Dear Participants,

As the Program Chair, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the 23rd Annual FIRST Conference in Vienna, Austria. At this year's conference we will evaluate how far the industry has come, herald some of the successes and bury some of the failures. This year's agenda will tell stories of what has—and hasn't—worked. The program content focuses on the actions that have pushed people of all nations, across a multitude of industries to link interconnectivity synonymously with crime and how we, as the incident response community plan our next steps forward.

We have a great line-up of speakers for you: Brian Krebs, Rob Thomas, Melissa Hathaway, Mikko Hypponen, John Stewart, Eugene Kaspersky and Jeff Williams just to name a few. And as always, we have built in plentiful opportunities for industry collaboration and networking that this event has become so well-known for in the incident response community. Our special events this year include the annual kick-off Ice Breaker Reception, a Newbie Roundtable Breakfast, Vendor Showcase (aka Beer n' Gear), the Conference Banquet at the beautiful, gothic Vienna Rathaus... and the many unofficial group trips to local pubs and coffeehouses—please be sure to join our Facebook page for more information and to connect with colleagues(https://www.facebook.com/firstcon).

During your stay in Vienna, I encourage you to take the time to compare and contrast our relatively young industry with the history that surrounds you. Examples of security and incident response are prevalent throughout Viennese history, giving us a perspective that is often missing in our Internet age; the problems we face are human ones playing out in environments we inhabit and protect.

I look forward to seeing you all in Vienna and to make those human connections that provide the most value in securing our networks.

Sincerely,
Gavin Reid

2011 Program Chair
FIRST.Org, Inc.

 

About Gavin Reid

Sr. Manager, Cisco CSIRT
Computer Security Program Office

As an IT security specialist with more than two decades of experience, Gavin Reid works with some very interesting people - from leaders in the vanguard of information security to hackers in the computer underground. Gavin leads the Computer Security Incident Response Team at Cisco Systems - a global team of information security professionals responsible for the 24/7 monitoring, investigation and response to cyber security incidents. As an active member of the computer security community, he also supports FIRST and chairs the working group responsible for the Common Vulnerability Scoring System. Gavin joined Cisco in 1999 from the National Aeronautics & Space Administration where he oversaw IT Security at the Johnston Space Center. He lives in North Carolina (USA), and counts guitar and skateboarding among his personal interests.