The Importance of Continuing Education: Live from DEF CON

Summary

​​Join Automox CISO Jason Kikta, live at DEF CON 32, as he discusses the importance of continuing education in cybersecurity. He emphasizes that ongoing learning and exposure to diverse perspectives are essential for professional growth in the IT field. He highlights how events like DEF CON and Black Hat serve as invaluable opportunities for learning, networking, and sharing knowledge, and encourages listeners to support and actively participate in such educational events to foster growth and innovation in cybersecurity.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to the CISO IT podcast. I'm your host, Jason Kikta. And if you can't tell from the noise, if you're listening to the audio and not watching, I am coming to you live from DEF CON 32 here at the Las Vegas Convention Center. It's been a pretty interesting week here in Vegas. I was originally planning to do the podcast from Black Hat and

I will say I was a little bit disappointed with Black Hat this year. It felt a lot like a recycled version of RSA. And obviously Black Hat has gotten more and more of a vendor focus over the years. Some would argue that it's always had a vendor focus, but DEF CON has stayed pretty true to its roots. And there's been some amazing talks here. The badges.

are amazing. a little, you know, they're basically the new Raspberry Pi chip with a complete video game inside, fully hackable. And really excited to get this thing home and take it apart. I was going to try and do it here and I just just haven't had time. And of course, as always with Black Hat / Def Con, there's a lot of amazing, you know, side cons going on as well with

BSides and some of the private conventions that are occurring at the same time and a chance to see old friends and really get caught up on what's the latest and greatest. And I think, you know, what I would really impress on everyone is listening is the importance of continuing education and learning. You know, too often people see these things as a fun boondoggle and people just...

you know, going out and partying and that is certainly a thing that happens for those who want to do it. But also this is a chance to really get a diversity of views to understand what's happening in a variety of security fields and applications and a chance to stay current because if you think about it without continuing education in cybersecurity.

in IT, then your team is going to stagnate, right? They're only going to be as good as they were when you hired them and whatever they've happened to learn on the job along the way, but they're not going to have an avenue to get outside points of view to learn what's new in their given profession and their specialty.

So it's very, very important to support those, I believe. you know, a lot of my team is here and I'm excited about that because they're getting a chance to see things that, you know, they don't see every day at Automox, or to, you know, even teach others some of the things that we've learned, some of the things that we've been able to do and hopefully pay it forward and make someone else a little bit more secure or their life a little bit easier. So.

I'm gonna keep it brief this time, which will probably be a lot more fun on YouTube than a lot more like what they're accustomed to for the YouTube shorts, but you know, it's a lot of fun out here. I look forward to seeing you all hopefully out here at DEF CON next year. And until then, stay safe and I'll see you next time. Bye.