Having lived and worked in Dubai early in my career, I have a great affinity with the Middle East. So when the opportunity to present at Gitex, the region’s premier technology event, and support our local Lookout team, I jumped at it. You might not think of the Middle East as being at the forefront of technological innovation, but if you stroll around Gitex, you’ll find everything from flying cars, robotics, and environment controls to IT and security.

For the past few days, I’ve been getting a lot of messages asking about my experience at this year’s Black Hat USA. So in this post, I’ll be recapping the conference to give you an inside look at what was presented and provide some helpful perspective. Black Hat is one of the largest — and most talked about — cybersecurity conferences. Its inception dates back to 1997.

At CrowdStrike, we stop breaches. It’s a simple yet powerful promise to our customers, our partners and to the world. As thousands join us today in person at Fal.Con 2022 in Las Vegas, and thousands more watch remotely via livestream, it’s a promise that we want to reinforce and extend. As cyberattacks have grown more powerful and disruptive, the importance of stopping the breach has grown. Stopping the breach is about more than stopping a single attack.

After a two-year hiatus, the Gartner Security and Risk Management, London is back! I had the privilege of attending a number of sessions, spending time talking with analysts and digesting some of the latest cybersecurity trends and strategies, including the Top Cybersecurity Predictions for 2022-2023 from Gartner. Two themes that stood out to me were security service edge (SSE) and extended detection and response (XDR) Below are some of my key takeaways from this year’s conference.

For its 25th year, Black Hat USA presented a “unique hybrid event experience, offering the cybersecurity community a choice in how they wish to participate” virtually or in person. It was a jam-packed four days of trainings, conferences, briefings, special events, and cybersecurity solutions.

Arriving at the keynote hall for Black Hat 2022, I was immediately struck by the size of the crowd – after the seemingly endless pandemic hiatus, the cyber industry had come out in force. The mood was one of enthusiasm, and the entire place reverberated with the vibrancy of reunion. It was a great event for the industry – and for HelpSystems – and a few things stuck out.

Now that Black Hat USA 2022 and DEF CON 30 are over, it is time to reflect on the security industry nicknamed “Summer Camp”, and the week that was in Las Vegas. We had a number of Netskopers from across different teams on the ground and in-person attending the conferences. Like with any large conferences, there were likely many folks who weren’t able to make it out to Las Vegas this year for myriad reasons.

Blackhat 2022, on its 25th anniversary, took place this week in Las Vegas. The most important event for the infosec community and the best place for security vendors to showcase all their innovations and products in this ever-growing ecosystem. This year, attendees come from 111 different countries. In 2020, Black Hat added the word Cloud to the existing track about Platform Security.