There's no denying that social engineering plays a big part in a majority of attack today, and Chris Hadnagy, chief human hacker at Social-Engineer, Inc., hopes it a big topic at the upcoming RSA Conference.
What events will you be attending this year in San Francisco?
In the next month or two I will be keynoting at NDSS in San Diego, speaking at RSA, and speaking at SXSW.What influenced your decision?
Where I speak is based on business, where can I reach my clients or potential clients. What venue gives me the chance to meet people who need the most help protecting their companies. Is it true that some of the events in recent times have caused us all a lot of pause - yes. But in the end, my job is help my clients protect themselves. My job is to help my clients learn to how to defend against social engineers. That role is more important than my personal feelings. My loyalty is to my clients not to a particular event.
What do you anticipate the most as far as conference talks this year?
I look forward to social engineering and human security being more in the spotlight. We need to discuss and develop educational tools as a community more frequently.Given the RSA/NSA news, what kind of impact do you feel this will have on the show this year?
Honestly, I don't think it will affect it at all. Many of the companies I work with are still going out there. Again, the loyalty is not to RSA for sure, but to being at locations where I can help my clients and potential customers understand the risks and fixes more.
What are some pressing concerns/threats in the industry that you feel will be discussed this year?
Human-based attacks. Social engineering has been used in over 60 percent of the attacks. Social engineering is a massive problem to corporate America and we need to be discussing how to teach companies to defend against it. I think this year we will see much more focus on these types of attacks.
