I still remember the first time I attended Black Hat. It was back when I was still working for Gartner, and at the time was considered a "rogue" conference that bordered on the illegal due to its occasional inclusion of former convicted hackers on the speaking agenda. Good, clean, white-collar analysts from Gartner most definitely weren't supposed to mingle with the underground, even those of us with hacker roots.
It took all of a nanosecond at the event to realize how wrong those characterizations were, and since then, Black Hat has become such a fixture on my annual calendar that even eighth cousins, thrice removed, know better than to try and schedule anything that week. Black Hat has grown into one of the most significant events in security: one that plays a nearly unique role in our industry by bridging the gap between enterprise security professionals and the researcher/hacker community.

The link for this article located at Dark Reading is no longer available.