The RSA Conference: What Do You Want To Learn?

RSA is not just a public-key cryptosystem, it’s also the premier security conference in the world.  Let’s face it…Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman know how to take a great thing and expand it into a really great thing!  The RSA Conference mission is to connect you with the people and insights that will empower you to stay ahead of cyber threats. 

As you probably know, RSA will be hosting one of it’s two 2015 conferences in San Francisco next month (April 20-24).  This year’s conference theme is “Change: Challenge today’s security thinking”.  I just checked the website for this event, and they literally have 540 speakers planning to attend this year!  In addition, they have what’s called “crowdsourced sessions” where mere mortals like you and I can go online and vote for their favorite session.  The top 12 vote-getters will show up at the conference to present their topic.  Pretty cool stuff.

I say all this for two reasons:

1) I have the fortunate opportunity to attend the conference in San Francisco this year, and I want to be the “voice of DevCentral” at the conference.  My goal is to attend as many cool sessions as I can and then tell all about it here on DevCentral so that we can all start/continue discussions around security-relevant topics that come up at this conference.  I know it’s not feasible for all of you to attend, but if you have a chance to go this year, look me up at the F5 booth in the exhibit hall.  I’d love to meet you and chat about all kinds of stuff.  If you won’t be attending this year’s conference, please feel free to add comments at the end of this article and tell me what you’d like to hear about.  I’ll do my best to attend sessions related to your interests, and I might even have a chance to interview some of the speakers and ask them directly.  I’ll try my best to get a video of myself asking the speakers questions on your behalf…then I could post them here on DevCentral…wouldn’t that be awesome?!? 

2) The second reason I mentioned the conference and great speakers is that one of F5’s own is in the running for two of the “crowdsourced” sessions.  You’ve seen him here on DevCentral, you’ve read his infinitely wise articles about all things security, and you’ve probably named your first-born after him (no one would blame you).  That’s right, I’m talking about none other than the man, the myth, the legend…David Holmes.  If you don’t mind, do us all a favor and go online to vote for David’s sessions at RSA.  I know he will appreciate it, and quite honestly, the rest of the world simply needs to hear more of what this man has to say.  Here are the direct links to vote for David:

DDoS True Stories - Mitigation Strategies through the Lens of Motivation:  https://www.rsaconference.com/events/us15/crowdsourced-voting/114-ddos-true-stories-mitigation-strategies

How the Skills Shortage Ushered in the Security as a Service Era:  https://www.rsaconference.com/events/us15/crowdsourced-voting/123-how-the-skills-shortage-ushered-in-the

I look forward to hearing from you in the comments section below…let me know what you want to hear from RSA this year!