Insider’s Guide to a SANS Conference – Day 1

Posted March 23, 2009
Filed under: External Training, Industry Events, Professional Development | Tags: SANS, SANS Phoenix, Security Leadership Essentials |

If you are reading this, it means that we both survived Day 1 of SANS Phoenix. 🙂

My favorite part of the day was helping everyone at the registration desk. It was fun meeting so many different people. There seemed to be a good mix of people returning to SANS as well as first time conference attendees.

Stephen Northcutt gave a short “Welcome to SANS” briefing this morning. I wasn’t able to attend as I was at the registration desk (see above).

Classes kicked off at 9AM and most ran until approx. 5:30-6:00PM. I know that we covered a TON of information in the MGMT 512 (Security Leadership Essentials for Managers) course. We talked about budgeting, project management, vulnerability management, and vendor selection processes.

Even though I am in a Management course, there was a great deal of technical information covered in Day 1. We discussed the TCP/IP header, ports/protocols, and packet analysis. At one point I felt like Neo in The Matrix – (paraphasing more than an exact quote…) “what do you see in the matrix? ones and zeros? I see a blonde. I see a brunette.”

Logistically, everything seemed to run smoothly. As always with big conference rooms and theaters, the temperature runs cold, so don’t forget to bring a sweater or light jacket with you tomorrow. 🙂

There was a SANS@night talk regarding Honeypots, which I missed. I am excited to see Rich Mogull’s SANS@night talk tomorrow night as he and I are connected on Twitter (@rmogull)

Speaking of Twitter, I “tweeted” about the conference at least a half dozen times today. You can search for the hashtag #SANS_PHX or follow me (@wifijedi) to see the updates.