Parisa Tabriz's Black Hat 2018 keynote challenges infosec's status quo
Keynote speakers for infosec conferences often play to the crowd with flowery quotes about how the security community are the real leaders of change, but Parisa Tabriz, director of engineering at Google, took a slightly different approach with her Black Hat 2018 keynote by describing -- in detail -- the actual work required to enact that change.
Some of the themes Tabriz hit on were familiar to the Black Hat audience -- focusing too much on flashy vulnerabilities and hacks rather than root causes and the broader impact that can be made by infosec -- but the tone of her keynote felt different. Rather than an impassioned speech meant primarily to inspire, Tabriz set out to instruct the audience with specific yet simple actions.
According to Tabriz, the way to make things better breaks down into three broad steps: Tackling root causes, choosing milestones and celebrating achievements, and building a coalition outside of security.
