Humans in Security, BlackHat talks
This is a brief response to Steve Christey Coley, who wrote on Twitter, “but BH CFP reads mostly pure-tech, yet infosec’s more human-driven?” I can’t respond in 140, and so a few of my thoughts, badly organized:
- BlackHat started life as a technical conference, and there’s certain expectations about topics, content and quality, which have changed and evolved over time.
- The best talk in the world, delivered to the wrong audience, is not the best talk in the world. For example, there’s lots of interesting stuff happening with CRISPR. We probably wouldn’t even accept a talk on the security implications. Similarly, we probably wouldn’t take a talk on mosquito-zapping lasers, as much fun as it would be.
- I and other members of the PC, work to change those expectations by getting good content that is at the edge of those expectations. Thus, there’s a human factors track again this year.
- That track gets a lot of “buy a UPS uniform on ebay” submissions, and the audience doesn’t tend to like those. They’re not cutting edge.
- I would love it if we got more SOUPS-like content, redone a little to meet audience expectations for a Blackhat talk, which are different than expectations for an academic talk.
- So what I look for is something new, in a form that I believe will be close enough to the expectations of the audience that we drive and evolve change in useful directions.
- Finding the right balance is hard.
So, what do you think a good BlackHat talk on human factors talk might be?
(I should be clear: I am one of many reviewers for BlackHat, and I do not speak for them, or any other reviewer. I cannot discuss specific submissions or the discussions we have around them.)
Update: Since this was written quickly, I forgot to link to “How to Get Accepted at Blackhat.” [link to https://www.whitehatsec.com/blog/how-to-get-accepted-at-blackhat/ no longer works] Read every word of that, ask yourself if your submission is a good one.