I had an amazing time at Black Hat MEA - hands down the best BlackHat conference I've ever attended. The people were amazing, and the venue was perfect. I learned many things being there, and had some of the best conversations. Also… we cracked Zeppelin Ransomware 2 years ago and the paper is now available to the public. Enjoy! #blackhatmea #mentalhealth #ransomware #people #saudiarabia #cybersecurity

Speaking at the first Blackhat Middle East and Africa was a privilege. It was a fantastic event with 30,000+ visitors and 260+ speakers.    The opportunity to share my experience on such a fantastic event has been a dream come true. I had the pleasure to speak about the importance of the importance of Human Factor in cybersecurity and participate in a panel about Data Protection, Privacy, and disinformation campaigns with Zaki A. Abbas, CISO of Brookfield Asset Management, Jon Staniforth, CISO of Royal Mail, Vikas Yadav, CISO of NYKAA and moderated by Jaya Baloo, CISO of Avast. My sincere gratitude goes to Informa Markets and The Saudi Arabia Federation for Cyber Security and Programming for their outstanding hospitality. Everything was perfect and Informa Markets put in a tremendous amount of teamwork on this event. Special thanks to Tom Bourgoin for inviting me. I was amazed to see the team energy, support, and coordination! Black Hat MEA is the first BlackHat to be held in the Middle East and Africa. It was three days of intense activity packed with tonnes of information and opportunities to network with some of the brightest minds in cybersecurity such as M. Shahmeer Amir, David Colombo, Chris Roberts, Betania Allo, Carmen Marsh, Brenno Andrade, Jamil Farshchi, Dr Magda Chelly, and Andrea Isoni. #cybersecurity #privacy #dataprotection #BlackHat #BlackHatMEA

👀 I witnessed something really special in Riyadh last week during BlackHat Middle East & Africa. No, it wasn't seeing a whopping 30,000 visitors across the exhibition center. Nor was it seeing a jaw-dropping $400,000 grand prize awarded during a hacking competition. ➡️ What really blew me away was… the women. The number of female coders and engineers was off the charts 🚀 The ratio of women to men was the same as you'd see at a US cyber event. And they were deeply engaged: everything from hands-on hacking in the chip village (I grabbed a photo below) to proudly discussing their college curriculum and future career ambitions in cyber. This is not what I expected. At all. This is real, positive, and consequential change 👏 It's honestly hard to fathom the amount of positive change that's been led in that country in just a few short years. Is it perfect over there? No. But they're really trying. And all those amazing women I met at BlackHat MEA are proof of that effort. I look forward to watching the Saudi cyber community continue to grow and make a positive impact in the world! #informationsecurity #cybersecurity #blackhat #blackhatmea #womeninsecurity #saudiarabia

I'm delighted to be a part of the most recent cybersecurity conference, "Back Hat MEA," in Saudi Arabia, as a CTF player and Interested in cyber security. Throughout the three days, I was astounded by technological advancements, hacking skills, and amazing sessions. Also, I am proud of the efforts that have been made to make this conference successful by the organizers and every person who has contributed to making it possible. Black Hat MEA #blackhatmea #blackhat #bhmea22

Riyadh Moments Hosting at Black Hat Middle East & Africa (15 - 17 November) The World's Largest Cyber Show   Reflecting on Black Hat MEA that unfolded a few weeks ago...   It's difficult to pick out a highlight....   ....so many points of value that took place in Riyadh at Black Hat's first edition in Saudi Arabia, which overall turned into something extraordinary. Lovely to play my role in shaping the stage at the launch of Black Hat MEA as part of the wider hard-working team who wonderfully put all this together.   An staggering record-breaking 30,000 visitors over 3 cyber-content filled days featuring more than 250+ speakers across a selection of stages including the Executive Summit, 4 Briefings Stages and The Arsenal section. Over the event so many experts in the cyber space shared their perspectives, advice and insights - many of are also young talents really shaking-up ideas and traditional ways of doing things.  With such a wide agenda to choose from, and of course I couldn't feature everyone, here's just a small selection of global speakers that stood out sharing insightful moments at #BHMEA22   Haran Kumar Monitoring with an Evolving SOC Fadyah Abdullah & Nouf Alqahtani Threat Hunting Challenges  Renad Alrabea Cyber Resilience & Readiness Abhinav Singh Cloud adversarial tactics Abdulrahman Al-Nimari Is Quantum Computing Breaking Encryption!? Ahmad Halabi Breaking Mobile App Encryption Tarek Naja Abusing Azure Virtual Machines Hsing-yu chen & Mars Cheng Abusing Misconfigurations  Mirza Burhan Baig The Great Hospital Hack!! Gabrielle Hempel, CECI, CCIP, CCTA, CHTI Threat Hunting in Cloud-Based Environments Lovely meeting and sharing conversations with so many of you, including Amal Al Sadi, Ehab Shobaki, Abeer As'ad, Ryan Johnson and hats-off to Yaser Alosaimi for doing a great job. Great to see and experience the results of the dedicated work from the entire team who spent months of sweat of tears to pull-off the end result including Basma Dawwas, MIB بسمة دواس Luke Hallewell. A special shout-out to the calm and collected Sheryl Carvalho sharing lots of smiles, conversations and teamwork who did such a wonderful job keeping everything fully under control.   Riyadh, until we meet again.....   Join me over at Hopwood Story & Speaker Coaching    #blackhatmea #Blackhat #Presenter #cybersecurity

"Every moment lasts only a second, but leaves memories that can last a lifetime." I've spoken at and attended many events over the last 2 decades, but this was special. It was an honour to be a speaker at this glorious event. The finale of the show was the #CyberSeed event. I was fortunate to be on the judging panel, sharing the stage with the fabulous host Lucy Hedges and four incredibly sharp co-judges Caleb Sima Gabrielle Chris Roberts and David B. Cross  Black Hat MEA - Three super hectic days of power packed knowledge and meeting some of the sharpest minds in #cybersecurity, all in one place - An epic event, the first BlackHat in the Middle East and Africa. Thanks Informa Markets and الاتحاد السعودي للأمن السيبراني والبرمجة والدرونز | SAFCSP - The Saudi Arabia Federation for Cyber Security and Programming. Thanks for the incredible hospitality extended. Right from landing at the airport to the arrangements throughout - everything was flawless. This was a massive team effort from both the organisations. Thanks Mr Chairman, Faisal Al-khamissi for hosting us for the special dinner. #SaudiHospitality at its best. Thanks Aman Sethi for the invite to speak at the show and arranging the Podcast with the 'oh so brilliant' Bryan Seely, and managing the stage relentlessly! Super energy and sheer brilliance! Thanks Ayah Albokhari for the protocol arrangements - your leadership and how you and your team managed the show are commendable! Malik Farhaj @JamalShahin - Thanks for your support on the ground! (When did you guys rest? - you know what I mean!) #cybersecurity #blackhat #blackhatmea #infosecventures #humanfirewall #emailauth #saudiarabia #event #SaudiArabia #KSA #SAFCSP #InformaTech

Not only is Black Hat the biggest cybersecurity event on the planet, but it was the first time it was being hosted in Saudi. So I don't need to tell you how much of big deal it was - and an incredible honour - to be asked to host an event of this magnitude, to share the stage with international experts from the cybersecurity community and learn from some of the greatest infosec minds - and generally some of the nicest people I've ever had the pleasure of working with - in the industry. Big shout out to the Informa team for getting me involved in Black Hat MEA. It's a week later and I'm still buzzing from all the amazing comments and memories 💙 #blackhat #blackhatmea #hackingforgood #infosec #saudi #KSA #thekingdom #host #metro #bbc #riyadh #ilovewhatido #womenintech