What Does It Mean to Help Protect the World’s Darkest but Secure Network?

Attendance at Black Hat 2017 hit a record setting high of 17,000 attendees, and remains one of the most important conferences for the security industry. This year, like last year, Gigamon is an event sponsor and official NOC (network operations center) Partner where our products are being deployed and showcased.

For those of you that have not attended Black Hat before, here is some essential information you might want to know about.

What Is Black Hat and Who Will Be There?

Black Hat is one of the most important security conferences in the cybersecurity industry. It offers attendees the opportunity to network and learn about the latest developments in the cyber security world.

The conference has a great mix of security professionals from all walks of life and provides a robust technology infrastructure throughout the event:

• The conference network provides wi-fi access to the most seasoned and skilled white and black hat hackers, IT practitioners and executives from all walks of life including government, law enforcement and private industry.
• The network is under constant threat and risk of attack by hackers searching for vulnerabilities.
• It’s used to train and deliver briefings to attendees on the latest threats, vulnerabilities and methods to protect networks.
• It transports some of the most malicious traffic – malware, DarkNet, unknown domains, encrypted flows – on the planet.
• The network is designed and planned months in advance by a team of seasoned security professionals and best-of-breed vendors who convene a few days before the event to deploy and configure the infrastructure so that it is ready for the first day of the conference.

What Is Gigamon doing at Black Hat this year?

Gigamon is an official Network Delivery Provider for the Black Hat NOC for the second consecutive year.

Here are the highlights of our participation in the NOC:

• The NOC leaders have selected the GigaSECURE^® Security Delivery Platform as an essential element and foundation for their NOC/SOC for feeding critical security tools with optimized network data.
• The NOC leads have identified best-of-breed vendors like PAN, RSA, Ruckus, Century Link to collaborate in the NOC to ensure availability and performance of the conference network so that attendees have the best experience while maintaining their privacy.
• Our GigaVUE-HC2 platform and GigaSmart^® for advanced traffic visibility and intelligence are integrated into the Black Hat Network, feeding mission-critical security tools like RSA NetWitness and OIP (Organic IP) for advanced threat detection, response and hunting and network traffic visualization.
• All security tools are deployed for out-of-band inspection of the traffic except for the firewall.

How Can You Prepare for Attending the Conference?

As mentioned earlier, the conference will be attended by a large contingent of skilled and amateur hackers, including black and white hat hackers. They may not have malicious goals in mind, but they will constantly be poking and probing all the surrounding conference technology infrastructure  – like the conference network and user devices –  looking for vulnerabilities to exploit.

They will also be testing and trying out the latest hacking tools and techniques for purpose of validation and not necessarily for the purposes of stealing sensitive information or hijacking endpoints or taking down systems and services.

With this in mind, be careful with your personal and corporate devices that store personal and sensitive information. Many attendees leave their phones and corporate devices behind and avoid public wi-fi altogether to avoid getting hacked. They also bring cash instead of credit cards.

Also take a look at this guide which has a comprehensive list of tips and reminders for attendees.

Schedule a Black Hat NOC Tour and See the Presentations

• Schedule a personal briefing of the Black Hat NOC with Gigamon.
• Attend a Black Hat NOC presentation session for a glimpse into this state-of-the-art network.
• Visit the Black Hat NOC website for presentation schedule.
• Learn more about our participation here: video, case study and Black Hat NOC interview.

In addition to visiting our booth 1058 in Mandalay Bay, opportunities to engage include executive meetings and speaking sessions. Learn more here. Stay tuned for more updates on our participation in the NOC during the show. See you at Black Hat!