Hi Ho
Hi Ho
It's off to Infosec we go !

It’s InfosecEU 2019 everyone !

Yes, it is that time of year when we all have a lovely time in London at Infosecurity Europe. Meeting old friends, meeting new friends, eating strange food, finding strange products, drinking too much alcohol, not drinking enough water, forgetting which is your hotel, partying at a different hotel.

As with every year, Olympia London will be crammed with vendors plying their tools, blinky cyber LED’s and magic snake oils to save you from a plethora of bad entities. Even just stepping outside of Olympia to one of the many pubs and hotels surrounding, you won’t be able to escape the skinny suits, brown shoes and immaculately slick back hair of the sales people…

But … if you think this is some rant about Infosecurity Europe, you will be mistaken! The event has it’s place in the calendar. It is a fab thing and we should have it indeed. It is a one-stop conference for everything you need to know about the industry, who are the major players, who are on the up and who are conspicuously absent!

The rant-y bit

No, this rant is much more to the beloved marketeers who have seen the buzzwords of the year and oh yes, you are not going to get away with it this year either!!

Welcome to Infosecurity 2019 Cyber Bingo … you can print out your card or you can play from the website … link here:

If you are looking for the 2018 list it is here :

So what about 2019? Well, I expect to see this happy collection around the stands … WARNING … this gets a lot sarcastic and snarky.

• Cyber-pocalype
  • or come other crazy phrase that concatenates cyber and some phrase meant to meant the end of the world!
• GDPR
  • Oh no … you are not getting away with it that easy people. GDPR is here to stay, and for those playing the drinking game, that’s 2 more shots you have to drink!
• Threat Intelligence
  • This isn’t good Threat Intel, this is aimed at those vendors who have simply forgotten what Threat intel is and isn’t. Here’s to you and your strange artefacts you found somewhere and think someone might give you money for them.
• Artificial Intelligence
  • Triggered … no it isn’t AI. It isn’t even ML, it’s not even code. It’s just marketing words.
• Next Gen
  • Did you know that Next Gen was actually a Microsoft accreditation once? and if your product is so ‘Next Gen’ then why is it still signature based and not even able to spot the easy stuff.
• Machine Learning
  • Triggered 2.0. At least you didn’t call it AI !!
• Unleash
  • Unleash the dogs of cyber-war !! Unleash the power !! Unleash the log files more like.
• Humans are the weakest link
  • Oh are they? even your CEO .. I dare you say that to their face!
• Insider Threat
  • Are they still on the inside … after all these years you would have hoped we would have caught them by now with the blinky cyber LEDs.
• Phishing
  • and all other variants of phish. And please … if it’s an icon of a fish on a hook then have a word with yourself … seriously !!
• Smart Cities
  • and the not-so-smart developers of them and the even weaker link of the humans. There is nothing smart about tarmac, concrete and bricks. Believe me, the wall I am headbutting right now after reading your marketing material is no more smarter than your product
• Quantum
  • of Solace? Leap? If you have this word on your stand, there had better be a time machine also !
• Crypto
  • Oh go on … you reckon you can do what with your LEDs? Oh really?
• Automation
  • Oh no … rise of the robots ! So by automation you mean you have a rinse and repeat script … Well try this one Line 20 … Goto 10.
• Ransomware
  • I’m sorry, this is something new you can do? You can prevent Ransomware too? Detect it even? Oh wait … did you invent this after the NHS or were you hoping no-one noticed it didn’t work then either
• Malware
  • See Ransomware above. Your signature based detection doesn’t work. End of.
• Incident Response
  • Your software won’t help. What we need is a PR department that speaks cyber and can help a CEO not die on our TV screens whilst stopping us getting fined to the hilt …. please.
• Breach Detection
  • Here’s some breach detection for you … Troy Hunt told me before you did !
• IoT Security
  • Your fancy system own;t protect me from a crappy piece of $1 Chinese tech riddled with vulnerabilities that Shodan nearly broke down over trying to index the possible ways you can breach me!
• Cloud Security
  • It’s called an umbrella.
• Nation State
  • Oh get off the gravy train people. If you’re start-up can really defend me from the billion dollar cyber army of a country then please pass me more of what you’re drinking !
• China
  • Just .. no .. and if you have written this, a) your attribution is wack and b) it’s racist!
• Huawei
  • Show me the proof goddam it. Stop buying into US political rhetoric and show me the proof.
• At least one picture of a hoodie
  • be original and at least have a pink hoodie and a blue screen ! You do know that most cyber-criminals don’t wear hoodies right?
• A picture of a padlock
  • Judging from most of the lock picking villages I’ve seen … your icon should not be representing your company !!
• We work with “GCHQ / NCSC”
  • You do know that we can verify that claim? You also know that if you say accredited by/ partnered with etc … we will be checking !
• Blockchain
  • I want to know if the blockchain forensics people will be here in 2019 … I have a few questions to ask you like … whuh?

So there you have it … I hope you score well on your bingo card. Come and find me, DM me on Twitter etc. I’ll be seeing you there!

[gravityform id=”1″ title=”false” description=”false”]