Welcome by BSides Lancashire

hello everybody Welcome to the first ever b-sides Lancashire um there are no fire drills planned so if an alarm goes off calmly leave that way and head for Greg's because Greg solves everything I need to tell you anyone with a red lanyard cannot be photographed so you can take photographs but not of anyone with a red lanyard so please be respectful of clearances and things um anybody practicing Ramadan we do have prayer rooms if you find somebody with a red t-shirt on they can help you and I think that is me good morning everybody um everybody says the uh best ideas come over a beer uh and now we're all here so uh Mike and I were starting to put one day and thought we need something in the Northwest which represents the cyber community here so today we're all going to be about inclusivity diversity entry to Market we're going to make sure that everybody has fun we're going to make sure there's a lot of things going on as well so make sure you get involved in all the activities and I don't think I've got anything on my mic yeah okay um obviously a big part of using the careers Village is crib your career management Career Development Career entry and so we've got some great stuff in there just to help people about um and we're gonna we've got a very special guest two special guests today but we've got a very special guest on video because he couldn't be here today so we're gonna play that he's going to tell you a bit more what's going on today and kind of set the scene a little bit and we've got cyber host party later on we'll cover if you want to know anything about that thank someone in I'm very happy single sponsor we'll definitely cover that all the um so it's Bae pen test Partners attitude Lancaster University extra beam Honeypot digital digital x-ray caps lock the beer Farmers the Kimball Court cyber house party the secops group and finally cyber resilience oh that's security company sorry realizer I'll say again that security company so now it's Rick he's gonna come on the live feed [Applause] [Music] thank you good morning everybody and welcome to the inaugural b-sides Lancashire um first of all I have to say I apologize profusely that I can't be with you this morning I was due to come and be one of the speakers today but as you can see my office is currently a mountain of boxes because I'm in the middle of moving house um and it's not really a great time for me to get away anywhere if I want to maintain my existence so next year I'll be there next year absolutely promise um nevertheless you have an absolutely um Stellar lineup today I'm sure you've all seen the agenda by now you have so much to look forward to uh you have thunder talks on the main stage um including Keynotes from Holly Grace Williams and from Chris Roberts and as far as I understand it you have two very secret guests so Secret in fact that I have no idea who they are either but knowing the organizers I'm sure it will be well worth sticking around to find out who that might be um but of course the main stage isn't the only thing going on uh at this first b-sized Lankershim um you have all the lightning talks that are going on on the in the Innovation Village um and you have a whole bunch of really cool startups to go and check out uh from a technology perspective from a careers perspective maybe certainly from a interest in the future perspective and and where cyber security is headed um certainly as far as my career's gone the most interesting part of it for me has always been that forward-looking part it's great to be solving the problems of today but one of the things that's always been interesting and and have been a passion for me has been trying to stay ahead of the curve it's it's what's really kept me working with vendors um more so than uh I try to stint at an SI a systems integrator for a while um and I missed very much being in vendoland because we have the luxury of being able to get deeply immersed in in the research that we do and research that we publish um trying to understand not only what our threat actors doing today and how are they doing it but how is technology changing how is security practice how are business operations changing and what does that mean for the attacker what does that mean for the Cyber criminal going forwards what will be the threat vectors of Tomorrow what will be uh the motivations the methodologies of tomorrow and to try and build the solutions today to solve the problem so tomorrow before they're even real um and that's been something that's really driven me throughout my career so going and checking out the startups is something I would you know really sincerely advice because that's where the action is in those people solving new problems or solving old problems in new ways so yeah Innovation Village is definitely something you need to check out in fact I don't know how you're going to manage your time because you've got these things going on at the same time you've got main stage you've got Innovation Village and you've got careers Village all three tracks happening simultaneously so you're really going to have to study that agenda and plan your time wisely in the careers Village you're going to have talks from caps lock you're going to have CV reviews if that's going to be a benefit to you you've also got an AMA ask me anything career session uh with Chris Roberts which is definitely an opportunity not to pass up so probably that's going to be the case again in the queue um there's another one with the recruiters as well so if you want to see what hiring looks like what hiring looks like from that side of Defense uh and get a bit of insight from the recruiters of what are they looking for what are employers looking for and how can you stand out from the crowd um that again that's going to be fantastically helpful round tables for uh management positions roundtables for technical careers um and then finally um there is not one but actually two Hands-On hacking sessions one with Holly Grace and one which I think is a flight simulator one uh with Ken Monroe um do them both I mean don't miss the opportunity those will both be absolutely worth attending I imagine both of those rooms will be completely packed um I also want to take some time to mention right now a project I was involved in from the outset which is respected security um encourage you to check out the respect and security website uh to look at the pledge to consider your own actions Behavior or maybe even inactions in some cases when it comes to treating your colleagues and peers within this industry with the respect that we all deserve the ethos behind respective security which is something that I'm a co-founder of is to have organizations not individuals but organizations sign up and take a pledge that a they will attempt to create a workspace that doesn't tolerate disrespect or harassment in any form and that they will have policies and procedures aimed at creating that kind of workplace that they will take complaints seriously and that they will deal with them appropriately and fairly and critically that they will also accept complaints from outside of the organization so say for example at an event like besides Lancashire although I'm sure it will never happen there today um somebody does harass another attendee that victim is totally at Liberty and confident in the fact that they can go to the employer of the person that harassed them if that employer is signed up to respect insecurity that they will have published a methodology for filing a complaint that they will have a published procedure for dealing with that complaint and that they will treat it with the seriousness it deserves we want to create not just a workplace but an industry where we are all aware and we all sign up to the fact that harassment intolerance discrimination will simply not be tolerated any longer it's not that we have a particular problem within our industry but it's that this is our industry and this is the industry that we can directly affect and do something about um so respects and security is definitely uh a key sponsor for big size Lancashire and I'm pretty sure that the event has already signed up to um The Pledge um so that's great and you know we launched it last year and we we blew our targets out of the water in terms of um how many people we wanted to get signed up in the first year um and we're going from strengths to strength with many many more exciting things to be announced later this year finally um the last thing and probably for many of us the most important definitely a thing that I wish I could be there for the after party it starts at 6 p.m tonight and it is the Cyber house party you've probably attended a few of their online events already maybe an in-person one if you've been lucky enough don't forget though this evening the event is ticketed so get a ticket uh and all of the funds raised will be split equally between uh its Tech vets nspcc uh Papyrus Trussell trust and Young Minds most of all enjoy the day again I'm so sorry that I'm here with these boxes instead of there with you um make the most out of all of the Fantastic wisdom and opportunities that are available to you today uh maybe I'll see you at UK cyber down in London next week um or maybe I'll see you at besides Lancashire next year whenever it is I look forward to it uh let's catch up and have a point see you then cheers foreign so so uh before we get to the talks um I've just been asked to say why we're at Lancaster University uh and why Lancashire in general so apart from being a great Community already here at Lancaster University um has been doing cyber security on and off mainly on for the last really two decades um and I've been teaching on our MSC in cyber security since its Inception about 12 years ago it's great to see people from like the first cohort and the current cohort here building that community but not only have we been trying to drive this forward in terms of you know teaching really good people um but in terms of our research we've also been trying to like maintain The Cutting Edge here and Lancaster university has been recognized by the ncsc as both magnetic center of excellence and cyber security research and you know education we're the only universities have both of those in in the Northwest and so when Sean rang me up and went we've got this crazy idea and I was like I'm in like literally straight after he said I've got this crazy idea I just said I mean what is it uh and uh you know a couple of months later you're all here and it's amazing to see and like it's really important that we carry on building the community um and then so just before we move on I have a little plea um we are research uh LED organization and we are doing some research this is a piece of cyber security research one of my PhD students is doing um please uh I will be putting this up again at breaks and stuff but please log in and to the qualtric survey there is a chance that you could win 50 pounds right and importantly I promise this is not social engineering it's totally legit and those of you who are very trusting have like scanned it straight away so thank you very much but if you could do that that would massively help out uh some research that we're doing here which hopefully it's going to be really important going forward so still morning everyone how are we all doing one person's awake one surviving you've got it one um so I'm gonna be the compare in this room this morning so if you like nice quiet intros to stuff I'd recommend the Innovation land um I'm absolutely got tons of energy and that'll come out because I need to keep the speakers going because they're going to be sat around all day anxiously doing bricks ready for their moment and with that I'm going to ask you all to pray be silent first of all check your phones are on silence as well we've already had one Rosie minus one point for starting for this evening please be silent for Holy gracefully um we were chatting earlier the chat GPT has done her a favor since she's one of the Forbes 30 on 30 which is not true uh what else do we know about Holly if you don't know Holly and are not stalking her on all social media your opportunities for the next 20 minutes while she's doing a talk please start stalking and following because she's amazing over to you good luck