Black Hat’s origins were as a vendor-neutral alternative to other security conferences that began 15 years ago. Today it has grown to a gathering of more than 8000 of the industry’s best and brightest researchers and a harbinger of the IT security issues the world will face.
“Hackers act as sort of a proxy for a crystal ball that would tell us the interesting things that will happen in the future”, Moss said. “Time after time, stories and talks that happen at Black Hat affected the world later. That was our secret sauce – our winning formula.”
Black Hat is “a great mirror” into the types of security trends that are gaining greater public awareness, he added, including issues like data loss prevention, disaster recovery, and business continuity.
Events like Black Hat, Moss added, are venues to share knowledge and stories about these trends that can be brought back to the IT professionals’ organization.
“You can explain to your management how security is a business enabler if we are involved sooner in the decision making process”, he continued. But if management only calls on security pros “after the house is on fire, then [they] will have very few options.”
Concluding his introductory remarks, Moss applauded US efforts to publish its international strategy for cyberspace, making it the first country to do so. He then called on other countries to do the same, in an effort to find some common ground and begin talking about how to combat common IT security problems.
“Pretty soon we can figure out where we have commonalities and start working together, instead of us all being Balkanized islands. We can start coordinating common interests”, he added.