Saturday, January 25, 2020

S4x20 Review (#S4x20)

Just returned from the S4x20 conference in Miami Beach. 

It was a great week.  First off I hooked up with Clint (@R1ngZer0) and Mathew from ThreatGen.  haven't seen them in awhile.  Talked about the game for a bit and they introduced me to a few people.  Thanks for that!  Second, the conference itself was really well put together.  Dale Peterson did a great job.

So about the conference itself, there are quite a few things that I liked:

1.  The venue was comfortable and close enough to lodgings to be convienient
2.  The speakers were great
3.  I really like the way the day started with an hour and a half of common track and then split down to the different stages.

All of the talks I attended were good but three were really kind of appropriate for me and my position:

a.  Cybersecurity Oversight and Governance: managing the Risk by Lisa Sotto (@lisasotto)
b.  The Inevitable Marriage of DevOps and Security by Kelly Shortridge (@swagitda)
c. Attack Vectors on Distributed Energy Resources (DER) by Maggie Morganti (@magpie2800)

Each of the above talks provide insight into some aspect of my day to day work, but like I said all of the talks I attended were good.

There were a couple minor irritations, but nothing worth making a big deal about and nothing specific to the conference itself but more directed at some talk content.  I just disagree with some peoples' conclusions on some matters.

@BEERISAC was fun, as were the other after hours activities and hey, it's Miami Beach in January.  I spent a few hours just walking up and down the beach. 

Conclusion:  Good Conference, I am going again if I can.  Hopefully next time work will pay for it.




1 comment:

Dale Peterson said...

I like the line " I just disagree with some peoples' conclusions on some matters." We want to put up all different analysis / views at the event. Sometimes even putting conflicting talks back to back. If we do our job it should be impossible for any attendee to agree with everything. Hope you can make it back next year and even get up on stage one of these years.