Opening Keynote

Welcome to B-sides Calgary 2020. I'm super super excited to be a part of this event. I love B-sides and everything that they do for the community. And I'm really really excited and I want to give a shout out to the organizers of this event, because I remember when they first reached out to me in, you know, like October 75th of the decade of 2019, forever ago, that it seemed like such a wonderful idea and I was so enthusiastic about it. And then kind of COVID happened and the world fell apart and everybody had to try to figure out how to keep this kind of community working in Infosec. So I want to give a big shout-out to B-sides for being able to do that and being able to kick this event off. I talked a little bit about COVID and unfortunately it has affected so many things about our lives since last year and Infosec is not kind of blind to that. We've seen an absolute uptick in the number of cybercrime incidents, of nation-state cyberattacks, of people interfering with elections, countries using cyber warfare on each other and it's continuing to escalate throughout the year as it goes on. Now, it's kind of crappy that that's happening, because in Infosec everybody already had so much to do, right? Everybody already was burnt out. Everybody was already dealing with the fact that we have this skills gap and the shortage, and people that we can get in the door. So everybody's working overtime. Everybody's trying to learn on the side. Everybody's already just super stressed out. And now, in this world that we live in, we're asking the Infosec community to do even more. We're asking you to really go the extra mile. We're asking you to work more hours. We're asking you to learn more things, even though you don't have any time. We're asking you to do all of this when you may be at home with your families and your dogs and the constant everything that's happening in the world around you and that's really difficult for us to kind of ask, for the world to ask of us. But it brings me to kind of the central theme that I've really been focusing on as I think about this event, and that is community. You know the Infosec community has a long tradition of cons, and you know, getting together and learning together and working together and really providing new and exciting ideas. And in the age of COVID, I was kind of worried personally at the beginning that we were going to lose a lot of that community sentiment. But we haven't really, I think, in my opinion, it's kind of become bigger and broader, because now with events like this going virtual, with events like RSA and BlackHat going virtual, Defcon going virtual, we're starting to see that we actually can do this community piece and we can do it in a broader sense. So people who may not have been able to ever attend BlackHat or a B-sides event in their community are now actually able to do that. And that's great when we start thinking about the kinds of ideas and diversity of thought that we need to bring into the community to start dealing with some of the main issues that we really have. And it's hard to get past the fact that it's less communicative. It just is, it's just not quite the same. You're not going to those parties afterwards, but I feel like we've gotten a lot out of this. And with that seemingly insurmountable things that we have to deal with in our daily lives with just COVID by itself, with the economy, and then with our already very complicated lives in cybersecurity or information security, it can seem like a lot. But what I find is that the community is stronger than ever. The community has slapped back and said 'Okay, you're not going to let us hang out in bars with each other anymore, you're not going to let us go into the classroom so that we can do this learning. So we're going to figure out a way to do it better and do it together.' I'm so excited when I see people - I have a very good friend Janine - who has completed over the last three to four months three different certifications and actually changed her career path entirely, just because she's got the opportunity to do that now. I think that these kinds of events and these types of community pieces are so crucial for us going forward. With everything that we have to do, with everything that we have to be in a world where we don't have enough people, we don't have enough technology, we don't have enough of the things to really drive us forward, community is really everything. And it's what we've built already in this community, in this Infosec community and what we need to continue to build in a much stronger way. So for this event, you know, there's so many great people that are speaking, there's so many great things that are happening, but one of the things that I loved as I looked over the event list and kind of everything that was happening is that it's not just super focused on one technical thing, but you know, people are talking about burnout, people are talking about culture, people are talking about the things that are important to us as a community to help us be able to actually get through this without everybody, you know, pulling their hair out and just going crazy. In the community and with the community, we can do this together. We can be better, we can be faster, we can be stronger, we can be all of those things and we can be more knowledgeable. So I encourage you throughout this entire event and after this event to start looking at more ways that you can immerse yourself in these communities, in your local communities, even though local kind of means global right now. So I encourage everybody to really spend a lot of time thinking about how you can communicate, how you can be a part of the community in ways that you didn't think of before. Maybe volunteering for some events, volunteering to give sessions at conferences, volunteering to give YouTube videos and teach people online, because there are so many hungry people out there right now who would love to be in cybersecurity and we can help them with that. So I want to get this thing kicked off and not take up too much of your time, but I ask you to remember as we go through this process, that this is exactly the kind of event, this is exactly the kind of things that we need to be doing to push cybersecurity and information security forward in this crazy age of COVID 2020. With that, good luck everybody, enjoy and I hope to see you tomorrow for the AMA.