You can read plenty of other blogs about some of the great presentations at Black Hat.  So I thought I would take another angle and talk about some of the other stuff that may be important to you.

1.  secure@microsoft.com – This years hottest party was again the Microsoft party.  This year it was at the LAX club in the Luxor.  As usual there were quite a number of people at the door who thought they could talk their way in or worse yet were told they “were one the list”.  I was happy to be able to go and saw many of the usual suspects there as well. I had to leave the party early to go catch my red eye flight home, so went right to the airport from the party.  As I wrote earlier, Microsoft is trying really hard on security.  But I couldn’t help but notice the irony of this grainy, lousy picture of the DJ booth at the party.  If you can, notice the computers that the secure@microsoft.com DJs are using. That’s right they are Macs!

2. A new low for booth babes – What would a Shimel review of a trade show be without a booth babe rant.  Hey I recognize it is Vegas and all, but EdgeOS went way over the line this year.  A booth babe dressed as a Las Vegas showgirl or some other type of costume makes a statement.  I personally don’t like exploiting woman to make that statement, but I understand.  However, these guys had woman who were dressed so raunchy and classless, that I could not bring myself to post a picture of them.  Come on guys!  You want to resort to the booth babe thing (and BTW I think the Black Hat crowd does not respond to that), at least have a little class.  These girls looked like street walkers and do you and your company no favors.  Is that really the image you want to promote?  Grow up!

3.  The Security Bloggers Network – We are back!  With the end of the Black Hat show, the SBN is going back to being the SBN.  The old logo is back and our promotion with Black Hat is at an end.  However, I want to personally thank so many of you SBN members who blogged about Black Hat.  The Black Hat marketing folks made it a point to come over to me and thank us for the overwhelming support and help of the community.  Our network delivered big time with them and they are already thinking about ways we can work together next year.  I will keep you all posted on that.

We have several new promotions we are working on with the SBN and will have more on that soon. Also, we learned some valuable lessons.  Next time we will work with the network members more closely in doing these affiliations.  Also, for any show like this we need to have an official bloggers get together.  Not because we don’t want to buy our own drinks (thanks to Chris Hoff for doing more than his share in picking up a big bar tab), but frankly we need to reserve a place that has enough space for us.  Security bloggers are big time. We have a great community of people who get together. Lets make it better.

I have some other ideas around the SBN I am working on too and want to form a committee to help. If you are a member and want to get involved, please drop me a line or comment.

Anyway, another year of Black Hat is in the books. It was a good one and I can’t wait until next year!