An Englishman Abroad – Securi-Tay3

Leave a comment January 29, 2014 Thom Langford

Gavin Holt, who I was fortunate enough to be mentor to for last years BSides London Rookie track, invited me to submit a talk for Securi-Tay3, the third annual security conference hosted by the University of Abertay and run by the Abertay Hackers Society. He is the Vice President of that society and responsible for drumming up trade for the conference. Securi-Tay has a reputation for being Scotland’s biggest security conference, and this year attracted something like 170 people putting it well on a par with many ‘professional’ conferences.

I duly did as I was told and submitted into the CFP.

The day was great; the conference was well managed and run, there were always plenty of volunteers in distinctive blue (and not black for once!) T-shirts who were friendly and willing to help. Vitally there was always a cup of tea available in the reception area, throughout the day, something so many conferences miss when you are working the hallway track rather than the advertised tracks. This is one Englishman who has traditional standards…

As expected there was a very strong technical slant to the presentations (many of them given by people called Rory it seems as well) and some of them were beyond me. In fact I tweeted the following day saying that the one downside to the conference was that I often felt like the dumbest person in the room.

I was able to present on “Throwing Shapes for Better Security Risk Management”, a wholly revamped version of a talk I did at the IT Security Forum late last year. When I first gave it I had some great feedback from Jitender Arora which I tried to address, as well as the formal feedback from the session (basically “good content but not what was promised”). Securi-Tay kindly recorded the talk which I will post shortly, although with the microphone cutting out there is only so much you can hear. Feedback afterwards was very positive, and I had some great conversations with people not just about risk management but presentation style generally.

Two other presentation also stood out for me; Ritesh Sinha and Paco Hope‘s “The Colour of Your Box: The Art and Science of Security Testing” and Rory McCune’s “Crossing the Mountains of Madness – How to Avoid Being a Security Cultist”. These will also be available at the Securi-Tay YouTube channel shortly.

This was a great conference, attended by people who truly wanted to learn and engage rather than just get out of the office for the day, and who are actively pursuing a career in the infosec industry. What did surprise me though was the number of people from the day who wanted to get more involved with risk management as a career option rather than the more technically focussed, ethical hacking option which at first glance would appear to be the defacto choice. The honesty and passion of all of the students there was very refreshing, and I thoroughly enjoyed chatting to everyone at the after party, all the way through the inevitable kebab on the way back to the hotel.

A big thank you to Gill Chalmers, Gavin Holt and all of the members of the Abertay Ethical Hacking Society for running an educational and excellent day.

Amsterdam has them now: RSA Europe 2013 and playing the Game of Thrones

Leave a comment November 4, 2013 Thom Langford

As usual it was a great week at RSA Europe, as much for the hallways track as all the other tracks on offer. Whilst it may not be as large as it’s bigger brother in San Francisco the move to Amsterdam from London seems to have given the conference a new sense of purpose and scale. The potential to grow in this location is obvious. But I hope it doesn’t grow too much more; there was always a sense of knowing what was going on and when, and where you were in relation to the auditoriums and speakers. I am sure that sense of perspective is more than lost in the scale of RSA San Francisco.

It still had it’s challenges, all minor. For instance, tea and coffee points that seemed perpetually shut throughout the day, a distinct lack of activities on Wednesday even after a 17:00hrs close, and perhaps the location did not lend itself to the kind of out of hours socialising that London had to offer. For me the Novotel bar became the centre of my networking experience, no bad thing, but I would wager there were a few more hotel bars doing the same thing meaning the networking was seriously fragmented.

The usual suspects were there for me to socialise with as well as some new faces, such as Tor and Kjetil from Norway who were both intelligent and hilarious, a combination I always enjoy. I managed to meet a few more of our industry “luminaries” as well which is always interesting (never meet your heroes!), as well as catch up with others I had met previously and enjoyed their company and insights.

For me the whole conference was focused upon 14:40hrs on the Thursday when I presented “Playing the Game of Thrones: Ensuring the CISO’s Role at the King’s Table”. Not only was I presenting in my own right but I was also presenting content and an approach that I had synthesised from a variety of sources and my previous thoughts and theories. The session went extremely well, was watched by a number of people I know and respect, and was fully attended (with even a couple of people having to stand). Questions at the end were thin on the ground although I had noticed that throughout the conference, but the feedback has been phenomenal. I haven’t had the formal feedback from RSA yet, but their newly introduced conference app allows me to see a certain degree of feedback on both me as a speaker as well as the talk itself.

The slides are above in PDF format, and are also available in Keynote format here. My good friend and evil twin brother Kai Roer kindly filmed the talk as well, and as soon as that is available I will be publishing that on YouTube. One of the key reasons for doing so is to invite more comments on the material itself, as I made a few bold statements that I am sure not everyone would agree with. For instance, the less influence a CISO has, the more prescriptive (and lengthy) the policies are, in turn making them less effectives. This is based on my observations only rather than research, so getting feedback on points such as this helps inform everybody more.

All in all it was a great week, making new friends and meeting old ones and always learning new things almost every hour. Here is my honour roll of folks from the week that made it as memorable as always:

Javvad, Brian, Kai, Kjetil, Tor, David, Dave, Bruce, Tor, John, Dwayne, Quentyn, Neira, Josh, Martin, David & Olivier (my apologies to anyone I left out, it is the fault of my memory and not how memorable your were!).

Taking RANT to New Levels

4 Comments June 12, 2013 Thom Langford

Noise Next Door giving conferences a new twist

For a variety of reasons I have been unable to post here as frequently as I have liked, but the great advantage of attending a conference is that it does spur one into action to get something written down. Tuesday Jun 11th saw a new kind of conference come to town, the RANT conference. Based upon the monthly RANT forum there were only three individual speakers with the rest of the sessions effectively panel debates but with significantly more audience interaction encouraged.

There were a number of highlights for me, not least all of the people I met there, new friends and old. One of the big surprises for me was the opening keynote from Mark Stevenson of the League of Pragmatic Optimists. I thought it an odd choice of speaker, a futurologist, but very much enjoyed his talk once I got over myself. he looked at (amongst many other things) how the digital revolution is changing our lives daily. What it came down to though is that despite the massive amount of change that has gone before us, the digital revolution is merely the cocktail sausage of dinner; we cannot begin to imagine what is around the corner.

I also enjoyed watching Javvad play up to his InfoSec rockstar status alongside Neira Jones and the irrepressible Stephen Bonner. It was unfortunate that the final panellist, Ed Gibson, killed the dynamic of the panel dead, changing what should have been an upbeat and funny session into a monologue of personal dislikes that crossed the line into embarrassing. I thought Javvad played to his RockStar persona very well, but also presented how he made his way to the level of industry notoriety he currently enjoys and the benefits it actually brings to the industry. The serious point of them actually being ambassadors for infosec was quite rightly made. Unfortunately Ed did the same for the next panel on state sponsored espionage, killing what should have been a powerful insight into the topic given his background. I understand Ed is a very highly rated speaker, but on the evidence of yesterday I won’t be rushing to see him speak, and how he handled himself was unfair on the other panellists and indeed on us as an audience.

The Boy Band Strikes back

The rest of the day went very well though, with plenty of laughs with the University Challenged pitting the grey hairs of the industry against the students of Royal Holloway, and a session on security awareness that I was invited to participate in alongside Geordie Stewart, Charles Clarke, Christian Toon and my old mate Bruce Hallas. The reaction from the audience was very positive, with some great questions and opinions. We didn’t all agree, which is exactly what needs to happen; if we all agree, nothing changes, but if there is dissent then that can finally lead to actually driving change in the industry. On the whole it was well received and moderated nicely by Jim Shields, although someone did tweet that he thought the conversation was “same old same old re training me thinks” which is actually fair enough; I do think however that we can only stop talking about it when it is “fixed” (whatever that means!).

Stephen Bonner’s presentation was a distinct improvement upon what he presented at BSides, and was a thoroughly enjoyable rant, replete with chocolate missiles for the audience.

The excellent Twist and Shout were managing the video and photography, and shared many of their corporate training videos in the breaks between sessions that not only gave a very polished and slick feel to the whole day, but also some light relief.

Networking drinks were copious and enjoyable, and the dinner was excellent with after dinner entertainment from Jim Shields in his stand up comedian alter ego and an improv comedy troupe Noise next Door. A fuzzy head this morning tells me I had perhaps a little too much fun.

It was an awesome conference overall, and I hope to see it grow and become part of the established circuit. The format can only get better as while there is a place for the traditional presentation of one person delivering content and then taking some questions has its place, there is a huge advantage to the RANT approach. It allows the audience to engage far more effectively and I would hazard a guess that the audience actually retains more than the standard 20% of content afterwards. Huge congratulations to Acumin for not only making it happen, but also for ensuring it was as free from the commercialisation of so many other vendor driven events, a hugely refreshing approach. The biggest congratulation of the day though must go to Gemma for making it happen.

The IRMS – a new angle on information security and risk management

Leave a comment May 23, 2013 Thom Langford

I have recently returned from a conference that I might not have ordinarily attended or even been able to justify, namely the Information & Records Management Society (IRMS) conference in Brighton.

I had been invited to participate in a panel session on Monday morning entitled “Adapt or Die: Is Records Management still relevant in a World of Big Data” alongside Christian Toon (@christiantoon) and Phil Greenwood of Iron Mountain, and Sarah Norman of HM Treasury. Not only was it an excellent discussion, but it struck me quite how similar the challenges are between the IRM world and the risk management/CISO world.

We answered a question around how can the IRM folks avoid only getting funded and have attention paid to them after an emergency, and it immediately struck me that this is exactly what happens with security. Another related question concerned connecting effectively to the business and I was able to relate the tasks of the IRM function to the Confidentiality, Integrity & Availability (CIA) goals of the information security professional, and how the two goals are very similar.

Even the opening speech spoke about IBM’s Four V’s of big data (quoted), namely:

Volume: Enterprises are awash with ever-growing data of all types, easily amassing terabytes—even petabytes—of information.
Velocity: Sometimes 2 minutes is too late. For time-sensitive processes such as catching fraud, big data must be used as it streams into your enterprise in order to maximize its value.
Variety: Big data is any type of data – structured and unstructured data such as text, sensor data, audio, video, click streams, log files and more. New insights are found when analyzing these data types together.
Veracity: 1 in 3 business leaders don’t trust the information they use to make decisions. How can you act upon information if you don’t trust it? Establishing trust in big data presents a huge challenge as the variety and number of sources grows.

Isn’t this exactly the sort of thing that CISO’s have to grapple with every day?

The world of the IRMS and the world of the Infosec Professional are very closely related it seems, and I think this relationship is one that needs to be explored by both communities further to ensure mutual goals are more easily met.

Christian Toon and me looking rather spiffy

On a personal side I had a great time speaking with the vendors, watching a few presentations and taking part in the pub quiz (we didn’t win..). There was even a black tie gala dinner on Monday that was an absolute blast that culminated in my friend, Christian Toon, being awarded a fellowship of the IRMS which was just fantastic to to be able to see.

I am sincerely hoping to go to next years event, and perhaps hoping even more that by then the argument to attend will be much easier as our industries begin to forge closer ties.

One Award, Two Conferences and a Surprise in the Works

5 Comments April 28, 2013 Thom Langford

I am just returning from a very full three days in west London for the annual infosec conference season. I will do my best to name as many of the wonderful people I met throughout all three days, both new and old, but if I miss a namecheck or two, forgive me, let me know, and I will rectify immediately!

Tuesday bought the kick off of InfoSec Europe. After a quick run round to get some schwag and chat with a few key vendors I had lunch with Cindy (@cindyv), Dwayne (@thatdwayne), Jitender (@jitenderarora), Javvad (@j4vv4d) and Brian (@brianhonan) to chat about RSA Europe and our proposed submissions. This was quickly followed by a couple of panels in the Keynote theatre (one moderated by Javvad) and then some good gossiping with Brian and Neira (@neirajones) before heading off to one the two award ceremonies of the night.

Well goodness, gosh and golly!

It was at this point the evening took a somewhat surreal turn. Having been nominated for Best Personal Security Blog at the inaugural European Security Bloggers Awards, I was both deeply honoured and supremely surprised to win! I was also very proud to see Javvad pick up two awards as well. To say that the evening started to blur somewhat from that point on would be an understatement, but I am glad to say that the award itself did make it home safely. I did spend quite some time talking with Dwayne and Jack (@jackdaniel), predominantly about the mysogeny that still manages to find its way into infosec trade shows through booth babes that were supposedly banned form this years infosec show (looking at you ForeScout…) and then about possibly spinning up a BSides in India. Jack proved what a class act he was by offering to advise anyone who would be willing to take on this mantle in India, something I am hoping to encourage. I will be posting more on the awards in the next few days but suffice to say a huge thank you to Brian and Jack for making these awards happen.

Wednesday bought BSidesLondon. Whilst I was very disappointed not to have been able to speak it did take the pressure off considerably and I was able to enjoy a few good talks

Javvad and his heroes

(javvad and Stephen Bonner, @stephenbonner) and some great conversations with friends and colleagues. Max (@hoolers) if you are reading this, I apologise unreservedly for not getting around to having the chat I promised! I also managed to meet my “rookie” for the Rookie Track, Gavin (@gavinholt), as well as a great chat with Leron (@le_rond). Halfway through the afternoon I had to head back to InfoSec for my a panel I was a part of on BYOD and Consumerisation. This went very well, was entertaining and informative in my opinion, and despite two attempts at distracting me by Geordie Stewart and Andrew (@sirjester) completed without incident!

View from the panel

A quick visit to the RANT forum (@rantforum) was followed by a couple of drinks at the BSidesLondon after party and then an early night.

Thursday bought a couple of early meetings including Bruce to discuss the Analogies Project (@analogies) which is always a pleasure. I then formally went on vacation…

The rest of the day was taken up with filming for a project I am involved in with Javvad, Andrew and the very talented Jim (@jimshields) of Twist & Shout. More of that to follow in the coming few weeks but I am incredibly excited at what this project may bring not just to me personally but also to the infosec community as a whole (for instance, a sense of humour…).

After dinner with @secwonk, @gattaca, @turbodog, @anthonymfreed, Cindy, Javvad and Andrew, a weary but very satisfied Mr Langford returned home.

Highlights

Winning the Best Personal Security Blog Award
Thursday afternoon (see above)
ForeScout’s apparent admittance that they needed booth babes to help sell their product

Lowlights

Missing Gavin’s presentation because of a scheduling conflict
Not finding myself spoilt for choice for presentations to attend at BSides – I thought the choice was predominantly technical and not as broad as last year. Still a great conference, well run and with a huge amount of talent; just less applicable to me this year.