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Super Cyber Fridays!

Join us TOMORROW, Friday [10-13-23], for "Hacking The Risks and Rewards of AI"

Join us Friday, October 13, 2023, for “Hacking The Risks and Rewards of AI: An hour of critical thinking about how to safely embrace this emerging technology.”It all begins at 1 PM ET/10 AM PT on Friday, October 13, 2023 with guests Devin Harris, product manager, RiskOptics and Caleb Sima, former CSO, Robinhood. We'll have fun conversation and games, plus at the end of the hour (2 PM ET/11 AM PT) we'll do our meetup.Register

Thanks to our Super Cyber Friday sponsor,  RiskOptics

Defense in Depth

The Value of RSA, Black Hat, and Mega Cyber Tradeshows

Are huge security conferences becoming too big that they're unaffordable to attend? Everyone sees value in security professionals coming together, but what specific value does a huge expo like RSA deliver?

Check out this post for the discussion that is the basis of our conversation on this week’s episode co-hosted by me, David Spark, the producer of CISO Series, and Geoff Belknap, CISO, LinkedIn. Joining us is our guest Lee Parrish, CISO, Newell Brands.

The return on investment isn’t always clear

Conferences grow because attendees see value in attending. This growth has its limits though. "Conferences have a natural tendency to grow until they suddenly cannot provide ROI and they become supernovas," said Jacques Benkoski of U.S. Venture Partners. For many, the cost of not being there might be more of a motivation than the actual value of attending. “Will FOMO (fear of missing out) continue to force vendors to sponsor big shows like RSA," wondered Sarah Breathnach of Hunters. 

Not all trade shows are created equal

Different shows have different purposes, set your expectations accordingly. "From my mindset, expos are for awareness, conferences are for contracts,” said Simon Wigfield of Amazon Web Services. David Baeza of Buttered Toast reminded that the show floor might be a spectacle but “the real conference and biz dev takes place on the periphery." 

Vendors can find value at these events

While some vendors might struggle to justify return on investment at large shows, some of this comes down to where you choose to spend your money. While a booth on the show floor might be obligatory, it might not be where you engage with CISOs., "CISOs and their senior staffers do visit RSAC but they go to keynotes and networking opportunities. Getting a speaking slot is 10x more effective than having a booth for lead generation," said Uri Rivner of Refine Intelligence.

Events can create an ecosystem

Even for those not attending big trade shows, they can still experience network effects from them. "A lot of people also come into the city for meetings and don't register for the RSAC -- they just meet on the fringes,” said Sarah Granger of SFFILM. Or as Vadim Sedletsky of Checkmarx put it, "Sometimes in our business there are things like the RSA Conference that you just need to do."

Please listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast app, or over on our blog where you can read the full transcript. If you’re not already subscribed to the Defense in Depth podcast, please go ahead and subscribe now.

Thanks to our podcast sponsor, Censys

LIVE!

 Cyber Security Headlines - Week in Review 

Make sure you 

 to join the LIVE "Week In Review" this Friday for 

Cyber Security Headlines 

with CISO Series reporter Richard Stroffolino. We do it this and every Friday at 3:30 PM ET/12:30 PM PT for a short 20-minute discussion of the week's cyber news. Our guest will be Martin Choluj, vp security, ClickHouse.

Thanks to this week's headlines sponsor, Hyperproof

Cyber chatter from around the web...

Jump in on these conversations 

"Lately it sounds like most people are miserable in cybersecurity, Is anyone genuinely enjoying their jobs and lives in the field?" (

More here

)

"Curious about password cracking data" (

More here

)

"Too difficult to land a cybersecurity job. I feel like I'm out of options" (

More here

)

Coming Up On Super Cyber Friday...

Coming up in the weeks ahead on Super Cyber Friday we have:

• [10-13-23] Hacking the Risks and Rewards of AI

• [10-27-23] Hacking Third-Party Risk in the Cloud

• [11-03-23] Hacking SOC 2

• [11-17-23] Hacking US Data Privacy

• [12-01-23] Hacking Trust Management 

Save your spot

and register for them all now!

Thank you!

Thank you for supporting CISO Series and all our programming  

We love all kinds of support: listening, watching, contributions, What's Worse?! scenarios, telling your friends, sharing in social media, and most of all we love our sponsors!

Everything is available at cisoseries.com.

Interested in sponsorship, contact me, David Spark.