February is getting busy: B-Sides, IISP and ISACA

Beside the day job, things are getting busier on the events front:

B-Sides San Francisco
With security conferences becoming ever more corporate, the 'underground' spin-off conferences seem to be attracting a wealth of skilled hackers and interesting security folks. As an example, while the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas is still huge, Def Con is where the more technical audience now goes.

The B-Sides conferences are continuing this trend, hosting ever larger free security conferences in parallel with major corporate events. So although RSA 2011 USA is in San Francisco from the 14th to the 18th of February, I am heading over to B-Sides San Francisco sponsored by the team at Stack Exchange for a very good reason:

The Security Stack Exchange site has only been in beta since late November and growth is already strong - it is attracting experienced IT and Information Security professionals as well as those who wish to improve their knowledge of the field - but although traffic through search engines is increasing, the key demographic for this site is exactly the sort of people I expect to meet, chat with, blog about etc at B-Sides and other security conferences. The Stack Exchange model has already proven itself - check out the growth and usage statistics over on Joel Spolsky's blog.

So I'll be tweeting throughout the event (and throughout the journey - as I'll have a fair amount of time between Edinburgh and San Francisco) using the following hashtags: #BsidesSF, #securitystackexchange, #roryalsop and #7elements as appropriate.

I'll also be submitting regular blog posts here at the 7 Elements blog, as well as on my own blog where relevant on talks, speakers, the event, the audience etc. from early to very late so if you're at the conference come and see me.

(The London B-Sides Conference call for papers is out already - this event coincides with Infosec in April. Some or all of 7 Elements will be there, so get it in your calendar now.)

IISP /ISACA Fraud Presentation

About 2 hours after I get back to Edinburgh I am hosting a talk by Louise Behan of the Lothian and Borders Serious Fraud Squad on behalf of both the Institute of Information Security Professionals and ISACA Scotland.
Louise is a very passionate speaker, and her talk promises to describe the real world impact of the failure of IT controls in a very direct way.
There are a couple of ways to register for this, so drop me an email and I'll let you know the best way for you.

More things on the horizon - keep watching this space!