It’s that time. The Black Hat Conference is taking place in Las Vegas this week and tens of thousands of people will fill the space in and around the Mandalay Bay hotel to gain insight on emerging attack trends and techniques—and how to effectively defend against those exploits.

There is a lot going on over the next few days, and if you just wing it you might miss out on briefings and activities you’ll wish you had experienced. If you haven’t already done so, I suggest you download the Black Hat app and invest some time surfing through the available keynotes and briefings to get the important things on your calendar.

Must-See Black Hat Sessions

Here are a few that I recommend you make time for:

  • Opening Keynote: Dino Dai Zovi, Mobile Security Lead at Square, will be presenting the keynote at 9am on Wednesday, August 7. The keynote is titled “Every Security Team is a Software Team Now” and focuses on the evolving role of cybersecurity professionals in a cloud-based, DevOps culture world.
  • Cyber Insurance Micro Summit: Jeremiah Grossman, founder and CEO of Bit Discovery, will be chairing a micro summit to the pros and cons of cyber liability insurance. The Black Hat website includes this description of the event: “Cyber liability insurance, like it or not, already has and will continue to have a profound impact on the entire Information Security industry. Everyone in the industry will be affected because no matter how many resources an organization invests in various security controls, there will always be latent risk of breach and financial loss. That’s one of the main reasons why organizations find it attractive to transfer their risk to an insurance carrier. As these business decisions are made it becomes vital for InfoSec pros to become familiar with cyber-insurance policies in what they cover and don’t cover; how claims are made, which are paid vs denied, how the incident response process may be altered; and how carriers influence what security controls their clients implement.”
  • Bug Bounty Micro Summit: Kymberlee Price, open source software security strategy lead for Microsoft, will chair this micro summit on the challenges and benefits of implementing a bug bounty program. The session will also cover best practices and lessons learned from organizations that have tried—and in some cases failed.

Black Hat Briefings for Everyone

These are three of the big ones, but there are hundreds of exciting and informative sessions taking place on virtually every aspect of exploits and cybersecurity. If you look on the Black Hat website or in the Black Hat app, the sessions are categorized into different tracks: Applied Security, Cryptography, Bug Bounty, Security Development Lifecycle, Human Factors, Exploit Development, Platform Security, Policy, Data Forensics / Incident Response, Enterprise, Malware, Network Defense, and more. Find the track or tracks that interest you and then scan for the briefings that apply.

Save Your Energy for Evening Black Hat Activities

If you’ve been to a conference like this before, you already know that there will be plenty to do at night as well. If this is your first time, be prepared. Many vendors host receptions or parties and it’s easy to have a calendar with 5 or 6 overlapping events on a given night. If you aren’t sure what’s going on or you want to make sure you aren’t missing a party you’d really like to attend, you can check out the list of parties and networking events published by Black Hat.

Don’t Forget to Visit Alert Logic

Leave some time during the day between keynotes and briefings to visit the Expo Hall as well. Hundreds of vendors will be there to share what they have to offer. Please come by Booth 1438 to learn about SIEMless Threat Management, and how Alert Logic combines platform, intelligence, and experts to provide customers with effective cybersecurity to protect against a growing and evolving threat landscape.

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