AI and Cybersecurity Take Center Stage at Largest-Ever Black Hat USA

BLACK HAT USA — Las Vegas is global cybersecurity central this week with the biggest-ever Black Hat USA conference.

Last year’s Black Hat USA drew about 21,000 attendees and 450 exhibitors, and this week’s conference is expected to surpass those numbers. And more than 110 countries are represented at the event.

Steve Wylie, vice president of the cybersecurity market group at Informa Tech and Black Hat general manager, said Black Hat was fully back from the pandemic last year “and this year we’ve just built on that.” (Informa Tech is Channel Futures’ parent company.)

Black Hat’s Steve Wylie

“It’s going to be the biggest Black Hat event on record for sure,” he said.

AI Biggest Tech Topic This Year at Black Hat USA

The combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity was a hot topic at RSAC, and it’s going to be equally prominent at Black Hat, Wylie said.

“AI is arguably the biggest topic in tech this year,” he said. “With that, there are big question marks around security and privacy, and different implications, different things to consider there. And I think within cyber, it’s kind of a two-pronged consideration where on the one hand, you’ve got the cyber vendors that are very much employing AI as part in their tool sets to deliver better tools to customers, but then you have the other side of AI, which is how are we, the cybersecurity community, going to respond and manage this new world that is very AI centric. So I think that’s certainly a big topic.”

The opening keynote by Maria Markstedter, founder of Azeria Labs, will address AI and cybersecurity, and tacking some of those big questions, Wylie said.

“AI can be a very effective way for the vendors to enhance their products, to make them more effective in the fight against cyber threats,” he said. “But there’s also the other side of that coin of how AI is going to be leveraged by the bad guys and how we’re going to defend against that.”

Scroll through our slideshow above for more from Wylie and news from this week’s Black Hat USA.