Editor's Note: Taylor Lobb is a security community manager for developers within Adobe. He is one of the speakers for the upcoming Security Awareness Summit 2/3 Aug in Nashville, TN. Below he gives an overview on his upcoming talk on building a Hacker Village.
I am a manager of security and privacy engineering for Adobe. One of our core goals is to ensure we have the most secure developers in the world. One of my challenges is to ensure we are engaging developers with some of the most secure training possible. Adobe Tech Summit is a biennial gathering of product development teams from across all businesses and geographies. We get together to share best practices, information about the latest tools and techniques, and innovations to both inspire and educate. In 2015, I was tasked with creating a security-focused event to raise awareness and get people interested in security.
One of the best ways I've found to raise awareness about security vulnerabilities is to demonstrate the impact that successful exploitation can cause. The Hacker Village was designed to do just that. Participants see the impact because they are performing the hack themselves. In just 15 minutes or less, anyone can participate and witness how easy it is and what can happen when a target has been successfully hacked. As a result of this training, we saw an immediate increase in security interest. In this optional three-hour event, hundreds of participants completed training in multiple topics with dozens completing every topic we offered. Most participants walked away discussing what they learned and asking us how to learn more. . Come learn from my experience of successfully designing and running multiple Hacker Village events. Key takeaways from my talk include:
- How to get started with your own Hacker Village type event (equipment, expertise, etc)
- Tips for how to provide an experience that is quick, simple, engaging, and educational
- An example of a successful "booth"
- List of other high value topics to include in your event
Looking forward to seeing you at the Security Awareness Summit in Nashville 2/3 August!
Bio: Taylor Lobb is a Manager of Security and Privacy at Adobe where he leads a team of penetration testers and develops programs and training to raise security awareness. Previous to Adobe Taylor worked as information security manager for Clearwater Analytics where he created several security training and awareness programs.
