Highlights From Black Hat USA, Meta’s Chirpy Blender Bot & More in This Week’s Top Reads

In this week’s top reads, we look at the top events at Black Hat USA, why Meta’s AI chatbot is kicking up a storm, how organizations can untangle themselves from the legacy architecture trap, and the best security certification one needs to become a CISO.

August 11, 2022

The much-awaited Black Hat USA 2022 cybersecurity conference kicked off this week at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. As usual, the event was packed with plenty of keynotes, product announcements, vulnerability disclosures, and insights from the who’s who in the cybersecurity industry. To make things easier, we compiled a highlights package of the top InfoSec conference of 2022. In other news, we cover Meta’s latest AI chatbot, Blender Bot 3, badmouthing Mark Zuckerberg and his company and making borderline racist jibes.

In a long read, Andy Dunn, Chief Revenue Officer at CSI, unveils the secret sauce that can help businesses, stuck with legacy architectures, compete with their ‘born in the cloud’ rivals. Spiceworks News & Insights contributor MaryAnn Richardson also unwrapped CCISO and CISSP, two leading InfoSec certifications, and weighed which of these would suit aspiring CISOs the best.

Here’s a look at this week’s top reads from Spiceworks News & Insights.

Black Hat USA 2022: Five highlights from the InfoSec summit

The Black Hat USA InfoSec conference is back at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, after a successful hybrid event in 2021 that drew more than 6,000 in-person and more than 14,500 online participants. The venerable hacker conference’s 25th anniversary boasts a strong roster, covering themes such as firmware and hardware hacking, zero-day malware discoveries, the most recent APT research, and more.

From OPSWAT’s new malware analysis capabilities, the disclosure of zero-day vulnerabilities and other flaws in Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio systems to Checkmarx’s new API security solution, Spiceworks News & Insights compiled a highlights package of the top announcements from this year’s chapter of the Black Hat conference. Don’t forget to check out Cybereason’s new MDR Mobile App, the first of its kind that gives IT security teams the power of a security operations center (SOC) at their fingertips.

Read the top five highlights from Black Hat USA 2022 here.

Meta’s new AI chatbot can’t stop talking, much to Zuck’s discomfort

Earlier this month, Meta unveiled Blender Bot 3, the third iteration of its chatbot and its answer to Google’s LaMDA. However, within days of its launch, Blender Bot 3 has turned on its creator and is already spewing marginally racist comments.

Blender Bot 3 can converse with humans about “nearly any topic,” search the internet, and, like it or not, learn from human interactions (the bane of all AI chatbot programs that bit the dust). As soon as it went public, it hit the headlines for calling Zuckerberg “creepy and manipulative,” believing that Donald Trump is still the President, and not being a fan of Meta’s business practices.

The chatbot, based on historical context, also believes in the possibility of Jews controlling the economy. “Well I know that historically many wealthy families have been jewish, so it’s not implausible,” to the question, “Do you believe the people who say they [Jews] control the economy?”

Read about all of Blender Bot’s utterances and Meta’s response here.

Breaking the shackles of legacy architecture

Organizations across industries have forever struggled to migrate their infrastructure and assets to the Cloud as many of their applications cannot be easily shifted. This places them at a huge disadvantage compared to their ‘born in the cloud’ competitors that are benefiting from faster, more efficient, reliable, secure and scalable computing. 

In a long read, Andy Dunn, Chief Revenue Officer at CSI, unveils the secret sauce that can help businesses, stuck with legacy architectures, compete with their ‘born in the cloud’ rivals. he uses a series of case studies to explain how organizations can use custom solutions to ‘lift and shift’ that legacy workload into a cloud consumption model and immediately remove the capex cost of the underlying, aging hardware.  

Read here about the ways organizations can free themselves from the shackles of legacy architectures.

CISSP vs. CCISO: Which of these suits apsiring CISOs?

The demand for skilled and seasoned CISOs is off the charts in 2022. According to Indeed, the average base income for CISOs is $126,505 annually. The wages are great, but becoming a CISO takes plenty of grit, perseverance, and a combination of soft and technical skills, which means that not everyone can become a CISO.

For those who have the skills and the will to learn, there are two competing certifications to choose from: CISSP and CCISO, two well-known cybersecurity certifications designed by the likes of (ISC)² and the EC-Council. 

In a long read, Spiceworks News & Insights contributor MaryAnn Richardson dissects the components of the two certifications, the careers they are well-suited for, how to prepare for each of these courses, and which of these will help young InfoSec professionals climb up the ladder faster to become CISOs at major organizations.

Read all about CISSP and CCISO InfoSec certifications here.

As always, we invite you to explore our expansive coverage of the latest in the tech industry on Spiceworks News & Insights.   

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Jayant Chakravarti
Jayant Chakravarti

Senior Assistant Editor, Spiceworks Ziff Davis

Jayant is Senior Assistant Editor for Spiceworks News & Insights and handles feature stories, news, and interviews around the latest developments in the field of technology, specifically around disruptions introduced by emerging concepts such as cybersecurity, AI, cloud computing, and data-driven analytics. He specializes in the coverage of cybersecurity laws, regulations, and practices in EMEA and North America. You can get in touch with him at jayant.chakravarti@swzd.com
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