My Impressions: Mandiant Community Night Dubai
The cybersecurity community in the Middle East is still small but growing, with new initiatives like Google Mandiant’s quarterly meetups bringing professionals together. At the latest event, insightful talks covered Kubernetes breaches, ransomware tactics, and nation-state threats.
Cybersecurity community is really small - probably one of the smallest in the entire tech industry. That's why being part of this movement is super important if you want to stay on top of latest threats, news and trends. Having a community in the region matters because the threats are often specific to the geolocation.
The Middle East is a large region, but its cybersecurity community is still quite small. The industry here has only recently started developing and has a long way to go before reaching the level of Europe or North America. There is only one well-known community, 971sec, led by Rami Shaath, a great guy I know personally and have had the opportunity to work with. But now, with Google Mandiant getting involved in the community, we have another great opportunity to connect with peers, backed up by a big vendor in the region. They plan to host meetups quarterly and I want to share a few thoughts and spread the news.
Content Wise
It's always great to listen to talented and hardworking people who know their stuff. Content-wise this meetup was super enjoyable, and especially I liked the "Breaking the Cluster: Lessons from a Kubernetes Breach" presentation by Kalyan Patmur. It was his first public talk, and it went really well. I rarely see any articles discussing the real-world applicability of Docker or/and Kubernetes in attacks, but this talk covered impressive details and tactics. Unfortunately, I can't share them because we were asked not to.
Other talks covered North Korean and Iranian threat actors, ransomware tactics, and more, all of which were super insightful. Again, I can’t share details as some of this content may be used in future articles and write-ups.
Facilities Wise
The office itself is simple but pretty chill - lots of space and cool stuff. Dan actually did a tour at the end of the meetup, but I had already left by then.
And the food… wow! Huge shout-out to the chefs - it was super delicious, with a wide variety of choices, soft drinks, and coffee. Not gonna lie, if I ate like that every day, I’d gain weight fast. Hope they have some kind of limitations in place!
Conclusions
Overall, a great initiative - nothing much to add! It would be nice to have a bigger room next time and maybe adjust the AC a bit.
Shout Outs
Big shout-out to Dan Caban for organizing the meetup, Rami Shaath for promoting it in the community, and all the great speakers: Kalyan Patmur, Joshua Goddard, Mohamed El-Banna and Carol Overes.
Looking forward to the next one!