InfoSeCon 2006 Report

Earlier this month, I was very fortunate to be an invited speaker at InfoSeCon 2006. This was my second year speaking there, and there are two things you should know about this conference:

1. It's a small conference, because the organizers are have created an atmosphere where the speakers and attendees mingle freely, discuss issues over dinner and drinks, and actually talk rather than just attend presentations. They've built a community, and this works extraordinarily well for both speakers and attendees.
   
2. The location is spectacular. Dubrovnik is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for a reason, and it's no joke when they call it the "Pearl of the Adriatic." In fact, the location is so spectacular that the biggest danger is that your boss will want to go instead. Fight this, or you'll miss the spectacular evening events that make this very much resemble a working vacation.
   

The conference as a mixture of combined sessions and individual "Management" and "Technical" tracks. The speaker list was headed this year by two big names in the industry: Eugene Kaspersky (of Anti-Virus fame) and Marcus Ranum (of "I invented the firewall and we've pretty much all screwed it up since" fame). Mr. Kaspersky's talks were a little light on the technical content, I thought, having been written by his marketing department. Still, it was interesting to hear him speak about the relationship between malware and organized crime. Nothing that isn't already common knowledge, but he's on the cutting-edge of this fight, so just hearing his thoughts was instructive. He also spoke about the organization of his company's malware lab, but I was fairly disappointed with this, as it lacked substantive detail and mostly just emphasized the fact that they do have such a lab.

Marcus Ranum's talks were much more interesting. In fact, he was something of a lightning rod of controversy, as I understand him to be elsewhere, too. He gave a pair of talks, about the state of the security industry and about the evolution of the firewall. The overarching theme, which became a sort of conference catchphrase, was that "we're doing security wrong." Not that anyone has a comprehensive solution yet, but if the first step is admitting that we have a problem, then I think he's done his job. I don't always agree with Marcus, but after hearing him speak and spending some time with him informally, I think his points are valid.

By the way, remember when I said that the organizers try hard to create opportunities to mingle with the speakers? It works. I really appreciated the opportunity to sit down and have several conversations with Marcus. I also got to spend rather a lot of time with some friends, both new and old, in the Croatian, Slovenian and Slovakian IT industry. We prowled the midieval streets of Cavtat looking for vampire photos and listened to a restaurant full of boisterous Croatian tourists singing along with an accordian. We sailed the Adriatic and scaled the Dubrovnik city walls. We even learned a few things about the discipline of Information Security. All in all, a valuable and enjoyable trip, and I can't wait for InfoSeCon 2007!