OK, so I'm a little late on my day one update. When I got home after day one I spent time with the family and then had some work to do. I was up until 1:00 am finishing a project plan that was due today.
This is my first SecureWorld Atlanta conference and wasn't sure exactly what to expect. I had looked over the conference schedule and knew from the length of the sessions and the titles that it wasn't going to be too technical. That's fine with me because I don't do much that is technical in my day to day work any longer, but I do enjoy sitting in technical sessions to stay fresh and learn new things.
I attended a session on SAN security considerations and a discussion by DHS on Securing critical infrastructure. I figured that the critical infrastructure talk would be a good one for me since I work for a company that is part of Atlanta's critical infrastructure. Neither session was overly informative but the CI session did have some good content and most importantly gave me some good contacts to keep for the future. From the SAN session I did come up with a few questions that I need to have my SAN team answer for me now.
The rest of Day one was spent talking to vendors trying to get past the "snake oil" and see what it is that they really do and how they are different than their competitors. I'm am actively looking at several different technologies to determine if they will meet needs that we have. The vendor time gave me a chance to see how some companies that I'm not as familiar with are doing things.
All in all the biggest benefit that I gleaned from day one was the networking opportunities. I also ran into a guy that did some consulting work with a company that I worked for a few years ago. He's still with the same company that he worked with then and I'm going to see about having him come in and help us with some professional services that we need.
