Joe Sullivan and Andy Ellis will take the stage once again at HITB

Sep 10, 2013 17:41 GMT  ·  By

On October 14-17, the Intercontinental Hotel in Kuala Lumpur will host the 2013 Malaysia edition of the world-renowned Hack in the Box (HITB) security conference.

HITB2013KUL organizers have revealed that this year’s keynote talks will be made by Andy Ellis, chief security officer at Akamai, and Joe Sullivan, chief security officer at Facebook.

Ellis will make a presentation on “Cognitive Injection: Reprogramming the Situation-Oriented Human OS,” while Sullivan will talk about “Bringing Social to Security.”

It’s worth noting that it’s not the first time when Sullivan and Ellis take the stage at HITB.

In fact, Ellis’s talk is actually the third stage of a presentation he made last year at HITB Amsterdam. In the meantime, he has done some interesting research on cognitive science and organizational psychology.

“As I've studied, I've found many analyses of the way the human brain learns, operates, and responds to new inputs to be quite explanatory of some of the effects we, as InfoSec professionals, often observe in the field,” the CSO noted.

“Rather than continuing to repeat our mistakes over and over, an understanding of how evolution has tailored the human brain to respond can be used as a tool to make organizations behave in ways we would find more pleasing.”

On the other hand, Sullivan will detail some innovative initiatives that can greatly contribute to security by leveraging social engagement.

“When I spoke in 2011, I focused on the importance of security teams always innovating to keep up with the latest threats. I still believe that, and when I recently started documenting some of our newer home-grown innovations I noticed a trend: that we have injected a social aspect into our recent ideas,” Sullivan said.

“So in this keynote, I will share some of the ways we've successfully engaged socially, even in otherwise technical solutions, to increase the security of our social network.”

By the looks of it, HITB2013KUL will be very interesting, so make sure to register for the event.