Here’s what 'Shmoocon 2016,' the D.C. hackerfest, tells us about the cybersecurity industry

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-business/wp/2016/01/28/heres-whats-changing-in-d-c-s-hacker-community/

By Aaron Gregg
The Washington Post
January 28, 2016

Walking around Shmoocon, a D.C. cybersecurity conference in its 12th year, 
one gets the impression that the hacker community is growing out of a bit 
of its outrageousness.

“There’s a chaotic element to it that has really fallen off,” said 
Shmoocon founder Bruce Potter. “All the shenanigans you used to see; 
dumping Jello in the fountain in Vegas…you don’t even see it anywhere 
anymore.”

To be sure, the cultural quirks are still there. Grown men still call each 
other by over-the-top hacker aliases. A man walks around wearing a chicken 
mask with a fluorescent-green box strapped to this back blaring electronic 
music. With the exception of a group of West Point cadets, everyone is 
wearing T-shirts.

But the crowd’s absurdities make it easy to forget that these are some of 
the most sought-after professionals in business, government and war. Over 
the past few years costly and highly-public instances of data theft have 
driven huge corporations to give cybersecurity professionals C-suite 
representation for the first time. And there’s a massive dearth of trained 
cybersecurity professionals, even in the Washington area: a 2015 report 
from market research firm Burning Glass found almost 50,000 open positions 
for cybersecurity professionals across the country with an advertised 
average salary of $83,934.

As a result, conferences like Shmoocon have become central nodes where 
corporate and government recruiters find cyber talent. Local economic 
development boosters are targeting cybersecurity as a growth sector for 
the region, hoping they can capitalize on the steady stream of specialized 
talent that spills out the region’s military and intelligence agencies.

[...]

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