5 Things I Learned at Cyberjutsu Day

Hello, world!?As I venture into blogging, I used a “5 things I learned about” format for my first post.?As I am still figuring out my “voice” as well as a system that will ensure I can keep up with writing, I’ll use the same format here for my second post.?Let me know what you think!?Is this format stale and overused? Should I stick to it as tried and true??Help me, help you!

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5 things learned at Cyberjutsu Day 2022

?The Women’s Society of Cyberjutsu (WSC) presented two events jam packed into a single, special day.?The third Cyberjutsu Conference, and the 9th annual Cyberjutsu Awards ceremony.?Held in tandem on 18 June outside of Baltimore, this pair of events was a perfect blend of business and relationship building.?If you take away one thing in this blog post – WSC is a true-to-form gritty underdog nonprofit.?They are wholly volunteer-based, and the passion of each and every person regardless of their role within the organization shows.?They describe themselves as a badass organization for badass ladies.?From my perspective, one way or another, these badass women will one day conquer the world[1].?

1) Speakers, Content, Value

Unfortunately, I was only able to attend two talks (spending most of the event staffing our booth), because both contained compelling well-delivered content and I’m certain the others were equally helpful.?Our community has a concept of “share the mic in cyber”.?These speakers took the mic and ran with it.

Who better than to lead the charge on emerging cybersecurity topics than your friendly neighborhood National Security Agency!?!?Kicking off the conference, Christina Walker wasted no time letting her audience know that the new Collaboration Center is there to put a face and voice to the historically silent organization.?Noting if you never say anything, the void filled by anyone saying anything is often not helpful, and Walker’s goal is to put a helpful face to the otherwise spooky outfit.

How is her office staffed??To cheers and applause, Walker said her shop is 68% female, with 50% of leadership roles filled by women.??And what are these ladies doing with the platform they have??Serving the community.?If you are part of the defense industrial base (DIB) you can actually leverage free services from the NSA to include Protective DNS, threat actor information sharing, and vulnerability scanning.?Per Walker, the reason NSA is starting here is the biggest part of the DIB is a small company unlikely to have resources to manage these services internally.?It’s 2022.?“I’m with the NSA and I’m here to help” actually has a decent ring to it, no!?!??Also: https://www.intelligencecareers.gov/

Disclaimer: Grace Chi helped me through a rough spot in my personal life.?I hope she accepts my unending gratitude.?Because of that I opted to abandon my booth for a bit to attend her talk.?And there she was, right on her personal brand with the appropriately titled “Sharing is Caring: a deeply human study on CTI networking”.?

Grace humanized the cyber threat intel community, paying homage to researchers who publish threat data, while using her podium to publish an analytic exposition on the budding discipline, interviewing CTI and management professionals to share what is working, what needs improvement, and how to be more effective.?In a most technical field, Grace and her study reminds us the value of the CTI community is the people, and that, like Christina Walker noted earlier, leveraging the microphone to help others helps us all.

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2) Pictures

This may seem not-at-all valuable, and not like a lesson learned.?It’s not about people, process, or product.?It’s not about business or any deep revelation.?It’s about picture taking.?The Jupiter One booth featured some authors of their recent self-published Reimagining Cybersecurity.?Being one booth over from theirs, I was asked to take pictures.?Though I’m of the generation that remembers when goons would smash anything that even remotely looked like (or held) a camera, happy to help!?WSC’s event even had pipe and drape backgrounds at their selfie station!?

Ok, so this was not easy for me, and I’m hoping to make others’ future picture-taking less awkward.?The way I thought one takes pictures:?Hold camera.?Take a dozen pictures.?One of those will turn out fine.?Not so fast!?Count down loudly from 5 to 0.?This gives both the subjects time to prep and signals to all the passersby to not walk in front of the camera.?Though the ladies were posing behind a standard rectangular table, do not shoot from head on.?Rather take a few steps to the side and hit the table and subjects from an angle.?Speaking of angles, I’m told the most flattering pictures are not taken eye-level.?Hold the camera up high and tilt it down.?When you have proper angles and are counting down from 5 to 0 the final step is to hand the camera to a woman and let her do all the things.?Thanks, Jupiter One for being super patient with me!?Glad you got a great picture, sorry it wasn’t one of the 70 that I took!

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3) WSC changes lives

Many groups exist to make a difference, and some are quite effective at that mission.?This section is not to take away anyone else’s successes or compare WSC with any other group.?But WSC is clearly changing lives and deserves recognition for that.?I’ve never witnessed anything like their Board of Director panel discussion.?For nearly an hour a microphone passed around the auditorium, echoing story after story after story about how WSC helped people out of some of the lowest points in one’s lives.?How WSC women supported one other through loss of life, income, or the dissolution of marriage.?How after receiving confidence-boosting perspectives those women were able to in turn share down the line to another, fulfilling a success-breeds-success paradigm.?How WSC “hard skills” training led to a job.?How networking led to a job.?How participating in competitive events led to a job.???

This appetite to give back into the organization is something I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else.?Further supporting this, was the sheer fact that many of the participants were remote.?Though a summer Saturday, enthusiasm for WSC is so strong, its Board of Director panel discussion featured active participation via online stream.?Making small talk I asked several event volunteers where they were coming from to give up their Saturdays, expecting responses of some Baltimore neighborhood or suburb. ?Chicago.?Seattle.?California.?New Jersey.?Florida.?Texas.?Why? The story was consistent.?WSC gets results, the entire organization consists of volunteers working tirelessly to uplift and promote everyone’s unique talents to the community, and each wanted to fly in to give back.?WSC consists of those looking for first time work in the cybersecurity space.?Those who feel stagnant.?Those who want to jump from non-technical to technical and vice versa.??Those who were there and want to help the next woman up.?Story after story of direct impact.

4) Board Games

The hacker community has a rich historical relationship with gaming.?WSC tapped into that perfectly.?From the onset, the registration swag bag included decks of Backdoors & Breaches from the Black Hills crew, and people were playing it during the lunch break.?Grace’s most excellent talk cited Spirit Island as a source of inspiration.?Heck, her talk had a clever “Where’s Waldo” element – with prizes! -- to keep everyone’s eyes on the slide deck and not on their phones.?Way to gamify a talk!?Where did people go to after-party??Out to play Dominoes, Taboo, and Heads Up!?These served as great non-intimidating, inclusive ice breakers and it was wonderful to be able to unwind from all the “business” in a chill environment.

5) WSC throws quality events

I’ve already shared how remarkable it is that so many participants attended via the streaming feed.?The speaker quality, presentation contents, the ability to ask a question and receive an answer in real time.?This was all possible because of a volunteer corps who controlled microphones and interfaced between presenters and the online community.

There was food.?Breakfast.?Lunch.?Snacks.?There was a happy hour.?This is how you event!

The second proceeding – the award ceremony – I’ve been to many of those.?It’s easy for spotlight of the nominees and award winners to be overshadowed by blustery sponsor talks.?None of that here!?A 5-minute welcome remark, and then for each award the nominees were listed, the award winner shared words of wisdom, next award up, then back to happy hour.?Kudos to the organizers for making this all about the nominees and for respecting everyone’s time.

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And there you have it.?Hat’s off to the ladies who fiercely drive WSC.?Your sheer relentlessness makes me excited to see where you take your organization next.?Stay badass.

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[1] to help fuel the fire, consider sponsoring or volunteering: https://womenscyberjutsu.org/page/Sponsor