I was surprised when I was told that University of Miami have its first Cybersecurity Conference in October 22th, because UM and Miami itself are not technology oriented. Before coming to the event, I quite doubt about the success of the event though Mr. Joe Sullivan, the CSO of Uber Technology, former CSO at Facebook, will be the keynote speaker. It turns of I was wrong! It is a very successful event. I have lots of takeaways and I would like to jot down them for my future reference.
It is first time that I heard Mr. Sullivan and met him in this event. In response to my question what is the key that separate the top security group from Facebook or Uber’s from the so-so company. He replied: top security engineers have lots of practical experience, he recommend me to put a lot of time on hands-on. He also introduced that Uber’s security team is now hiring, they are mostly looking for people who have data analysis skills to work on the fraud detection and privacy issues. I think those are very precious takeaways I got from Mr. Sullivan today. Some one would argue that it is simple truth that you have to practice a lot in order to be a professional in a specific area. However, I feel more strong and more confident about myself when get the “simple truth” from Mr. Sullivan. Normal people tend to see the simple truth and let it go, exceptional people always try to keep himself passionated about the simple truth and finally become successful. I can feel Mr. Sullivan is a such people. When I read a article later I am even more excited by his word on gaining experience. Here is a quote from his Fortune interview in 2014, in response to the question “What advice would you give to someone who wants to do what you do?”
I would tell them to just jump right in. That’s the amazing thing about technology and the Internet right now, especially Internet security. It’s not about where you went to school or what degree you got. It’s about your ability to solve problems and be creative.
During the coffee break, I met Dave Aitel, CEO of Immunity Inc., who made the commercialized version of OllyDBG. We didn’t have the chance to discuss deeply, but I have his card and will be looking forward to a future conversation with him. I never imaged that Immunity Inc. is born and grow in Miami Beach. Maybe those guys in black tee shirt enjoy coding on the beach too much.
I have networked with a bunch of security guys from top security companies who sponsored the events. Following is a picture of today’s sponsors.
I met with Ric From Fireeye. Ric is a senior security engineer. He is passionate about technology even thought he is more like a sales man here. He know the Fireeye product very well, and I chat with him about sandbox and how Fireeye’s product implement virtualization in their global threat analysis. One fact I got from him is that Fireeye deployed 7 million virtual machine in the threat analysis platform and their solution is scaled very well. Ric is work at Miami Fort Lauderdale area. Hope I can meet him to know more about the career in the network security industry.
I also met with David from Blue Coat. David is very knowledgeable about the technical aspect of their products. They also have a central analysis platform to identify the threat and have push the threat intelligence to all the customers around global. This is standard model for most of the security company I know, including PANW.
I met Marco from Vectra, Vincent from zscaler, Ron from tenable, Matt from Fortinet. They all used to be engineers and are very willing to discuss technical stuff with me. I have great conversation with them all.
I would say that this first University of Miami Cybersecurity Conference is way out of my expectation. It provide me an opportunity to learn more about those top security companies at my back yard. I wish UM can keep up and have the future Cybersecurity Conference each year. I would be very glad to see the UM will have some of program dedicated to Cybersecurity education in the near future.