Updated February 26, 2026.

In August 2026, Merryl Goldberg’s book will tell the full Cold War story behind the sheet music cipher that stunned the cybersecurity world. This post is the origin story of how that history moved from a Southern California birthday party to the keynote stage at the RSA Conference.

In 2021, at a birthday party in Southern California, I met someone whose story would soon echo across the cybersecurity world. At the time, she seemed exactly what she was. A warm, approachable music professor with an infectious smile. What I did not know was that decades earlier, she had helped outsmart the KGB using sheet music as a cipher.

The Birthday Party

It was the summer of 2021. After more than a year without travel due to COVID, my wife, Kim, and I were eager to attend a close friend’s birthday gathering and spend a few quiet days in Southern California. The party was held at our friend’s home, and the weather made it easy for guests to drift between the house and the patio. We knew only a handful of people, so introductions came naturally. Names were exchanged. Conversations unfolded.

One of those introductions would soon matter.

At dinner, a woman at our table introduced herself as Merryl Goldberg, a music professor at California State University San Marcos. We quickly learned she was also an author and a boxer. The range alone made her memorable.

When Kim and I mentioned that we worked in cybersecurity, the conversation shifted. I noted how many security professionals are also musicians. The balance of creativity and logic is more common than most people realize. Merryl listened, smiled, and said she had a story for us.

What followed left our table stunned.

In the 1980s, she and fellow musicians encoded sensitive information into sheet music, allowing messages to pass the KGB and helping Soviet defectors escape. It sounded improbable. It was not.

Her story has since been told in detail by Wired and many others, and now in her forthcoming book. But that night, around a dinner table in Southern California, it was simply a remarkable story shared among new friends.

When the conversation resumed, I asked whether she had ever considered telling that story to a cybersecurity audience. She had not. She smiled again and said she would be open to it.

Call For Speakers

When Kim and I returned home, the story lingered. The more we thought about it, the more it felt like something the cybersecurity community needed to hear. We began drafting a submission to the RSA Conference Call for Speakers, outlining the unlikely intersection of music, cryptography, and Cold War history.

With Merryl’s approval, we submitted the proposal and waited.

In early October, I received an email from Britta Glade, the RSA Conference’s Senior Director of Content and Curation. She wanted to hear the story firsthand. The keynote team, she explained, had ideas about how it might be presented. If everything came together, she wrote, “it will rock!”

RSA Conference

By the time the conference was rescheduled from February to June, the keynote plan had solidified. When the final details were confirmed, I booked my flight to San Francisco.

The night before the presentation, Merryl and I met for dinner. She was curious about the cybersecurity industry and asked thoughtful questions about the field that would soon hear her story. The parallels between music and technology resurfaced in our conversation. Patterns. Precision. Improvisation within structure.

The Presentation

On the morning of the keynote, the room filled quickly. Britta opened the session by reflecting on the relationship between music and programming before introducing Merryl to the stage.

The format was conversational. The story unfolded deliberately. A young musician in the 1980s. Sheet music passed between hands. Messages hidden in plain sight. The KGB listening, but not hearing.

The audience was riveted.

Earlier that day, I had mentioned Merryl’s story to Jen Easterly, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and encouraged her to attend the keynote. As it happened, Jen was speaking just before Merryl, which gave them a few minutes together backstage. Their brief introduction would later grow into something more lasting. In the years since, Jen and Merryl have stayed connected, and Jen has invited her to participate in multiple events and discussions bridging history, music, and cybersecurity.

After the Talk

After the talk, a crowd gathered at the front of the stage. Among them were Bruce Schneier and Wired reporter Lily Hay Newman. Conversations quickly turned to the cinematic quality of the story. It felt less like a conference session and more like the beginning of something.

Later, I walked Merryl through the vendor floor. The IBM booth featured a mixing board installation that illustrated a simple truth. Focus on everything at once, and you get noise instead of music.

At the NSA booth, a working Enigma machine drew a steady crowd. Given the reason we were there, it felt fitting to stand in front of one of history’s most famous encryption devices as it operated once again. Cryptography, past and present, seemed to converge in that moment.

After the Keynote

The momentum did not end when the lights came up.

In the weeks that followed, Merryl’s story appeared in Wired, Dark Reading, podcasts, and international publications. The cybersecurity community embraced it. What had begun as a conversation at a dinner table was now part of a broader dialogue about creativity, courage, and the unexpected paths that shape our field.

Conversations that began backstage extended well beyond the conference. Relationships formed. Invitations followed. History reached new audiences.

Years later, as Merryl prepares to publish her book, it is striking to look back at where this chapter of the journey began. Not on a stage. Not in a newsroom. But at a birthday party, where a story was simply shared among new friends.