As the world (or at least, myself) begins to emerge from Lockdown, in-person events are returning. For me, this was initiated with an excellent trip to Manchester, experiencing Matillion’s Super All Hands gathering, meeting with new colleagues that had until that point merely been faces on a collage of Zoom tiles. As part of the event, I found myself back on stage, discussing security topics once more and celebrating that on LinkedIn. This post was spotted by an eagle-eyed Ben, which resulted in a conversation that started with “So, Andrew, I see you’re back to presenting in person….” – And that is the story behind how I found myself giving the first ever (in-person) talk at DC44191, located in The Wall’s Secret Cinema Room
I can take no credit for deliberately continuing the series; but by chance, the topic on my mind flowed on from my first (albeit, virtual) appearance on the DC44191 stage with the first AWS Security Ramblings. Where the first talk had me optimistically providing advice, guidance and experience to those that may be securing an AWS environment for the first; this session went a bit darker. Focused around a fictional (yes, honestly; not sure why no one believes that) scenario of what can happen when things go wrong, access keys fall into the wrong hands, and various nefarious escapades ensue. Topped off neatly with a foray into deploying honey key pairs to watch for adversaries taking advantage.
As promised on the evening, slidedeck for reference can be found below.
Once I was done and off stage, it was time to relax; buffet was served (including a Ceasar Salad, which is a little weird for feeding an event full of hungry security geeks), and I was able to enjoy the second talk of the evening presented by ever excellent Callum Lake, sharing his experience migrating from student to fully fledged infosec professional – providing advice to fellow students for avoiding potential pitfalls; and crucially for me, thoughts on on the seasoned (old?) professionals amongst us can best aid and mentor the incoming generations. It’s a talk that really gave me a lot to think about.
I’ve got to say a big thanks to organiser’s Ben, Morgan and Ryan, fellow presenter Callum, (unnamed) colleague along for moral support, every other attendee, and those that were following along remote on the live stream. Getting back to in-person events was a blast, I’m looking forward to the next event (unfortunately scheduled to be virtual only) with Ben promising to get back on stage himself to cover Azure Sentinel, and I’ll definitely be doing my best to be available for the next in-person session. If you’d like to join us, keep an eye on DC44191‘s Twitter Feed, and please say hi in person.
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Andrew
