Banyan tree, Bangalore, India

It has been an incredibly busy five weeks since 44CON, with a lot of travel, projects coming to fruition, conference talks and preparation as well as more writing than is reflected in this blog.

I have spent three weeks (over two trips) in India carrying out five security risk assessments and hosting one three day client visit, and all I can say is that my India based colleagues continue to impress and amaze me with their knowledge, analytical skills and above all friendliness. I had the good fortune to spend some time with them at a team outing, discovered a mutual friend in London and also hit the dancefloor with them (if you have never danced in an Indian nightclub, you haven’t really danced!).

I was also able to spend an evening with the lovely folks of the Delhi chapter of NULL in Noida, and had a great couple of presentations (WAF and compliance) as well as an engaging conversation on interviewing in the infosec world. I had struggled for the last couple of years to find good conferences and forums in India, but apparently I missed an incredibly vibrant and widespread community. I’m glad to ay that is no more the case and I look forward to attending more in the future (along with my India based colleagues). On my return I attended the IT Security Forum and spoke on “Throwing Shapes for Better Security Risk Management” covering three ways to manage your security programmes more effectively.

A project I have been working on with my good friends and colleagues @sirjester and @j4vv4d finally came to fruition with the help of @jimshout, called Host Unknown. I am extremely proud of this project and we have spent many hours agonising over the details, honing the performances and getting website, YouTube and social media coordinated; in fact it was a lot more work than we expected! There is so much more in the pipeline, and if you would like more information please contact us, I promise you will only be mildly disappointed! (I am also legally obliged to point out that it was all my idea, despite what some of you may have heard.)

My other piece of news is that I have been asked to be a guest blogger for Iron Mountain, something I am absolutely thrilled by! I have already posted my first article, and I am looking forward to writing many more. As someone who can often struggles to  get down to the process of actually writing int he first place, (once I am started I seem to be OK!) I see this another incentive to flex that particular creative muscle more frequently, as well as getting used to writing on specific subjects, somewhat to order. I will of course be cross posting back to this blog, but I would encourage you all to head over and see what they have to say. My particular favourite is @christiantoon who is certainly one of the more prolific writer on the site (and a great guy to boot!).

It’s the RSA Europe conference next week, and I have been busy preparing my presentation “Playing the Game of Thrones: ensuring the CISO role at the King’s Table”. While there is an element of content that I have covered in other presentations before, this is nonetheless a new presentation with plenty of new content, somewhat more research based (although by no means academic) and very much pushing me out of my comfort zone. That said I think it is going to be a strong presentation which should generate some good discussion; here’s a podcast where I explain what I am going to be talking about, and I will of course be covering the conference in my next blog.

With all of this going on I haven’t been able to post as regularly as I would have liked, but I am building up a great stash of content that should see us through the winter months. Winter is coming after all!