I have always had a soft spot for the ISSA-UK; ISACA and (ISC)2 are all very well (and have a slightly different  value offering what with their examinations and credentials), so the ISSA have sometimes in my opinion been compared alongside them somewhat unfairly. I like them for a number of reasons:

1. Great value for money – at less than £100 per year and with a considerably higher number of events per year (at least in London) than (ISC)2 and ISACA, that’s a lot of potential CPE’s.
2. Quality of speakers; I am biased (having now become an ISSA-UK speaker), but I have always been impressed with the quality of speakers. The highlight for me of the last 12 months for instance was Bill Hagestad  when he spoke about the Chinese cyber threat.
3. Awesome people and networking; I am constantly meeting great people and having great conversations with them, infosec related and otherwise. Just tonight I made tentative arrangements to do a talk alongside someone else, discussed a high profile speakers apparent downfall (always useful for the future when the inevitable happens to oneself) and “connected” with a number of highly intelligent and rightly opinionated people.

Overall I think of them as having the least of an agenda with no exams to sell or certifications fees to maintain, and this is why it puts them at the top of my list.

Telling it like it is apparently

Last nights talks were very similar to the Bristol one of a few weeks ago in that Richard Hollis presented on Deep Threat – Top 10 Lessons to Learn from the Online Adult Entertainment Industry, and I did my UFO’s, Dirty Dancing and Exploding Helicopters, a Hollywood guide to risk management presentation again. The final presentation was by Adrian Wright, ISSA-UK VP of Projects on Securing The ‘Internet of Things’ – Implications and Key Questions. 

I have to apologise to Adrian as I overran on my presentation putting the pressure on him to be as succinct as possible. Running over time is rightfully seen as something of a cardinal sin for a presenter, but in my mitigation it was because of the level of interaction from audience was just brilliant, and we got a good number of opinions across all of the topics put forward.

I have commented on Richard’s excellent presentation from when he gave it in Bristol, but Adrian’s I had not seen before. It was utterly fascinating and presented (as expected) very well by Adrian. What struck me the most was that the adoption of new technology is just increasing in speed over time almost exponentially. What this means for the internet of things is that before we know it, literally in the next few years, we will see a massive shift in how we consume food, control our homes and even park our cars. Only time will tell, but in this case, not a lot of time.

A great evening as usual and my tanks go to Gabe Chomic (@infoseccrow) for the invitation.

The presentation from the night is here in PDF and native Keynote, and as always if anyone would like to continue to conversation with me you know the usual channels!