DEFCON founder joins the gov’t security establishment
Posted on: June 5, 2009
DEFCON and Black Hat founder Jeff Moss now sits on the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Woah!!!
Moss (aka “Dark Tangent”) will be one of 16 people providing recommendations and advice through the HSAC to the Secretary of Homeland Security. Quite a leap for the guy who started DEFCON as a big party and parlayed the event into big money when he spun up the Black Hat security conferences.
Having followed DEFCON and Moss for a number of years, he’s not one to shy away from controversy and “Speaking truth to power.” In some respects, I can’t say I’m totally surprised; Moss has been inviting “The Feds” to DEFCON over a number of years with current and former employees of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and the Army speaking at DEFCON conferences. The federal security community has a level of comfort working with Moss and they know he’s a pragmatic and a holistic thinker that isn’t bottlenecked into a single practice or discipline.
Perhaps the real surprise is the relative boldness and progressiveness of The Establishment has shown in inviting Moss. We can only but hope that when Moss speaks, The Man takes the time to listen.
Doug on IP Comm - An independent voice on VoIP, telecom, and IP Communication 
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