Handle:
Silver Surfer

IRL:
Mike Reavey

Rank:
Director, MSRC

Likes:
Warm weather, Battlestar Galactica, and responsibly reported vulnerabilities

Dislikes:
Rain, Rain without end, Clouds with potential for rain, reality TV, and unpatched vulns

I’m here playing MC at the tenth edition (!!!) of the BlueHat Security Briefings on the Microsoft Campus in Redmond. So far it is shaping up to be an immensely successful event. As Celene mentioned in her announcement post, this is the most robust line up of content we have ever had, with a wide range of topics including threats to next-generation infrastructure, mobile technology risks, the Web browser landscape, and predators of the ecosystem. We started off the day examining the dark underground of this security culture of ours, looking across continents to understand who the real players are. As we enter the next-generation infrastructure block this afternoon, I’m convinced there will be even more technical insights to come, both eye-opening and reassuring, as is the typical fashion at BlueHat.

Hanging out with us in the speaker lounge today and tomorrow are nearly 150 attendees from across the security ecosystem. Attendees span the industry, from those in the security researcher communities at large to our friends in government, security protection partner groups, and security response teams. It’s amazing to have such a diverse group of people here for two-way conversations with our engineers. It’s those talks, as well as the countless side meetings, community mixer events, and “hallway tracks” that make BlueHat successful. The interactions between our internal and external audiences always leave us more excited and committed as we all work toward building a more secure planet through shared ideals.

Last week I had the pleasure of being invited by Cisco to keynote their very first BlueHat-esque type of conference, which aims to improve their own security posture by bringing in key researchers who can share their findings with Cisco security professionals. It’s encouraging to see our peers and partners continuing the formula that has been so successful for us at Microsoft and inviting us to be a part of it. When Chris Hoff from Cisco gave a talk at BlueHat v9, it was one of the most highly rated talks on the cloud that our conference had ever seen. Sharing our platforms for these types of win-win outcomes makes it all worth it.

Okay, I need to go grab the mic and step back into my MC duties…until next time.

- Mike

*Postings are provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.*