Charles Goldberg | VP, product marketing
It’s hard to write a blog about an industry event without including a cliché about “unprecedented times”, “new normal” or a “are you crazy yet from staying at home?” but I will try! Only a year ago we were enthralled at Black Hat USA 2019 by all the latest security innovations and the DefCon hackathons. Now, we are getting ready to sit back, put on our blue-light blocker glasses, and settle in for thought-provoking webinars and online chats.
Black Hat stays the course
With the barrage of education opportunities available to all of us, Black Hat still rises to the top for security professionals. The good news is that Black Hat USA 2020 is happening this week as originally planned. It is packed with the best opportunities to learn from the most accomplished visionaries, researchers, implementers, and white hat hackers (of course!). Even if you’re not planning on attending the full event, Thales has you covered. Just sign up for a free pass for sponsored sessions, the Arsenal and Business Hall.
The opening keynote is very timely. Matt Blaze, McDevitt Chair in Computer Science and Law from Georgetown University, will be speaking about “Stress-Testing Democracy: Election Integrity During a Global Pandemic”. His work focuses on security, privacy, cryptography and scale, especially at the intersection of technology and public policy. If you don’t have a pass that allows you into keynotes, you can learn a lot from Matt on US voting system vulnerabilities from his 2019 talk.
The Arsenal is a unique Black Hat experience as it is a space for developers to showcase their work. This experience may actually be better online, as the demonstrations are held in an open, conversational environment, enabling presenters to interact with attendees and provide a hands-on experience. In person, it is sometimes hard to hear and see. Now, we will all have a front row seat.
Secure your most sensitive data with Thales
At Thales’s virtual booth, we will have experts available to answer questions and show demos for managing and automating the lifecycle of the exploding number of cloud encryption keys. In addition, we’ll be on hand to discuss best practices to migrate from on-premises access management solutions to cloud based services, and we can provide our customers with the status of the SafeNet KeySecure and Vormetric Data Security Platform convergence strategy. Also, you can learn more about our recently announced CipherTrust Manager. In the meantime, I invite you to watch this welcome message from Thales’s Todd Moore, VP of encryption products.
Security can’t take a year off
On the bright side during these “uncertain times”, at least we aren’t heading to Vegas in the August heat! We can look forward to the Business Hall with exhibitors opening this Wednesday, Aug. 5 and Thursday, Aug. 6 (Sorry, you’ll need to bring your own “Beer and Bacon” to snack on while perusing this year). Be sure to come by the Thales booth to say “hi”, swap a COVID story, and discuss best practices for data protection and access management--not just during this crazy time, but for all time. In addition, just for stopping by to learn more about Thales or for a data security consultation, we’ll give you an opportunity to answer questions in our virtual booth, however, we’ll send you real-stuff as a thank you. Personally, I want to score a gaiter to wear while hiking. In addition, you can enter to win a Peloton Bike (restrictions apply)--a highly coveted item during this pandemic!
See you at Black Hat --sort of!