The good, the bad and the ugly - Infosecurity Europe

Quick summary of Infosecurity Europe 2009, based on a bit more than a day I've spent there...

THE GOOD

There is always some good stuff at the conferences like Infosecurity. This one is no exception!

• Infoguard had a fibre taps (photo by Chris)

• EDR was more than happy to show us how their data destruction really works

... and after that you are left with a disk... almost like new :-) Thanks for the demo!

• ACUMIN had a full-scale proper, hardware simulator of Robinson R22 helicopter - great stuff, I got through 2 gates and won a RC helicopter :-)
• Information Security Awareness Forum together with SANS offer a free course that ends up with a GIAC STAR (Skills Test and Report) - this is very time limited offer!

This would be all good so far... so let's move on...

THE BAD

The bad stuff is simple - most companies present exactly the same stuff for yet another year in a row. Some people (you know who you are hihi) also suggested that the goodies we get are not very interesting - yes, that's true... blame it on the credit crunch! Still some companies managed to deliver quite a lot of fun at their stands (like riding a Segway around the obstacle course - sorry, forgot the name of the company but that was fun). Was that Sophos with a karaoke party at the end of the day? :-)

THE UGLY

O2 for sure... and possibly other mobile network operators... Can you imagine that in the middle of the expo like Infosecurity you can't access email on your mobile/laptop (of course I assume you don't use WiFi in places like that). The signal was 5/5 bars, 3G available, switching to EDGE from time to time... so what - didn't work at all, an network iteself was disappearing from time to time - NO SERVICE.
Bottom line is simple - if you need to check your email, leave the expo hall and go out (ie. move to another cell - or so you may hope for), check email, go back.

I would expect from mobile operators to plan for high congestion in places like exhibition centers - well... I was proven to be WRONG!

Final notes...

Thanks to SANS for all the good stuff. It was a pleasure to meet again with so many great people -  Dan Kaminsky (sorry the beer didn't work out - next time maybe), Chris Riley, DigiNinja (real name intentionally witheld) and many many others... hope to meet you soon again :-)