Your one-stop reference for infosec events announced for 2021 so far
While Covid-19 has, for now, put an end to in-person industry conferences in many countries, the infosec events calendar has nevertheless remained impressively busy.
While some organizers chose to cancel their 2020 events, especially at the pandemic’s outset – starting with Mobile World Conference (MWC) last February – most transformed them into all-virtual affairs instead.
In-person, indoor events will surely be the among the last activities to return to normal once Covid response-mandated restrictions across many countries are eased. But with vaccines now being rolled out worldwide, many infosec events scheduled for the second half of 2021 were tentatively planned, and have been held, as in-person conferences.
Many have so far persisted with a virtual model or compromised with a hybrid format – and there may be no going back to the former status quo.
“We have realized that a significant element of business can progress without the need to incur extensive costs associated with face to face engagement – not only in the form of travel and accommodation, but also those costs associated with hours lost in travel time,” Camilla Currin, cybersecurity consultant at infosec firm Trend Micro, told The Daily Swig.
“Will we start slipping back into that 24/7 business lifestyle or will we continue to drive the online, connected world, where we attend streamed conferences and events?
“Will the developers of collaboration tools get us to a place where the functionality of these tools provide richer experiences to what we used to experience in person? Only time will tell.”
It remains to be seen how many formerly in-person events persist with the online model, permanently adopt a hybrid model where those who can’t attend can instead stream presentations (AUSCert2021, for instance, is taking this approach), or dismiss the hybrid option for fear that it will cannibalize the in-person conference.
Most will no doubt be keen to restore the many revenue streams that were lost in the virtual migration that took place last year.
In the meantime, the infosec calendar, which we’ve set out below, is once again looking busy and a mixture of formats are on offer.
Cybersecurity conferences: 2021 schedule
Here’s a rundown of upcoming cybersecurity conferences, which we will update throughout the year as events are announced, rescheduled, or reconfigured:
CyberSec&AI Connected 2021 | November 4-5 | Virtual
Conference focused on AI and machine learning and how they intersect with security and privacy will cover topics such as privacy-preserving AI, AI for cyberthreat intelligence, and election security, privacy, and trust.
Visit the CyberSec&AI Connected website for full details.
Black Hat Europe | November 8-11 | London, UK (also virtual)
Black Hat's final major event of the year will as usual feature a stellar range of speakers speaking about hacking tools and techniques, security vulnerabilities, and cybercrime trends.
Visit the Black Hat website for full details.
Open Security Summit | November 8-12
Monthly events, focused on the collaboration between developers and application security professionals, that bring together leading figures from OWASP, government agencies, and product vendors, among others.
Visit the Open Security Summit website for full details.
AWS re:Invent | November 29-December 30 | Las Vegas, US (also virtual)
A slimmed down event appears to be in the offing after 2020’s three-week cloud computing conference from Amazon Web Services (AWS) featured more than 500 sessions repeating to serve different time zones.
Visit the re:Invent website for full details.
CyberCrimeCon 2021 | December 2 | Virtual
The Group-IB conference features presentations from cybersecurity leaders, infosec researchers, forensic experts, and law enforcement professionals on detecting and tackling cybercrime.
Visit the CyberCrimeCon website for full details.
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