Last week I was in San Francisco for the annual RSA Conference. The last time I was there in person was 2019 (although I watched many a streamed session in the past several years). I was there on behalf of SiliconANGLE, my new home, as their cybersecurity reporter. Today I wrote my first couple of posts:

• A recap of Bruce Schneier’s keynote and a summary of his many-storied career in cybersecurity. He has a new book out called A.Hacker’s Mind that is quite entertaining and the talk basically takes off from the book about how he wants to reinvent democracy using technology for good. I know, there are plenty of counter-examples but you should really listen to the talk (you have to be registered for the conference, don’t get me started about that). Anyway, I am a big fan of his, as you can tell if you read this post.
• A recap of two panels on incident and threat response, both from the POV of specific incident tactics as well as some suggestions for improving overall skills and incident analyst capabilities.
• Plus this vlog with Dave Vellante that I did the week before the conference, where we talk about a bunch of different topics including the 3CX double-supply chain attack that happened last month.

RSAC has definitely changed over the past four years. One of the panels above had all women on it, including the moderator. That is a welcome change for the better, and what made it also worthwhile was these were all powerhouse experts that I often turn to when I need the appropriate source.

Also while I was there I got to spend a short bit of time with another one of my go-to sources, Tanya Janca. (I reviewed her courseware and book on application security here.)

This was one of only two in-person events that I have attended in the past year, and it was nice to get to rub elbows with Tanya, Bruce and other luminaries, as well as break bread with some of my Bay Area friends that I have known for many years but haven’t seen since the pandemic began. All this personal contact almost mitigated the pain and suffering of being on crowded flights and having to deal with a over-crowded convention center.

If you have cyber news that you want to share, you know where you can find me.