Security BSides Orlando 2015 Report

This past weekend, April 11 & 12 2015, we had the third Security BSides Orlando.  This was my second BSides Orlando and this year I also presented.  For those that may have missed it, this is my report of the event.

Sadly, I was not able to attend on Saturday, due to another event I went to.  I was disappointed by that, as there were a few talks I wanted to attend.  Each day there was a keynote, along with a second keynote on Saturday.  Talks were organized into 2 physical tracks, and the topics fell into one of 4 broad areas:  Foundations, Construction, Wrecking Ball, and Ground Truth.  Foundations was the more intro topics, construction built on that with tools, techniques, knowledge to build your program, Wrecking Ball was the red teaming, awesome tools, and Ground Truth was innovative comp sci/math.

In addition, there were all-afternoon workshops, 2 each day, a lockpick village all day each day, and the Capture the Flag game both days.




I enjoyed the talks on Sunday.

We had a keynote from Jeremy Epstein of the NSF.  I attended Ryan Buenaventura's session next.

After lunch I gave my talk on the NIST CSF.  Hopefully people enjoyed it.  I'll be posting a page on it soon with links to various resources.  I stayed for Tim Krabec's talk.  Then I moved over and attended the KidHack talk (some interesting ideas), and then the one on mobile malware.

All attendees got a t-shirt (orange for attendees, lime green for staff), a bag, and a cool badge.  Badges were marked for attendees, sponsors, presenters, staff, and a couple for the donor levels.

(I need to post pics)

While I liked the t-shirt design, wasn't too cool on orange.  I would have preferred more subdued colors.

This year, the venue was at University of Central Florida, rather then a hotel conference center.  Not sure how this helped with cost.  I know they did have some issues (having dealt with conferences at universities, I can image).  Parking was fine, space was ok.  The presenter dinner could have been better.  I'm not sure when they are planning the next one to be (I think probably around the same time in 2016), but hope they can hash things out, as I understand it will be at UCF again, tho I think in a different, larger building.  Hopefully they'll do something different for the presenter dinner, as I plan on submitting again for next year (I have some ideas for future talks already in my mind).

I understand that videos of the talks will be posted in a month or so.

They also gave some info on their growth at the closing ceremony.  The attendees at BSides Orlando has been growing steadily:

• 2013- 220
• 2014- 300 (3rd largest BSides)
• 2015- 550 registered, 460 checked in

Pretty good results.  BSides Tampa got 400ish this past February.  BSides Tampa plans for their 2016 one to be on a cruise ship in February.  I wonder how that will affect their numbers as compared to BSides Orlando in 2016???  I would like to think that BSides Orlando can be bigger next year.  Several on the org team, along with presenters and attendees are from the South Florida area, and others are from Tampa, so they are pulling from a large area for attendees.

Congratulations to the BSides Orlando team for putting on another great conference.

Now, if we could only get some interest around here for a BSides South Florida...