Black Hat 2006

Well, here I am waiting for my red eye home from Black Hat this year.  Overall, this show was much bigger than any I have attended in the past. The thing I love about Black Hat versus shows like RSA or InterOp, is Black Hat is for real security pros, not for newbies.  So here are a couple of other observations:

1. Cisco-  They were a big sponsor of this show.  Other than their name being on the banners though, I think Cisco did this to cover their butts after last year.  Their table was practically bare, they had two or three small placards up.  It was almost embarrassing.  Either no one told the marketing department that Cisco was attending the show or they wanted to just keep their head low and hope nothing bad popped up.  As it turns out a new zero-day bug was turned up at the show, which Cisco acknowledged.  To be fair they did have a nice party Wed. night at Pure.

2. Microsoft - Unlike Cisco they had a vibrant presence.  Giving out CD copies of the latest Vista code (later than the publicly available beta 2, I was told this is close to a PR1 release)., Microsoft encouraged the attendees to let them have it.  They were there to learn and make sure they are out ahead of any issues.  I think it was a good strategy that worked well.  Also, they had a great invite only party at the pool of the Palms.

3. eEye- Those connoisseurs of good taste, the eEye research team were out in force.  I don't doubt their technical chops, but did they need to wear T-shirts that were printed on the back "Microsoft - See you next Tuesday".  They were very proud of the latest McAfee vulnerability they found.  This has triggered several conversations I had over what are the ethics of one security company finding, announcing and profiting from finding vulnerabilities about another security company.  That should make for a good blog post.

4. The Black Hat sessions - All of the sessions I attended were packed.  The speakers were experts and the presentations very interesting.  Best line up I have seen yet. The DefCon stuff sounded really good too, but I could not stay.

5. The press room - they need to make this a better experience. It was next to impossible to do a real interview in them.

6. The people - besides being security savvy, they came in every shape, color, size and form. Keeps it interesting

7. Best booth give-away - The StillSecure technical briefs.  We could not keep enough of these in stock.

8.  I was amazed at the amount of people I have either heard of or met at past shows.  Really, when you get down to it, the security industry has a hard-core group of regulars that make the security world go around. I really enjoyed meeting and talking to a lots of these people.  Learned a lot!

9. How many people read or have heard of this blog. It was flattering and encouraging to me.  It also made me think, maybe I want to take down the picture of my wife and kids.  But I think having it up disarms people I have upset with my posts, so I will leave it up ;-)

10. Vegas Rocks! - I was discussing security with a reporter and I said that if the world was a perfect place with all people being angels, we would not have a need for so much security.  We would also not have Las Vegas.  There is just too much of everything you can want and it takes a lot to control yourself!

Its a tough job, but someone has to do it,  I am already booking my plans for next years show!