Cybersecurity is a mainstay in IT discussions and, likewise, in the subject line of blog articles like this one. The reasoning is clear: unsafe data is unreliable at best and causes bankruptcy at worst. Our resident security expert Shaun Miller visited Las Vegas to stay on the leading edge of cybersecurity trends both from a corporate and guerrilla perspective.
Cybersecurity Experts Convene in The City Of Sin
It might make sense that hackers would choose Las Vegas as a hub of activity, but what might be less expected is the corporate cybersecurity guys and gals chose LV as well. In many ways, the city was host to both “sides” of the cybersecurity coin: Black Hat and DefCon. Both host the who’s who of each respective focus.
Black Hat USA 2022 took place August 6-11 and centers on the corporate side of cybersecurity. This can include vendors and business-facing solutions and answers regarding some of today’s common and not-as-common approaches: data backup and recovery, human training, real-time scanning and malware identification, threat intelligence, SOC analysis, and computer learning/AI in the cyberdefense space (among much more). A black hat in the hacking world is a malicious hacker (whereas a white hat is an ethical hacker, similar to old Westerns in which the hat color dictated the morals of the individual).
DEF CON 30 took place immediately after Black Hat, August 11-14. While several large corporations were present, they were not pitching products in the same way they may have been at Black Hat. Instead, in addition to the speakers and training one might expect at an industry conference, DEF CON organizes into “villages” of disciplines across the conference center. Often, these villages will host workshops and/or capture the flag (CTF) events in which they ask hacking participants to break their cybersecurity. (Within those events there will commonly be a prize that could include cash or accolades for first or fastest to perform different tasks). Of particular interest to Shaun were the car hacking village–attempting to gain access to a Tesla—the physical security and tamper evident villages—tampering with tamper-proof tape and lockpicking—the biohacking village—the quickest way to a man’s heart is by hacking his pacemaker—and the aerospace village—fly a Boeing simulator or try to crash the world’s communications systems, dealer’s choice.
PC Mag also offers a great look at the two conferences.
In talking with Shaun, he enjoyed the conferences for different reasons. However, the events have left him a more prepared IT security professional and is looking forward to sharing many of his findings with Certified CIO’s team of experts who can help your business or organization strengthen its cybersecurity!
