in San Francisco this upcoming week, along with my Fortune colleagues Jeff John Roberts and Jonathan Vanian. The security event, which started as a colloquy for cryptographers in 1991, has since mushroomed into a vendor bonanza. Seemingly timed to extend the advertising frenzy of this year's Super Bowl by another week, the conference will provide marketers the opportunity to swipe badges, to eke out s.w.a.g., and to court the basest emotions of our lizard brains. The perennial unspoken theme: FUD--or fear, uncertainty, and doubt--a trifecta universally embraced by salespeople, especially ones in cybersecurity. Get Data Sheet, Fortune's technology newsletter, where this essay originated.