SANS Difference Makers Awards Ceremony

Key Takeaways

[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign I need some energy right now I want you to top your neighbor right now and tell him I'm ready to celebrate I'm ready to celebrate listen I am Stephen A Hart I'm the director of content marketing here at the Science Institute and it brings me joy to welcome each and every one of you to the 2022 Sans different sneaker awards ceremony yes we are partnering tonight with exonias and hacker Valley media and we really wanted to take the ceremony tonight and level it up and so we brought some amazing people to co-host with me I'd love to introduce Monisha Bush Chris Cochran and Ron eddings give them a Roundup tonight everyone good I'm gonna let you know right now I'm the one for the crowd interaction so I'm gonna reach out I'm gonna look at you eye to eye and I want you to match my energy is that okay all righty quick intro about me my name is Monisha Bush my friends and family and people out there they call me Mo I've been with Sam for about five years now I am the missions programs and Partnerships coordinator I am so very much honored to be here as one of your MC's tonight I do want to let you know that this whole thing would not be possible without our friends here at hacker Valley media I'm going to go ahead and let them introduce themselves ladies and gentlemen how's it going everybody following Mo for anything I don't think I don't feel very confident right now she's got a nothing but energy but no I'm Chris Cochran I'm one half of uh the hacker Valley uh founding team uh with Ron here I've been in cyber security pretty much my entire career but now I make content for us for our community and I'm also at exonius as the security advocate so making sure that everybody knows we are here and I'm Ron eddings the other half of hacker Valley media I spent the first half of my career as a cyber security practitioner Hands-On keyboard and I decided to spend the second half of my year celebrating the great people in this room and also the people watching live on YouTube and it's such an honor to be here with everybody to see everybody's face and to pull this all together yeah and mo it is hard to follow your energy like that's the same but we are in for a treat and I hope you all are ready to celebrate awesome [Music] so to start us off I wanted to share a video uh by John Pescatore telling you a little bit about what the difference Mako Awards is and the difference that it makes so watch this video in cyber security there's there's no shortage of rewards programs but I joined science 10 years ago and I'd known Alan power for many years so he and I immediately started to set about what could Sans do to reward the people out there weren't making the headlines the headlines are always about disasters in cyber security you know you never see plane landed safely at National Airport you only hear about the crashes but in cyber security that's definitely true so I wanted to do sort of two things reward people that were sort of displaying sans's core values sansa's core values are increasing excellence in Security operation doing security well not talking about security well so that was key and the second was to find those people who really weren't getting known they weren't winning ciso of the year or vendors weren't doubting what they did we really are trying to help the good guys beat the bad guys it's part of the what I call fighting the good fight and there's been cases out there where people on their own time have done so much to fight that good fight so it's not just their job paid them to do this it's on weekends and on vacation in their own initiative they volunteered or they started up things to help kids or teenagers or other people learn how to do security right or learn the difference between bad practice and good practice success and Social Security almost invariably means changing something and it means attacking hard things to change not easy things to change so to make a difference you have to be a change enabler you have to really put your career on the line to fight for the changes you know are needed and I think that's what differentiates the pro this Awards program quite a bit [Applause] Sims has invested in in community engagement and every year we look forward to recognizing our Global cyber communities Security Professionals are the next in line and truly they are the key to saving our world right uh and we must do everything that we can to believe in them but even more important to celebrate them here's how tonight is going to go this is our time it's our time to celebrate we don't celebrate ourselves enough so here's what's going to happen we have two winners for each category we have a committee winner and a community winner so the presenters are going to come up they're going to bring people up everyone if you are announces the winner you're going to come up on this side of the stage again this side of the stage you're going to come up it's your time tell us a little bit about why you won the award tell us a little bit about who you are tell us who you want to think and once you are done you get your award and you're going to step right off on this side right here feel free to go over there and take pictures at the standard repeat wall But be sure that after you're done doing that right outside these doors make a right we have videographers waiting for you to do your acceptance interview great so before we kick things off we thought it would be great to start off with a question what does it mean to make a difference when we were putting the award show together with the gracious host at the Sands Institute we saw hundreds of nominations come in and we were able to see and experience the appreciation and and the support that people have in our community we made it our mission to also try to make tonight a little different to celebrate everyone here to celebrate everyone that couldn't make it that's watching live and and kick things off and what it really means to be a Difference Maker is to show up every day and to see the work because we all know what's out there but to show up and give it your best every day imagine what the difference that you can make the impact and the lives that you can touch by just doing your best exactly we're going to get right to it we are who's ready to get this party started [Music] you guys can get louder than that I said who's ready to get the 2022 annual Difference Maker Awards started I'll take it I'll take it I'm living with this energy so we're gonna go ahead and kick it off with our very first award I am going to introduce uh someone who most of you should know in this room someone who I considered to be our fearless leader the very own CEO of sans Mr Eric basso coming to present the first category of Innovator of the year [Applause] how would you like to have to follow that I mean come on and where's John pesk there he is John this is not fair is it I mean you know we've been doing this for a while and this is like a whole nother level I mean holy cow what an event yeah yeah I do think Alan would be proud you know he's founded pouted Sands back in 1989 and really the heart of the Sands Institute is about solving problems in this community we always talk about the sort of the fourth pillar of sansa's mission this is it John I don't know how many years 10 11 12 years ago we started this 10 years ago and it was um frankly because there's an awful lot of people out there that do an awful lot of good work that don't make CSO of the year they're not recognized they're in the trenches they're fighting the good fight day in and day out and and Alan really wanted to and John they wanted to say hey let's give them a shout out but wow this is a whole different thing so before we get on to the actual event of this and I get to have the first envelope here there's some people now I've been to 10 weddings this year this does feel like a wedding vibe to me right 10 10. yeah and one was a daughter so any other people that married a daughter out now this year so it's a yeah it feels that way and I happen to know how hard it is to do that so where's where's Jennifer Santiago come on my takeaway from Mary and my daughter off is these things just don't magically happen there's a lot of work and Jen you can take a bow for the whole team because it's a it's a village that makes it happen and I know one thing for sure John and I are never handling it again ever so I I have the first award which is the innovator of the Year award so I guess I get to is there a drum roll the nominees for innovator of the Year Andy Grant erkang Zhang cat Traxler Darren Argyle foreign the innovator of the Year award Community selected is none other than Andy Grant [Applause] too tall wow um super honored to to win this um wasn't hoping to win the first one so I could see how it gets done but uh we'll we'll set the stage here now um this is an incredible honor um doing something that seems Innovative is risky and challenging like they were saying about the Difference Maker Awards and it's very rewarding reassuring to have the community support and recognition for this um so a little bit about me I'm the head of offensive security for Zoom Video Communications I joined back in July of 2020 and I started building out their offensive security program but what I wanted to do differently after 13 years of Consulting was to remove all sense of time and scope restrictions and limitations upon those security researchers so I worked tirelessly to make sure that there wasn't that pressure of oh we have a release coming up oh you need to look at just the new features anything and everything is in scope and it's really individually driven the team gets to pick their targets intuitively based on their experience and their skill sets and not dictated by a methodology or from top-down approaches as I like to say to to candidates who join the team is that I want you to find rabbit holes and I want you to explore them I talk about them as my truth finders really get to the truth of how the product works and then call out the security risks that are there what brought me here and and with the people I need to thank for for this award um obviously anything I do my family is a huge part of their support for the ups and the Downs the time that it takes to do something like this but looking specifically at this award and my career I want to start with my first job ever in cyber security with isec partners and the founders there and the group that started that program really set an incredibly High bar of expectations and quality none more important than Alex Stamos and David teal my first two managers in my career at Zoom doing something like this takes the support of leadership and so I want to call out my first CSO Jason Lee who is a huge supporter of this Innovative approach to offensive security and then our CEO um aparna Bawa who is really supportive and makes sure that my team has the freedom and resources we need to be successful and then lastly any Innovative idea is only an idea unless you have a team to execute on it so I really have to thank my team who has been phenomenal at making this happen I have an amazing group of about 20 security researchers who get to just look at those rabbit holes and explore them and find that impact and without those truth finders none of this would have been possible thank you all [Applause] foreign and of course we have we have one more um winner of the innovator of the year this time selected by the committee so I get to reopen the envelope and the committee winner for Innovative of the year is Darren Argyle so fantastic um I'm so surprised and honest to have been voted the winner and thanks to everybody the groceries for me it's a real surprise so thank you and look son sorry I can't be be there in person but unfortunately as I'm in the airport I'm about to uh born a flight to Australia where I'm having truly intolerance so much a very challenging year actually in Tennessee some of the welcome you can and some of the work that I had done over the last year I mean it's just been awarded obviously this award is recognition of that um you know being bloated the winner of international view award uh you know I'm guessing recognizing some of the work that we do in beside the leadership when back in 2018 we recognized that there was a gap for educating the southern recipients to the executives and we knew that we could make a difference with our communities it's been um a great honor to see this one a choice award and thank you very much hope you all have a great evening thank you foreign [Music] mentorship is super important especially to me honestly I wouldn't be here tonight without mentorship and honestly I wouldn't be who I am I have a couple mentors in the audience tonight uh namely one is my wife my beautiful wife sitting here in the front I wouldn't be the parent I am without her and honestly I have another one who also is uh sitting near my wife Dave Bittner he's one of my biggest mentors for Content uh being a professional showing up every day with your A game and so with that we have to celebrate mentors yes I remember my first Mentor I was uh really young I was 19 years old working in video and I worked at a video studio and one day this guy walks in and says hey do you want to learn more about tech I had this CCNA book right in front of me and I told him no I don't want to learn more about tech I'm a hacker I don't need to learn anything I thought I knew it all and this person his name is Marcus Carey he wrote many books uh tribe hackers and I'm very grateful that he took me under his wing but just like as Chris said you know there's other mentors that we have in our life my wife is also here Monica eddings she's also helping out with the slides as well thank you Monica and my sister as well my sister Shonda Seymour my brother-in-law uh Jordan sing more are also in attendance and we're so glad to have you all and now without further Ado we gotta keep talking about mentors we're going to be introducing this next category mentor of the year and to give the award out let's present Katie Nichols [Applause] thank you so much really appreciate your words and it's an honor to be here to present this next award um as they said mentorship's so important um we have a lot of challenges in cyber security but I would argue one of the biggest ones is bringing people into this field not just bringing them in it's keeping them here right supporting them once they're here and mentorship is such a key part of that and I've had so many mentors in so many ways but I think the special shout out to one of my Sans mentors Phil Hagin who was the first person who said yeah Phil is amazing he was he was the first person who said after I gave a talk at a Sans threat hunting Summit um he said hey have you ever thought about being a Sans instructor I said not me no way but right it's that encouragement now I am and I think my students if any of them are in the room I'd say I'm doing a pretty darn good job and thank you but I would not be here without my mentors and there are so many ways to Mentor right something formal every month day year maybe something informal just encouraging someone over Twitter or now Mastodon right a simple message a simple word of encouragement that's mentorship too and so I hope you'll be inspired by the nominees for this category the nominees for Mentor of the year Deidra Faya AJ young will lint MK Paul Moore Eric bellardo and it is my honor to present our first Community winner please join me in congratulating Deidra fayal [Applause] thank you the lights are so bright thank you so much this is an honor I am so elated to um receive this award mentor of the year um by day I do work for the people that we all love the Internal Revenue Service I am a senior I.T security specialist there where I am creating cyber security programs for our new hires that come into cyber security and I also volunteer for black girls in cyber I am the director of mentorships there but um but I love mentoring I love pouring into people I always say I have the margin the bandwidth to pour into people I love um when people come to me and talk to me I just love how they express their concerns and I just love that I um get that chance to pour into people and so it's just a part of my life and I am just related to get this award because it's just who I am so I just thank y'all so much thank my husband for being here and sending out all the text messages please vote for my wife thank you all thank you thank you thank you [Applause] thank you Deidra and we are so grateful for who you are and what you pour into others now it's time to present our next winner this is the committee winner and the winner is AJ yawn and here to accept on his behalf jarek Beason so join me in welcoming Jared [Applause] uh what do I say that picture is not me that is AJ um we just happen to be two Cali kids that love cyber security and try to give back and he wishes he could be here but he is wanting you all to know that he is honored mentoring is what's core to him and uh for him to be recognized by his peers means everything to him so thank you [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] what a perfect transitional song right seeing how we have so many shining stars in the building tonight you know Stephen speaking of shining stars we we kind of clean up well don't we [Applause] [Laughter] listen I I couldn't agree more it's been a while since I've probably worn pants sort of belt so now that our stars are aligned um we are going to present or ask our next presenter to come up and um introduce our next category for rising star of the Year Jared Gleason [Applause] it was no coincidence that I accepted on behalf of somebody so Rising Star you know when I think about it Rising Star I think about a Trailblazer I think about many of you that are in this room at one point in time you were rising stars and now we have practitioners that are excelling and doing great things the rising stars and the nominees that we have today are showing what can be done early in your career and they have unlimited potential and they are shining examples of what we want our industry to be moving forward and the nominees are the nominees for rising star of the year segun Ebenezer olamiyu Michaela Barnett Serena dipenti Dominique West is inette Kamal cat Traxler and without further ado foreign [Applause] star of the Year thank you cyber security communities in Nigeria for voting for me for your support and for going all out to make sure that I immense the winner as the rising star of the Year 2022 I want to appreciate every cyber security leader mentors confidence safely at the rest of other leaders who have contributed to my growth I want to appreciate them and I want to appreciate thanks for bringing such an award at this time this is a call to do more and I'm promising everyone watching that I am going to do much more even on the coming year to make sure that the cyber security ecosystem in Africa and Beyond continue to thrive thank you and God bless you thank you so this wasn't part of the spirit but how about a round of applause for Stan's International reach the person [Music] all right and the committee winner Dominique West hi everyone I wish I could be there in person to see everyone's beautiful faces um I want to take the time to thank Sans exonius and hacker Valley media for the opportunity to even be nominated for this award I want to thank anyone who took the time to think about little old me and write my name down for this award it's truly an honor to be recognized by my peers many of who I look up to I'm grateful not only to enjoy the work that I do in cyber security but grateful to be able to give back and make an impact to this community I um unfortunately can't remember where this thing comes from but it kind of stuck with me um in every sense and it's how I try to navigate the world with intention and that thing is whatever I decided to participate in I want to make sure that I've made whatever I join a little bit better than when I started so even if it's just one percent my goal is to make sure that I can do good it in this world and this award lets me know that that intention is being received so thank you [Applause] it's my song yeah okay let's keep it going surround I I have kind of a quick joke for you all right all right you ready for it I think so okay what type of blood does a proofreader have proofreader a proofreader what type of blood what type of blood I don't even know a a b no no type oh get it oh that's a that's a good one I see what you did you know what got them all night here all night let's talk about other types of types right we have books we have articles there's so much content out there today I think that's what makes cyber security so impactful this is one of the industries where you can go from being a college graduate a college student or working at a store and accelerate your career and make hundreds of thousands of dollars it's crazy incredible and we got to recognize the people that are also creating these this content articles and books and the next category is article or book of the year and to present the award we have Thiago Musa foreign good evening uh really pleased to be here if fairly new to sense been here for three months now and I'm actually delighted to present the article or book of the year because back when I started 2000 uh didn't have that many books in security so from the Frack magazine the Hacker's Choice last stage of delirium you know those old guys I really relied on them to start my career in cyber at that time and after that you know so many books that I've read and they were so important so I'm really delighted to to announce uh this this prize which I think is really important for the community and the nominees are the nominees for article or book of the year hacking apis by Corey ball the art of cyber warfare by John DiMaggio The Hitchhiker's Guide to dfir experiences from beginners and experts by Andrew Rathbun oh no hacked Again by zenet Kamal well with no further Ado uh and the award goes to for the community winner the art of cyber warfare by John DiMaggio [Applause] all right thanks man thanks everybody I uh I honestly uh am amazed to be here today you know I started this journey a long time ago you know honestly uh I finished high school with a 1.9 GPA so if there's anybody I could thank it would be my English teacher you know what I mean um you know I I it's been a very long journey uh there was somebody in my career that really made a difference that I've never I've never really acknowledged uh this was decades ago um he was Air Force intelligence analyst of the year and I had just gotten hired to uh to be a sigan analyst and I didn't know anything about cyber I didn't know anything about uh uh doing intelligence analysis and this guy taught me everything he knew and while he's moved on to a different career path and done a lot of different things his name's Tom Alexander and I just I wanted to just say thank you to him because the guy taught me so many things and those principles have led to where I am today and many of those are in my book that I wrote anyway it's a very humbling experience and I thank you very much and I also wanted to thank my family my girlfriend Jolly Marie uh and my dog Tyson because he was there to listen to me as I wrote this thing and and hashed everything out with him so thank you everyone [Applause] well uh in the article or book of the year uh for the committee winner goes to hacking apis by Corey Bell [Applause] unless well after seeing John win I was like that's it all the way from Oregon to DC good job John uh so hacking apis uh in case you didn't know apis represent 83 percent of all web traffic Akamai uh fun fact from a couple years ago so it's probably more now those are designed to deliver the goods the private data of everyone intentionally and when those are secure that's a great thing that helps the global economy run when it's insecure uh it's one of the first fastest and easiest ways to gain that data for an attacker so when I was volunteled to take on uh API security and penetration testing of apis for Moss atoms I dug into it and found out there are a whole lot of ways that these can be insecure and when I reached out to some of the leading pen testers out there they either didn't know how to test them or they had one guy on the team and so I saw the Gap and wanted to help fill that and spread the word so that we can close that Gap and prevent future data breaches of the API I want to recite the opening of my book which is the dedication and uh it goes this book is dedicated to my wife Kristen and our three daughters uh you're the light of my life and I love you uh your sorry uh your distractions were always a delight and you only cost the world a data breach or two [Laughter] [Applause] close I just wanted to thank uh the amazing team at no starch press I would not be here without them uh the opportunity to work with an amazing pen test team of Consultants at Moss Adams and um all the mentors that have helped me get here along the way thank you [Applause] [Music] hey Chris yes sir so Corey just talked about his wife Kristen yeah and he's dropping some lyrics man I know my beautiful wife Kristen is here right yeah I don't know she's gonna call me out later and be like you know you didn't have any of that for me so listen the next category is about podcasts what's a podcast I don't know so listen we're both podcasters um and we know how incredibly demanding it is to create content that people find both they enjoy and that they find valuable and we've got nothing but love for the commitment and the determination that podcasters put into producing inspiring content uh consistently over the long term everybody has a podcast these days but that's what makes it that much more special when someone's being recognized for the work that they're doing in podcasting I'm no slouching podcast I'm all right you know we got a few shows over here at hacker Valley but the person we have to present the award is a legend a pure Legend the man with the golden voice the host of the cyberwire podcast Dave Bittner Give It Up thank you well thank you thank you all uh for having me here tonight it's a real honor and I really appreciate Chris and Ron inviting me and everyone from Sands for having me be a part of this wonderful evening this is really magical um I always say that my favorite part of my job is that I get to talk to interesting single about interesting things smart people about interesting things and as podcasters we get to share that information with the people who are listening to our shows one of the things about being a podcaster as opposed to being someone doing Live Theater or doing a sport or anything else where you're doing your thing in front of other people is that you're doing this usually by yourself and they're at the end of the show there is no applause so you're not sure how you're doing and you go and you check those numbers and you see is anybody listening is anybody downloading my show and the way to make that happen is to hang in there and keep at it and build an audience and do great work there's a great uh quote from Steve Martin the great comedian they said what is the key to success and he said be so good that you can't be ignored and the people who are our nominees this evening definitely fall into that category let's hear the nominees the nominees for podcast of the year Cloud security podcast by ashes for John risky Biz by Patrick Gray infosec unplugged by Davin Jackson Cloud security reinvented by Andy Ellis blueprint by John Hubbard and the community winner of podcast of the Year Cloud security podcast Ashish Rajan [Applause] and especially moving and the award goes to thank you so much for this award even though we're really bumped we couldn't be there in person we just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's made this uh yeah this is probably the our fake version but the actual version whenever I see it uh thank you so much for the award uh we really appreciate everyone who's shared our podcast on social media and everywhere else and start calling it to a friend making us top 100 in the US UK Australia and recently France as well so this would not have been possible without you and I think we're just accepting this on behalf of you and we have a lot more people to thank yeah for sure and as she said this award is not for us it's for everyone who's made this possible so firstly all our amazing audience and listeners from the first few hundred to now many thousand people who listen to us promote us encourage us share their favorite episodes tell us what they'd like to hear all of you this award is for you to all our amazing guests who come on the podcast show and share all their knowledge and insights and you know you you make it all possible this award is for you to all our amazing sponsors and Partners this one is for you from our first sponsor which was axonius which just happens to be um sponsoring this amazing award as well to sneak who's made it possible for us to go full time and everyone in between who supported us thank you um you know it is a labor of love and a lot of things have to come together for this to be possible also to our amazing team who work around the clock to push out so many incredible things thank you so this award goes to all of you and we are literally just accepting it on your behalf I just want to say thank you to my co-hosts and my producer as well I think she definitely deserves a special athlete because I'm just a mouth in the face as everyone and the beard and the beard as everyone else who knows me would tell you but I think I just want to say thank you to her as well so thank you everyone for having us uh having Cloud security podcast which is our label of labor of love being nominated and mainly award as well thank you so much for this and hopefully we'll see you in person for the next one and before we wrap up just a big congratulations to all the nominees and finalists who you know we are just incredibly proud to be among such an amazing cohort of people also a special thank you to Sans hacker Valley media and exxonius for putting on this recognition of the good work that's being done in the community thank you so much for this honor thank you peace [Applause] before I announced the second winner here um as a daily podcast producer I would like to say that the Cyber wire is the first daily cyber security podcast but I cannot say that because that honor goes to Sans with the ISC stormcast podcast Johannes Ulrich yep he's been at this the longest great show all right our committee winner Cloud security reinvented Andy Ellis [Applause] truly thank you I am so grateful to receive this award especially my first year being a podcast host I've been a guest on so many podcasts and a lot of the people who I looked up to are either in this room or couldn't be here tonight either especially though Chris Ron you two have been a fantastic set of role models for how to put on quality Productions uh I've got a couple people I will thank and I'll I promise I'll be really quick especially to my producer Beverly Rose navalga this award is yours as much as it is mine to the the folks at BH photo who gave me all of the equipment or I really bought it but uh everything that has made the production quality is fantastic as it is but most especially I really want to thank every single one of my guests without you there is no podcast without your stories there is no podcast and so this award is really for all of you who've shared your stories with the rest of the community so thank you I am extremely grateful that cloud security reinvented has won this award for podcast of the year [Music] how can you not want to sing this song I mean honestly okay before I get on script I'm sorry everybody else is throwing shots out my father is in the building sitting in the front row and if we want to talk about respect honor being an ally in the community I get it all from him so I just want to thank him from coming all the way from Denver Colorado joining me today for the Denver's makers award thank you Dad I love you it's a family event it's a family family event so Dr Maya Angelou said it best in diversity there is Beauty in their strength that's a great quote and I love this quote because it reminds us that despite our differences that we're all still human and I feel like we've all felt something recently we've started working dispersed maybe working from home or doing something different with our lives and at first companies were a little scared about it they were concerned that this uh disbursement wasn't good it wasn't gonna create something special but I could tell you that has created diversity behind every Zoom screen as a person I feel like some of these people in the room I've spoken to I've seen your house I've met your family and that has brought us together in a very special way totally agreed uh I think this person that we're going to bring to the stage now is not only a woman that I look up to and that a lot of other black women in the community look up to but she is the very essence of black girl magic and she is going to come to the stage to present the category of diversity champion of the year please give a round of applause for Mrs Tanisha Martin [Applause] all good so many amazing people here I'm happy to see you um especially for this category which you guys know I am very passionate about I'm diversity champion of the year so here are the shears nominees the nominees for diversity champion of the Year Talia C Parker Lynn Dom Michaela Barnett Delicia hodu Eric bellardo all right some Heavy Hitters up there and luckily most of those people are my friends and I love them so I'm excited to be here all right the diversity champion of the year we have two the first the community winner my friend Talia C Parker [Music] [Applause] hello everyone thank you so much to science and the entire uh uh staff their uh hacker Valley and all the additional sponsors for putting together the difference makers Awards um it is such an honor to have been uh nominated for the diversity champion of the Year award among so many other amazing uh folks doing uh just life-changing things in this space and so it's truly an honor to be in the number and to even be considered uh and to be given this award so I just want to sincerely thank thank you all for for thinking of the work that is happening in this space and and deeming me um you know qualified and deserving of of such an award uh I'm truly truly enjoyed the work that I'm able to do through black girls in cyber um also known as the bgic found Innovation and the cyber community as a whole it's only possible because of our allies our sponsors the board volunteers family friends um you know these things don't happen alone so I'm truly grateful for those who have played a part in a role in making sure the work is done and we still have so much more to go um I'm so sorry I could not be here in person um maybe by the time you guys see this I may have a new baby in my arms um but I am so grateful for the opportunity to still um be able to say my things so thank you all again so much so if you guys are not keeping track uh and you should be black girls on Cyber is definitely uh number two award today so I'm very excited for them all right so next up our committee winner for diversity champion of the year my friends also missed Alicia hoto [Applause] wow I just want to say I didn't want to cry all right laughs I just want to say thank you especially to my mom over there in the audience to my family back home because because of them I'm able to be here maybe to be myself um I definitely want to say thank you to Eric Patterson Betsy Martin um to Dennis gandrette to my entire sayings HBCU team to my um science diversity Task Force Team to Eric battle to Sans to hacker uh hacker Valley media um and especially to those individuals out there I'm talking to you all they were watching this this is for you this is for individuals who have not been seen I see you I want you to know that I see you this award is for you we created Sans HBCU because we believe that individuals need to be seen they need to be heard they need to have the chance and the opportunity to succeed in a field that is so amazing cyber security because we need more individuals who are just as amazing as each and every one of you in this building tonight so I just want to thank you all again for this opportunity thank you to Sans thank you to everyone who voted for me thank you to my family back home I'm bringing this back to Georgia go dogs [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] I've been waiting to get on stage with this guy all night just for him to be able to do that she sang last time so I felt like I had to do something because I felt like I was like in the race of being a host I was in the back so I had to come forward a little bit you know when we hear the word influencer I mean influencer really gets a bad rap these days right when we hear the word influencer we think self-obsessed people that are snapping selfies they're selling juice cleanses they're they're starting podcasts wait a minute this sounds like me a little bit I'm just kidding um but a true influencer really knows that it's not about them it's about you totally and this next person coming to the stage I have to tell you um I'm very excited for the opportunity to introduce Mr Mac Max chefton whose leadership has personally influenced my professional Journey um as a thought leader he leads with tenacity passion sincerity so I would like to welcome Max to present the next category for influencer of the year [Music] thank you so the people earlier complain about having to follow Ron or Chris and I had to follow Delicia and then the dance walk up here and then most kind introduction of me so I think I've had it at the hardest all night but influence of the year I'm really it's an honor to present that award because influencer is not just about individual contribution but inspiring others to make positive change and create momentum for that to snowball and create more and more change and a positive impact on the cyber security community so without further Ado let's hear this year's nominees the nominees for influencer of the year Dave Kennedy John Hammond Camille Stewart Gloster AJ young Ashish Rajan all right and the first award winner the community winner is Dave Kennedy [Applause] wow I wasn't uh expecting that uh in fact I tried finagling out of Ed whether or not I won and uh he was like man I'm not going to tell you we've been friends for like 15 years and um so Ed nice job keeping it under secret um but really uh Sans I first want to give a shout out to Sans because uh Sans was instrumental in my career coming into this industry I got out of the military intelligence side of the house I was in the Marines and yes the Marines have a military intelligence group um but uh came out and uh did my GX certification and uh it was the first cert that I ever got in this industry and I remember you had to do a white paper and I wrote that white paper I was so nervous submitting it uh that I sat there every single day waiting for it to get graded and back then they didn't grade them very uh frequently um so I had to wait a while and finally got my passing exam which is one of the highlights I think uh remembering getting into this industry and I never thought I would be an influencer and when I think about what the name influencer means it's really everybody in this room today um you're a positive role model A positive impact on this industry uh contributing not only to the industry but the community and I think that's the most important piece that we have in this industry That's Unique is that we're all sharing our experiences our knowledge we're helping others we're uplifting others we're making it more diverse we're making it better for everybody and you know you heard from one of the previous speakers around trying to make the world a better place than you left it and that's been my motto ever since I I started this industry as just trying to help others coming into this industry and making people better I never thought I'd be speaking on national news in fact I have a fear of public speaking Believe It or Not uh and uh and I'll just tell you a really quick funny story about doing news media interviews uh recently I was uh doing an interview for uh national news organization and I was coming on talking about Iran cyber cyber capabilities which I feel like I can talk about um and they're also having an Iranian nuclear expert that was talking about the Iranian nuclear treaty that was going on and they got these segments mixed up and they introduced me in his Iranian nuclear expert on live national TV now I feel like I'm prepared for every situation and that was one of those things where I had no idea what to do and I started sweating in places that I didn't know was possible like under your nose you could sweat underneath your nose apparently your ears start to sweat and I was drenched in sweat within five seconds of them introducing me and I'm sitting there with complete tear on my face and you have two decisions one is you say hey I think you got the segment wrong on live national news and I'm in a studio and everything and the guy that you know I know the the studio person he's looking he's like what's going on I'm like I don't know what's going on um and and yeah that that option which would have been the right option or you panic and you try to BS your way as a Iranian nuclear experts which is what anybody would do right um and so I started bsing my way as an Iranian new class but I had nothing about they're like talking about some like Treaty of like 1983. I'm like yeah that's that treaty was amazing I don't know uh you should talk about the Cyber stuff too it's like oh no we have somebody coming out next about the Cyber stuff I'm like I'm the Cyber guy um anyways never thought I'd be in a position here with so many amazing folks here tonight as well as so many amazing people in this industry when I first came to this industry I you know I was really surprised about the knowledge and the ability to share information and try to uplift one another and that's something that we we can't lose I mean what Stan's doing with the military with colleges with training folks all over the world I mean it's really been an instrumental part of building this industry up as well as what everybody's doing the podcast information John out there you know every single day posting some amazing things that I watched all the time and learn new things from so you know everybody here is an influencer I want to thank you for being up here I'm just one of many and uh you all are really a positive amazing force in this industry let's get keep it going and make it even better so thank you all very much all right and next we'll present the committee Award winner for influence of the year really proud to present this uh this award goes to someone who's been influencing first advocacy and cyber security and now literally our national policy this award goes to Camille Stewart Gloucester [Applause] thank you oh my gosh first of all thank you all so much thank you to Sands to hacker Valley media to um all of the sponsors but can I just say Jen asked me to come here and present an award I was not expecting to get an award but I am so honored for two reasons one you all influenced me every day and so to be called an influencer is so weird I'm not one of the cool kids it's nice to feel like um to feel seen as delicious so eloquently put it and then two my goal is just to empower people in and through technology and I found complex challenges in cyber security and good people and a key to uh opening up our society through technology and so how could I enable that and make sure we all feel seen and are able to do good work in this space and have access and opportunity so it is my humble pleasure to do the work that I do every day at work but even more so to do the work that I do in the community and if I can in any small way show the world the work that you all do and make room for new voices in this space I will continue to do that so thank you oh and a big we are shouting out our spouses and our family so a big shout out to my husband because we got married and then I took this big job and he doesn't seen me that much and so he's here supporting me and to my family so thank you all foreign [Music] dang you know what I gotta say that cyber security has changed the world and not just the world because of all the technology but the world because of all the money think about all the money that's floating around out there we hear cyber security in the news all the time and it blows my mind if you were throwing a guess for what was the first half of the year in 2022 when it comes to mergers and Acquisitions what was that total volume in billions I'm not going to put you on the spot but someone else throw out a number in billions how much do you think the first half was they went over here too smile was that 800 billion not quite that much 103 billion dollars in just the first half of the year and it's not all about the money though but when you look at what creates jobs and jobs and security for us is really the technology and the people behind it and the people behind it aren't just selling it they're also giving it a way to help others and that's what we have open source for so to present the next award uh please welcome Chris Cochran and uh is it down in Jackson yeah Devin Jackson while uh Devin's making his way up here uh I wanted to say a personal thank you uh to exonius honestly because for a lot of reasons I wouldn't be here tonight without them uh they truly believe in the community they believe in giving back I'm sure a lot of you seen the the giving back stuff they've been doing lately uh so they really care about this community and really go above and beyond to do that I had to bring my brother from another mother up here to help give the open source award uh to everyone out there because when you see a problem sometimes you have to create the solution it's not always there for you to reach and grab for sometimes you have to be creative Innovative and do your own thing it is my honor to present this year's open source tool creator of the work of the Year Awards here are your nominees the nominees for open source tool creator arctic wolf labs power hunt Lee let's give it a hand for our nominees all right and the community winner award goes to Arctic Wolf labs and that award is being accepted by Daniel Thanos yep congratulations great job wow I didn't I didn't expect this it's my wife told me I should have prepared a speech but now I'm kind of regretting that I didn't well I just want to I want to thank uh first of all I want to thank the good Lord for allowing me to be blessed and to work in a great organization um and able to serve a great team um I want to thank the security Community I want to thank all of you um for everything that you do each day um the reason why we won the award we had developed a series of scripts or tools to handle the log 4J vulnerability the thing that cost many of us in this room are our weekend and our holiday when it broke um and so uh what we saw um as early uh vulnerability scanning tools were being released they weren't actually picking up the vulnerability and that's because you had to actually do a deep scan of the code and actually analyze and see if the required classes were there and the signatures were there and uh we were just seeing a lot of vendors saying they weren't vulnerable and the tool was discovering actually they were and because this Library kind of goes everywhere uh the the team and I immediately recognized that there was work we had to do to protect our customer base and then protect the community at Large and so we got we got to it we were in the response for our customers we got the tool developed in a couple of days and got it released the next day and uh you know we just got a lot of thanks from a lot of people in the community as they were beginning to use it and that's what it's all about um it's about doing good and doing it exceedingly well and uh the folks that I want to thank for this obviously my team in Arctic Wolf Labs um for all the work they put into this the Arctic Wolf organization not a broader organization itself all of our security operations folks uh which sacrificed a lot of time to make sure all of our customers were protected um I want to thank my family for allowing me to live my passion I work crazy hours and they put up with me and I have crazy ideas and they still put up with me um I want to thank my wife especially Sal because without her I'd be living in a van by the river and uh and that's and that's everything thank you so much you guys be sure to do your uh [Applause] so real quick um again congratulations uh you saved a lot of holidays for us last year and here's to hoping we don't have to worry about that again this year [Applause] and the committee winner it goes to leap and that is being accepted by Alexis brignoni [Applause] congratulations if you were wondering what leap means doesn't mean that I'm going to be jumping here leap means logs events properties protobuf parsers and this is a project that I started around 2018 2019 because I saw a need for cost uh accessible tools free um that are uh transparent open source that allows uh folks in the community to be able to deal with data sets that are unknown right um especially from mobile devices and then we branched out and um this project even though I started that base code the community embraced it folks from around the world starting to put in their ideas and their Research into the tool I want to mention a few of the folks that really contributed in this project it's over 25 people but I'm going to mention a few I want to mention yogesh kathry his uh Mentor as well he really influenced the way I see code and I see artifacts and how they are relevant to our investigation some work Alex casenes up in the UK for CCL solutions group another Mentor a person I look up to uh Geraldine Bly uh my uh sister for another mother I guess I could also say she does great research and I know I know she's watching Jessica Hyde also one of the uh she really pushed and helped me pull out the the idea together starting the project Kevin Pagano CTF master and also those code for us Dr Joshua James and Josh Hickman as his excellent test data that we couldn't do work without it again it's a community project and together we can definitely uh make make things work thank you so much congratulations uh be sure to do your interview right here [Music] mine I ain't never getting oh All I Do Is Win do you all feel that when you hear that song I feel it and you know all we can do is win I'm a very competitive person and being in this field allows me to be competitive because we have adversaries we have to constantly play this game of chess with them but they cheat and we still have to win and you know we gotta also celebrate the people that have done it individually but also the teams out there that are constantly winning in the space we're obsessed with performance in hacker Valley we're always trying to get that much better but when you look at individuals or even look at a team Mastery is a journey it's not a destination you don't get great and all of a sudden you can just like lay back and live off your your past you have to continue to innovate improve and get better and for that we are going to be uh bringing up to the stage someone's present team and practitioner of the year let's do the notes line Ishmael Valenzuela [Applause] this was all rehearsed right so you know uh but uh no it's so amazing to be with uh all of you today and it's hard not to be inspired you know with so many inspiring people around us tonight and when thinking about you know practitioners of the year the work practitioner is so powerful right it's it represents what Sans is about and it's not um I couldn't help by by going down memory lane thinking about my first Sans event that was a Brussels 2006 and I remember going there what struck me the most it wasn't that I was well which was a lot I was getting instruction from the best top World practitioners right in the industry but also the fact that I was sitting around practitioners people that were doing similar things that I was doing they were you know trying their best day in day out to do their job and that we could learn from each other not just from the instructor but from being with all that amazing people and I have to say that this is what I love the most about coming to science events even 16 years later whether online or here in person and I go to quite a lot every year uh we get to to to hang out with practitioners we get to learn from each other and that's what I'm so uh excited and so on or to be introducing the next nominees the nominees for team or practitioner of the year Tony Benson Drago's threat intelligence team Navy cyber defense operations team Caroline Wong and the community winner for the team or practitioner of the year is for Tony Benson [Applause] [Music] I'm glad he told me to be careful about the grooves look I traded all my heels in during covet for Jordans and Chucks so I had to go buy some shoes today but um um thank you to Sans thank you to uh everyone who voted for me um of course I have to thank God first just for the breath every day to be able to influence and hopefully just do something better and be better than I was the day before that's my that's my goal that I strive for each day um of course I gotta thank my mommy I'm sure I'm sure she's watching if she was able to click on the YouTube link um um I just love you for your support and I thank you for that um I thank you for supporting me even when you don't agree with me so I do appreciate that I thank you to my partner my favorite co-worker now because I work from home most of the time so I get all the venting and everything so I thank you for being here with me this evening um and I have to thank my team because really it's just my team all I do is try to be top cover and make sure they have what they need to be successful so I thank them because I'm pretty sure they were the ones who nominated me so I am grateful to my team and um really for the Difference Maker award and just in general because we're all difference makers um every single person in this room every single person watching um really we're making a difference just by showing up every day and hopefully we're able to show up as our authentic selves don't worry I'm going back to my hoodies and my um my dunk clothes soon um but uh I am so happy uh to be here I'm happy to get this award um and I really do this for the sydneys the gabbies the alleys which are my God children every day because I want them to be able to grow up in a space where they're able to see themselves where they're able to believe in whatever they want to do and I want us to all just remember that uh love yourself love each other love will bring us together in this world thank you everyone [Applause] and the committee winner for the team or practitioner of the year is for the Navy cyber defense operations team being accepted by Christina Hicks all right thank you so much to Sans for the honor of this award um as you know it is no small feat to be transformative in a large bureaucratic organization especially one like the military um so I am deeply appreciative of you recognizing our team for their Herculean efforts to do just that they have modernized and transformed how we execute cyber security for the United States Navy now I'm the Commanding Officer says you know the boss doesn't actually do all the hard work so I want to thank and recognize Commander Brandon Campbell please stand up he's our director of operations yeah so he is an exceptionally talented cyber security professional the driving force behind our team and their Innovations and luckily for y'all he is retiring after 20 years of service in just a few months anyone would be lucky to have him on your team you can find him on LinkedIn Brenda Campbell thank you but it is truly a labor of love for us to serve our great nation to defend and protect those who are out there defending and protecting our way of life so I will just leave you with this thought from Margaret Mead never doubt that a small committed group of citizens can change the world indeed they're the only ones who ever have thank you again for this [Applause] [Music] tonight has been pretty amazing hasn't it you guys enjoying yourselves so listen this next category for research over the years one of the biggest Awards of the night which is probably why I wasn't on it we are thrilled to celebrate the extraordinary research that's taking place in our industry and to present our next award please welcome my co-host munish [Applause] thank you Stephen they're having us the host the presenter hey Matthew all right it is my honor to present this year's researcher of the Year Awards your finalists for this year are the nominees for researcher of the Year Sharon brzezinov Eugene milou awesome I'm gonna go ahead and give the community winner first and it is Sharon brisnav thank you wow thank you everyone uh thank you for choosing me as the researcher of the year in the researcher category thank you very much to the organizers and thank you to everyone who upvoted for me um also thank you for clarity the company I work for uh we've done some amazing research this year we did some research on different uh scad eventors and also on iot vendors and I think overall our interaction with the various vendors was very very successful they were all very appreciative and they really weren't wanted to work with us so I would like to thank everyone and I hope to see you next year Max will present the committee winner and the award goes to Mr Eugene nilu [Applause] hey everyone my name is Eugene nilo I am a security researcher CTO and co-founder at adversa the leading research driven startup for a Boston security eye we are on a mission to increase trust and EA systems by exposing air vulnerabilities and I'm very happy to become a researcher of the Year recognized by Sans experts and community in a few years most tech companies will become AI companies and this shift is similar to how years ago many traditional businesses had to go online just to stay relevant the progress of AI isn't deniable right now but the problem is that AI is vulnerable by Design you can imagine that the security level of EA systems is similar to security of software in 90s which is terrifying I hope that this Awards will put the security of AI on the map for many of you security people let's protect one of the core Technologies of the future together thank you [Applause] [Music] all right It's the final countdown final count yes Final Countdown alrighty we actually have one award left one award left and we got to do it justice because this is big this is really the biggest award that you can get it is the biggest award because a life is a long time this is the Lifetime Achievement Award and so you know if you win this you've really done something with your life and your career to present this award I am pleased please join me in welcoming John Pescatore thank you when did Bill Clinton first run for president was like 92 four years before that he gave a speech at the Democratic Convention that went on for 45 minutes and then he said in conclusion and the crowd leaped up and went yay so since I'm the last thing behind you and getting to those desserts I'll go pretty quickly but I did want to say it's great to see these Awards grow to this and still keep the essence of the Sans brand and I want to say a few words about Alan pallor because he's the man who created the Sans brand Sans brand is based on really skilled Superstar practitioners who can teach teaching others to be really skilled practitioners and growing from there and it's about a couple other things there's a quote I think it's misattributed to uh what's that guy who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia C.S Lewis but I think it really came from somebody else and it says Integrity is what you do when you don't know what anybody else is watching in our field they give us the keys to the kingdom and then ask Our advice they trust us it's easy to make money in this field right you see the dollars we can all make money in this field but being able to deliver on that trust and help people improve their business improve their lives that was a core value and so when we started looking at difference makers we were looking for that type of thing and then you guys certainly showed us that that exists out there second thing or final thing before we do the introduction the award winner um to me the coolest thing is seeing what a meritocracy we're in when we first started these Awards I think it was the second year somebody in Sands management said maybe we should focus on women or minorities or something we said no let's focus on people making a difference and they'll Bubble Up and I think we've seen that tonight these are Community nominations and you can you can see the diversity and the inclusiveness we had here and that's I'm really if I could point to one thing that's the coolest thing I wish Alan could have seen that this year that's the coolest thing so with that we're going to talk about a Lifetime Achievement Award that doesn't mean it's going to be a 90 year old person that comes out probably but let's say it could be the nominees for Lifetime Achievement Award Leslie Carhartt Robert M Lee Sunil you Kim zetter Andy Ellis okay the community winner whoops the community winner Leslie Carhart [Applause] wow a lifetime I'm 40 years old what do I do now what do I do for the other 50 years 100 years I'm gonna live forever um thank you everybody I'm really humbled to be here I did not prepare a speech because of these amazing people dominated in this category so there's so many people to think and I've never understood what it was like to be on these award shows and actually have to thank all the people first of all I'd like to thank my father who has supported me endlessly in being a giant nerd and not getting in fights with me over dirty stuff I'd like to thank all of the people at dragos including robly who's also nominated today for giving me the best employment of my life and giving me an opportunity to help people thank you to my colleagues in the United States Air Force from which I retired last year to the 434th thank you very much to all of you you've changed my life you challenged me in ways I never thought possible and thank you to my martial arts Community my teachers and my students who also challenge me in very interesting ways every single day I'm very grateful for all of you and I'm grateful for the community you know this is this is really daunting for me because I look at myself and I'm a pretty good incident responder I'm pretty good at my job I'm pretty good at forensics but I'm not the best the best is probably sitting out there in the audience today oh my God there's some phenomenal people out there I'm pretty good am I the best people manager team manager out there I'm pretty good I'm not the best I'm sure the best is also sitting out there today what I found in nishas is a community leader and a community activist and I didn't realize there was a need from that when I started joining social media and blogging and speaking and doing volunteer work a decade ago decade and a half ago and it turns out there is in cyber security we have a lot of challenges as a community we have challenges in diversity we have challenges and pipelines we have challenges in ethics and in doing the right thing with technology and with cyber security it's it's really hard and sometimes it's hard to speak up and do the right thing when we're facing political challenges and ethical challenges and legal challenges and all the things that make our job really really hard because it's the people that are the hard part not the technology and what I found a place in is being a community leader and that's going to be very very scary but there's nothing special about me I'm just a person and I'm really glad to be here and really glad to know all of you some of my great friends are in the audience right now thank you all of you I challenge you all to be Community leaders like me step up it doesn't take a superhuman I'm not a superhuman I don't have an IQ of 200. I'm just some look you know I'm just some person who's out there trying to do the right thing and speak up for the people who can't speak up for themselves and we all need to try to do that more now more than ever in our society we're facing more and more challenges with AI and all the things the other speakers have brought up so thank you all thank you for having me I am tremendously honored and humbled thank you foreign [Applause] wow so first um to God be the glory because I am undeserving of this award um as actually just by the fact that I didn't get voted on by the community by the community but you know what's funny is that I asked my wife hey did you vote for me and she said no I didn't I I wasn't I wasn't aware that I could vote so the funny thing is none of my family afford it for me so um but at the same time I feel completely undeserving of the war because as Leslie mentioned there are some amazing people that I was up against I mean Rob Lee was on there and he didn't even make the first first level cut which I thought was like are you kidding me so uh I am I I am I didn't really even prepare anything because I didn't think I had I was going to be up here so what a privilege and what an honor and I really uh thank the committee I do thankfully thank the people who actually did vote for me online um maybe next year you can vote more or something like that um but anyway uh thanks to Sans honestly you know this lifetime achievement is not something that one does on their own we stand on the shoulders of giants and Sans has so many Giants there are people who I learn directly from John over here or Ed or I mean there's a lot of instructors and Sans who are here that I learned from and that I was able to stand on their shoulders I hope that I can offer that as well for my children who I think my wife who's in the audience thank you very much for um actually my I honestly my lifetime achievement is just marrying my beautiful bride what um I want to privilege it is for me to be able to have uh such a wonderful wife who also had the patience to uh edit my book my horribly written book and make it into a wonderful um contribution to the society um my children of course who uh who lived with the maps and dad while I was I guess doing these lifetime achievements but you know what's funny is that my uh my two sons I have four kids my two older Sons are I guess following in my footsteps because one of them is working for the detection engineering team on Salesforce and the other one is going to join the security team at Slack which got acquired by Salesforce so I have two kids working for security at Salesforce now my two girls they have no interest in security but who knows uh one day hopefully they'll join the workforce here as well um other folks I would like to thank uh Jupiter one uh who actually competes with axonia so I will also thank axonius and Sans of course and and my good friends Ron and um and Chris at hacker Valley Studio actually more broadly uh I want to thank the Tinkers you know who you are right and they're a tremendous support to uh to me and to the community at large um I'm sure I'm forgetting people but uh I just I again I I'm so tremendously happy for uh to be able to receive this award and thank you very much [Applause] Just One Last Thing Before I turn it back to our host for the final one ask I make every year when we do this is that you pass it on that you keep an eye out for other difference makers and next year you nominate them and that you inspire some others and encourage some others to be difference makers in cyber security as well thanks and let me turn it back to our hosts foreign [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Laughter] give it a round of applause for everyone here tonight first we have to say thank you to Sands everybody has Sands everyone at exonius the team at hacker Valley thank the nominees thank the people that submitted the nominees and honestly thank you for spending the night with us thank you for everyone that's watching at home they couldn't be here tonight thank you so much keep your schedules open we will be bringing the dmas back live and in action for 2023. so again I also would like to thank you guys for allowing me to be one of your hosts this evening and you guys have a wonderful night and one last thing I'm gonna go off script because why not listen science is about our people and I I appreciate my people we have some people in the back that I just want you guys okay or AV team who made this happen right Jenkins Jessica yeah all everyone and I'm not gonna have you guys sing but one of my guys is here tonight on his 28th birthday yeah streaming this out first I want you guys to say happy birthday Brett happy birthday [Applause] thank you guys thank you so very much have a great night have a great night guys right foreign [Music]