Like RSA, Black Hat also changed in 2005 but for a completely different reason. The conference was sold to CMP Media that year for $14m (CMP is now part of Informa).
Since the CMP acquisition, Black Hat has had a bit of an identity problem. It retains its role as a cybersecurity summer camp, but it also moved in a simultaneous aspirational direction as an RSA wannabe. It got more corporate, sprinkling blatant sales pitches in with its traditional content. So much so that Black Hat is now perceived by some as a jack-of-all cybersecurity trade and a master of none. Practitioners were turned off by corporate hyperbole, while vendors felt alienated by an anti-establishment hacker vibe. I’ve heard that Informa hired a high-priced New York City branding company to conduct research and help it through this Black Hat identity morass.
To be clear, the authentic content presented by researchers, threat analysts, reverse engineers, and now AI experts always was, and still is, exceptionally valuable, and the Black Hat team does a respectable job vetting signal from noise. That said, there are all kinds of conference sponsors who pay big dough for prime real estate. Given this, I highly advise security professionals to resist the temptation to “wing it.” Avoid the shiny lights, silly themed cocktail parties, and the casino and focus your attention on the meaty conference content.
