They almost achieved a brain melt-down at the Nordic IT Security Forum this year. The atmosphere was on a parallel with InfoSec Europe, but better. Better because this is the Nordics, we are only 9 million in Sweden alone, I need to count Finland, Norway and Denmark, but even together we are nowhere near the density of mass of InfoSec enthusiasts, experts and products as found in the UK. UK boasts a population over 64 million. Clearly we can’t compete in the Nordics, but we don’t want to!
It was great to find lots of really cool guys from Finland, Norway and Denmark with us. We were graced with the presence of Mikko Hypponen who delivered a great keynote, and David Lacey from UK, the brains behind the ISO27000 standard and the Jericho forum was among our ranks, not forgetting the towering presence of Mika Kataikko! I was moderating among the esteemed female security ranks of Ann-Marie Eklund Löwinder and some other guys too, that were great, but Ann-Marie outshines them all 🙂
I was delighted to find even more Brits over in Stockholm, Jason Hart was great! A former ethical hacker, left me with a very simple message “you will be hacked, accept and prepare”. His argument was that we waste so much time and energy trying to block the inevitable, it just makes more sense to transfer those energies. It reminds me of quantum physics funnily enough. Basically they were scratching their heads for many years trying to place quantum as a part of existing laws of physics and got nowhere. Progress was only made when it was accepted that quantum cannot be understood. Acceptance opens a new world, and a blank sheet to start working on that presents a new breed of questions.
So did I make new contacts? The problem was that I was so busy moderating or speaking that missed out on a whole load of networking. However I saw everyone else was busy, so I’ll try to do better next year!
Well now you’ve read all my ramblings I’d better finally get to the point, articles written by 5 of the top-ranked speakers at #nordicitsec can be found here, of which I am privileged to be one.