Toronto's 2015 SecTor Conference.

I feel utterly privileged to have attended this years SecTor Conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Center a few weeks ago now.

For those of you unaware of what Sector is, it is Toronto's pre-eminent Information Security Conference.  Anybody and everybody associated with IT Security is here. SecTor is not only an educational event, but a social one as well.  It is one of the annual events where Security Professionals congregate from around the province and indeed across the country. 


The schedule is hectic, with multiple tracks of discussion panels suited to a variety of current topics. 
Although the main conference is two days in length, there is a third day just before the conference for those who wish to participate in various Infosec educational courses. 


This years daily Infosec sessions can be found here: http://www.sector.ca/Program/Sessions

Over the two days, there were four Keynotes:

• Big Data Needs Big Privacy ... Enter Privacy by Design - Dr. Ann Cavoukian
• Globalization of Cybercrime - Jason Brown
• IT Security Operations: Successful Transformation - Kristin Lovejoy
• Maturing InfoSec: Lessons from Aviation on Information Sharing - Trey Ford 

All four of these speakers bring with them a wealth of experience and skill.  I was riveted to my seat the entire time.  

As for the actual Infosec discussions themselves, they were very wisely organized into a Technology track, a Management track, a Security Fundamentals track, and a Sponsor track.  Again, see http://www.sector.ca/Program/Sessions  for a drill down on the actual discussion topics for each. 

I wish I could tell you I saw them all, I *had* planned on jumping between several presentations, but each one I attended had me fully engaged. I can honestly say that SecTor went out of it's way to select exceptional topics and speakers for this event.

Part of the problem with committing to a track as an attendee is that the CSO Summit is co-hosted alongside SecTor!  The CSO Summit is co-sponsored by KPMG, and this year featured discussions by Kris Lovejoy, the former Global CISO if IBM, and Tim Rains, Chief Security Advisor, Microsoft.

The Expo Hall itself was huge, with a broad cross section of Infosec vendors from Educational Institutions, Compliance and Governance bodies, to Appliance and Software Vendors.  Securesense and  Fortinet showed off their "Forti-Express" a state-of-the-art rolling Briefing and Demo center. 

 Two things that grabbed my attention among all of the commotion in the Expo Hall were the "Lockpick Village" and the "Internet of Things Hack Lab".

The Lockpick Village has been a mainstay of SecTor for the past several years now. It's a free, full participation, workshop in using the standard tools of the trade to learn how to pick physical locks! Attendee times are recorded, with a prise at the end for the quickest time. The people sitting at these seats are among the happiest at the entire event. 

 

This year Tripwire introduced the Internet of Things Hack Lab. Employees from Tripwire, as well as one of their previous hackathon winners were onsite to  guide attendees into the world of IoT hacking. They brought samples of common IoT devices with them, and were willing to educate anyone who wanted to sit for a while and get an understanding of the security (or specifically lack thereof) of the Internet of Things.

SecTor was an overall success in my books.  They brought the right people to discuss relevant topics, the vendor space was very well represented, and the social quality was outstanding.  Thank you SecTor for once again putting on a remarkable event.