Toronto InfoSecurity Canada 2005
By Ian Scott
I know I haven’t completed my review of the 2005 CanSecWest conference - but I just returned last week from InfoSecurity Canada (Toronto), and thought I’d write out my comments on this conference.
First, this conference was not nearly as intense as CanSecWest. That’s probably because it seemed to be aimed at a different crowd.
Whereas CanSecWest attracted a lot of the “do’ers,” InfoSecurity seemed to be aimed at managers and executives.
CanSecWest offered what I’d call “hard information,” while InfoSecurity Canada was “soft information.”
Not that it was bad, mind you. In fact, I still got a lot out of InfoSecurity Canada. One of the major differences was that InfoSecurity Canada had a large Vendor Floor with booths and displays. It was quite interesting to be able to see some of the latest marketing, speak with representatives of companies that are attempting to leverage and assist business and organizations with IT security needs, and sit in on the presentations.
Along with more vendors, there were more “freebies” as well. I’m not sure how many pens I managed to add to my collection. And being a Linux guy, it was fun to be able to have a beer on Microsoft’s dollar as they hosted the meet and greet session on Wednesday night.
Let’s get the two big disappointments out of the way. First, one of the presentations I had chose to sit in on was “Emerging Information Security Threats and Countermeasures.” Claudiu Popa, President of Informatica Security was the presenter. Claudiu seems like a nice guy, and spoke well, but we never really did get into “emerging threats.”
Most of Claudiu’s presentation was taken up with past statistics, and by the time his hour was finished, he had quite a number of slides that were still left.
The second disappointment was that the “Special Delivery: Secure Email” presentation by Fred Avolio of Avolio Consulting did not happen. There was no announcement or communication about this, and instead when I entered the room that was marked for Fred’s presentation, I ended up listening to a presentation on “Federated Identity And Access Management.”
It was ok, but not exactly what I wanted at the time.
One other disappointment, which is probably more my fault than anything else is that I missed Kartik Trivedi’s presentation on “Google Attacks.” When I arrived at the conference room, there was standing room only with the door open, and I simply couldn’t hear Trivedi speak. It was pointless to hang around. I was looking forward to this presentation, and would have thought the organizers would have assured enough room for those that had registered for this presentation.
So, what was good about the conference? Mike Paquette of TopLayer had an interesting talk on “Effective Intrustion Prevention.” Again, not lots of technical detail, but some interesting thoughts and comments.
Probably my favorite presentation was by Robert Buren of CMS Consulting. Although CMS seems to primarily deal with MS Networks and products, Mike provided some excellent insights into both the buyer and seller’s perspective of security services. He offered some excellent insight, great advice, and basically offered the “Be A Consultant In One Hour” lesson. For me personally, Mike’s presentation was the most beneficial of all that I attended.
The other difference between CanSecWest and InfoSecurity Canada was the food. Whereas CanSecWest provided excellent and filling lunches, InfoSecurity lunches were basically sandwiches. But of course, InfoSecurity was half the price as well.
Speaking of lunch, the “Opening Day Keynote” speaker was Howard A. Schmidt, who spent years as the White House Cyber Security Advisor and who is now with E-Bay as their CISO.
Schmidt was both entertaining, thoughtful, and provided some great insight into the issues of Information Security, possible solutions, and advice on figuring out how to solve problems. He was an excellent choice for the Opening Day Keynote.
Was it worth the $795.00? I’m not sure yet how to measure the value of the conference. Whereas I can say that the CanSecWest conference was most definitely worth $1,800.00, just in the knowledge it provided me, I did manage to make a lot more interesting contacts at the InfoSecurity Canada event. But based on the presentations alone that I was able to take in, I don’t think it was worth the money. Having said that, I’ll probably attend next year anyhow, just for the ability to check out the Vendor’s floor and talk to others.
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