Exactly one week after my talk at BeerCon2, I was slated to talk at BSides Islamabad!

Summary

• Before BeerCon2
• Getting the talk ready
• Giving the talk!
• My takeaways from the event.

Before BeerCon2

Upon my gradually increasing hype for BeerCon2 and having submitted a CFP there, my friend Ibad said that if I wanted to, I could also submit it to BSides Islamabad.

So, I reworded my CFP ( below) and provided it, and then a little while later it got accepted!

Getting the talk ready

Since it was in essentia the same talk as for BeerCon2, I first prepared for that one, and once I had given it, I moved on to modifying it a little.

Because -- contrary to BeerCon2 -- I had an additional 10 minutes to give my talk (!), and you know what that means: MOAR slides!

So I modified the few things I wasn't entirely happy with in my BeerCon2 presentation, and I added an entire technical example to it, just to spice it up a little more.

Giving the talk!

On the day of, I wasn't as stressed as I thought I'd be, catching a few talks along the way.

When came my time, I just logged on, started sharing my screen, and poof, everything started off well!

I had to introduce the talk again 30 seconds in due to a small technical malfunction, but that actually didn't phase me!

Perhaps I should've been phased a bit, because as I was giving the talk, I got to the time-midpoint, and I still had so much to talk about, and as such shifted into high-gear -- a shift that I'm sure was noticeable.

During the Q&A, a very interesting question was asked of me: "Do I think knowing programming is required to get into InfoSec?"

Although I myself come from a development background, I personally believe that one can enter InfoSec without any programming knowledge whatsoever, but that certain domains within InfoSec do (for example malware reversal).

I may not have put it into these words specifically, but that was my answer to the question that is certain to feel like a locked gate for the aspirations of those interested!
To be fair, I still don't believe I'm entirely in InfoSec yet, because I lack so much of the underlying knowledge and terminology. But I'm getting there, and anyone can!

My takeaways from the event.

The event was well organised and structured, we had open lines of communication and an entire Discord server packed with attendees and speakers, which was awesome!

There were few rookie speakers and I would like in the future to see a day dedicated to Pakistani (potentially rookie) speakers!

All in all it was a fun experience!