The London weather was uncharacteristically pleasant for the whole week which saw it play host to many visitors around the world who descended for Infosec 2018 in Olympia.
As usual, the event was lively, with a seemingly endless line of attendees walking the hall, and attending sessions.
In my view, the sign of a good conference is how many people it can bring together. And I lost count of the number of new and interesting people I met, as well as bumping into old friends, colleagues, and peers. Not to mention catching up with journalists and analysts.
Presentations
We had a snazzy booth and regular presentations which proved popular among attendees, with each presentation pulling in the crowds.
My colleague Chris Doman and myself had an opportunity to present in the tech talk track. It was a new experience as all the attendees were given headphones to wear so they could hear the talk clearly.
As a speaker, it's a different experience as you can't hear your own voice, so are relying on the non-verbal cues of your audience to ensure they are engaged and can hear you clearly.
Our talk was around piecing together the global threat jigsaw puzzle in which we presented a correlation of data from our customers, OTX, and other vendor reports and highlighted the malware, threat actor, and exploit trends over the last year.
Awards
It wouldn't be a security conference without an awards ceremony, and we had not one, but two reasons to celebrate.
AlienVault won the SC Magazine awards for the best cloud security solution for the second year in a row.
In a slightly less-formal setting, I was honoured to win the the award for the most entertaining blogger and the Security blogger awards.
Other events
Many large events like Infosecurity Europe end up creating an ecosystem of events around it. Outside of the main conference, there are a host of smaller events ranging from informal gatherings to full-on events.
RSA was back in town with its one day 'unplugged' event - which I have attended in the past, but couldn't make this year.
Then there's Bsides London, which has continued to grow impressively year on year and attracts nearly a thousand participants.
A couple of things struck me as being a bit different at Bsides London this year. Firstly, how I didn't really recognise many of the names giving the talks. This, in my opinion, is great. It demonstrates progress, and shows what a great environment has been created where newer names are encouraged to submit to, and get selected to speak.
Also, I attended several of the rookie track talks, which were all stellar. The content and quality of talks more than made up for the first-time speaking nerves that a few displayed. I hope the rookies found the experience useful, and will build upon their experience in the future.
Until next time
When it was all said and done, it was a very enjoyable, if not tiring week filled with great content, the opportunity to meet up with old colleagues, and make some new connections.
Our next major conference will be Blackhat in Las Vegas in August, and we’re already looking forward to it.
