A conference focusing on cyber and information security is returning to Garden City.
Destination Augusta estimates the weeklong BSides event, set for Sept. 30 through Oct. 5, will attract more than 1,000 people generating an estimated economic impact of more than $500,000.
Augusta is one of more than 100 cities worldwide that hosts a BSides conference. One of the local organizers, Phil Plantamura, COO of Security Onion Solutions, LLC, told ABD the Augusta conference is the largest in the southeast.
“It’s mostly information security practitioners that come,” he said. “There are chief information security officers from various large organizations that come. We have company founders that come.”
Bsides is an outgrowth of the DEF CON and Black Hat conferences in Las Vegas. Plantamura likened those conferences to the “A” side of a vinyl record. BSides represents the other side of the record, giving a platform for sharing information closer to home.
“As a result, these Bsides conferences started standing up all over the world. It runs in a couple of 100 cities worldwide,” he explained. “Each city kind of runs what it wants to run, kind of does their own thing, and they incorporate and have their own logos. So, I’ve had people tell me BSidesAugusta is the best one, because it has the most attendees and the most quality information, security talks and inexpensive to attend, and it’s well organized and so forth.”
The week kicks off on September 30 with Training Week at the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center.
“It’s a place where academia, industry, and government can come together and discuss topics that are relevant to cybersecurity,” he said.
BSides is partnering with theClubhou.se and HACK Augusta to host some activities and classes on October 2nd and 4th, including the Beginner Capture the Flag event.
“Just to sort of bring the community of practitioners together, and kind of give them a chance to socialize and share stories,” he said. “There’s just not a ton of opportunities for practitioners in this community to get together. There are activities for business and activities for the civilian, and military groups at TechNet and AFCEA events. But this event is really targeted a lot more at the practitioners, the technicians, the people doing the work.”
The week of activities leads up to the main BSidesAugusta conference. It moves to the Harrison Education Commons at 1301 R.A. Dent Blvd. on the Augusta University Health Sciences campus.
Opening remarks begin at 8:30 a.m. with the keynote speech at 9:00 a.m. The keynote speaker is Robert M. Lee, founder of DRAGOS, a company that says it protects critical infrastructure.
“Robert’s a really well-known speaker in information security circles. You’ll see him on news channels commenting on industrial control system securities. You know, if there’s a power outage that was caused by a cyber-attack in the country of Georgia, for example, the national news will ask him for his opinion,” said Plantamura.
It is followed by a series of presentations and tech talks. The conference will conclude by 5:00 p.m.
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit https://bsidesaugusta.org/
