HITB Amsterdam 2014 to feature hacker expo, all-women lineup

By Digital News Asia August 5, 2013

HITB celebrates its fifth anniversary in the EU with special hacker expo
Also wants to highlight women who have made tremendous contributions to IT sector

HITB Amsterdam 2014 to feature hacker expo, all-women lineup FRESH from a successful conference in Amsterdam this year, Hack In The Box (HITB) announced that its next security and hacker conference in the Netherlands will feature a hacker expo and for the first time, an all-women lineup of keynote speakers.

HITB2014 Amsterdam will introduce the all-new ‘Haxpo,’ a hacker expo that would be open to professionals and the public.

“2014 marks our fifth year in [Europe] and we want to commemorate this with a large celebration – a chance for us to do something different that we think has not been done before,” said HITB founder and chief executive officer Dhillon Andrew Kannabhiran (pic).

The Haxpo will run from May 28-30, 2014 at The Beurs van Berlage in Amstedam. To encourage the spirit of inquisitiveness and innovation, it will showcase cutting-edge technology and security solutions for industry professionals alongside fun, hands-on tinkering and hacking exhibits, HITB said in a statement.

The exhibition will include the Capture the Flag (CTF) battle, HackWEEKDAY developer hackathon, a ‘hackerspaces’ village with an area dedicated to makers and builders, plus a lock-picking area and a social engineering challenge -- all under one roof.

Entrance to HITB Haxpo will be completely free and HITB is also encouraging all builders and hackerspaces to apply for exhibition space, which will be free for non-commercial entities.

Haxpo will run alongside the popular annual HITB conference, which itself runs from May 27-30 and which will introduce the first ever all-women keynote lineup of leading security individuals:

Katie Moussouris (head of the Microsoft Security Response Centre);

Kristin Lovejoy (general manager of IBM’s Security Services Division);

Pamela Fusco (chief information security officer at The Apollo Group);

Jennifer Steffens (CEO of IOActive);

Mischel Kwon (former director of the US Computer Emergency Response Team); and

Jaya Baloo (chief information security officer at KPN Telecom)

“We've never had an all-women keynote lineup, and with 2014 being our fifth anniversary in the EU, we thought it was a perfect time to do so,” said Dhillon.

“Though there is still an insufficient number of women leaders in the IT sector, we want to use this occasion to highlight a handful we feel have made tremendous contributions.

“Most importantly, they all offer a different point of view in an industry dominated by men,” he added.

For exhibition opportunities, email [email protected]

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