We have three very excellent and experienced Keynote speakers for this years Black Hat Las Vegas. Tony Sager and Richard A. Clarke will be speaking simultaneously on day one and day two promises to be an stimulating address by Bruce Schneier.

Check out our Black Hat USA 07 page for updates!

https://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-usa-07/bh-usa-07-index.html

Day 1 Keynote: Tony Sager

The NSA Information Assurance Directorate and the National Security Community.

The Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) within the National Security Agency (NSA) is charged in part with providing security guidance to the national security community. Within the IAD, the Vulnerability Analysis and Operations (VAO) Group identifies and analyzes vulnerabilities found in the technology, information, and operations of the Department of Defense (DoD) and our other federal customers.

This presentation will highlight some of the ways that the VAO Group is translating vulnerability knowledge in cooperation with many partners, into countermeasures and solutions that scale across the entire community. This includes the development and release of security guidance through the NSA public website (www.nsa.gov) and sponsorship of a number of community events like the Cyber Defense Initiative and the Red Blue Symposium.

It also includes support for, or development of, open standards for vulnerability information (like CVE, the standard naming scheme for vulnerabilities); the creation of the extensible Configuration Checklist Description Format (XCCDF) to automate the implementation and measurement of security guidance; and joint sponsorship, with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), of the Information Security Automation Program (ISAP), to help security professionals automate security compliance and manage vulnerabilities.

The presentation will also discuss the cultural shift we have been making to treat network security as a community problem, one that requires large -scale openness and cooperation with security stake holders at all points in the security supply chain - operators, suppliers, buyers, authorities and practitioners.

Tony Sager, Chief, Vulnerability Analysis and Operations Group, Information Assurance Directorate, National Security Agency Tony Sager is the Chief of the Vulnerability Analysis and Operations (VAO) Group, part of the Information Assurance Directorate at the National Security Agency. The mission of the VAO organization is to identify, characterize, and put into operational context vulnerabilities found in the technology, information, and operations of the DoD and the national security community and to help the community identify countermeasures and solutions. This group is known for its work developing and releasing security configuration guides to provide customers with the best options for securing widely used products.

The VAO Group also helps to shape the development of security standards for vulnerability naming and identification, such as the Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL), partnering with National Institute for Standards and technology (NIST) on the Information Security Automation Program (ISAP), developing the eXtensible configuration checklist description format (XCCDF), and for hosting the annual Cyber Defense Exercise and the Red Blue Symposium. Mr. Sager is active in the public network security community, as a member of the CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) Senior Advisory Council and the Strategic Advisory Council for The Center for Internet Security. He is in his 29th year with the National Security Agency, all of which he has spent in the computer and network security field.

ADDITIONAL Day 1 Keynote: Richard A. Clarke

A Story About Digital Security in 2017.

Richard A. Clarke is a former U.S. government official who specialized in intelligence, cyber security and counter-terrorism. Until his retirement in January 2003, Mr. Clarke was a member of the Senior Executive Service. He served as an advisor to four U.S. presidents from 1973 to 2003: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Most notably, Clarke was the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council for both the latter part of the Clinton Administration and early part of the George W. Bush Administration through the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Clarke came to widespread public attention for his role as counter-terrorism czar in the Clinton and Bush Administrations when in March of 2004 he appeared on the 60 Minutes television news magazine, his memoir about his service in government, Against All Enemies was released, and he testified before the 9/11 Commission. In all three instances, Clarke was sharply critical of the Bush Administration's attitude toward counter-terrorism before the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the decision to go to war with Iraq.

Richard Clarke is currently Chairman of Good Harbor Consulting, a strategic planning and corporate risk management firm, an on-air consultant for ABC News, and a contributor to GoodHarborReport.com, an online community discussing homeland security, defense, and politics. He also recently published his first novel, The Scorpion's Gate, in 2005; and a second, Breakpoint, in 2007.

Day 2 Keynote: Bruce Schneier

The Psychology of Security.

Security is both a feeling and a reality. You can feel secure without actually being secure, and you can be secure even though you don't feel secure. In the industry, we tend to discount the feeling in favor of the reality, but the difference between the two is important. It explains why we have so much security theater that doesn't work, and why so many smart security solutions go unimplemented. Two different fields -- behavioral economics and the psychology of decision making -- shed light on how we perceive security, risk, and cost. Learn how perception of risk matters and, perhaps more importantly, learn how to design security systems that will actually get used.

Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist and CTO of BT Counterpane, referred to by The Economist as a "security guru." He is the author of eight books -- including the best sellers "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World," "Secrets and Lies," and "Applied Cryptography" -- and hundreds of articles and academic papers. His influential newsletter, Crypto-Gram, and blog "Schneier on Security," are read by over 250,000 people. He is a prolific writer and lecturer, a frequent guest on television and radio, has testified before Congress, and is regularly quoted in the press on issues surrounding security and privacy.