OPCDE 2017 Recap
The first purely technical cybersecurity conference in the Middle-East!
As a cyber security company being based in the Middle-East Dubai, It is Comae Technologies aspiration to enhance the awareness and importance of information security within the information technology community and help enliven the local information security fraternity and encourage students to take up professions such as reverse engineering. we wanted to do something different that made a difference in the region.
We decided it was important to refuse sponsored talks, and nontechnical presentations as we do not see any value in events focused on sales and marketing. We believe in growing ecosystems. One of the key measures of this is sharing knowledge and learning. Every presentation submitted to OPCDE went through a rigorous review board this method worked well.
We had 15+ talks by 20 highly distinguished international speakers from all over the world sharing their research. From leading companies such as Mandiant/FireEye, Veracode, Ncc Labs, Trend Micro (zero Days initiative), Intel, roots9B, and much more.
It gives us immeasurable pleasure that OPCDE conference was every success we hoped it would be. We had 200 attendees 30% women all with professions such as Reverse Engineering, Web Security, Digital Forensics, Network Security, IT specialist, Risk management, software Developers, Security Architects, Penetration testers, Government Employees, Programmers and more!
Other highlights from our side events such as the UAE National CTF consisted of 25 students The winning team 0xPharaohs, came from the American University of Sharjah, received a cash prize of $5,000 USD sponsored by Dell Secureworks.
The secondary team KU1337, from Khalifa University, won the UAE Rising Star cash prize of $2,000 USD sponsored by noon.
Medals went to the runners-up Team ShadowBrokers that included a player that was only 12 years old. The ladies in the team also managed to resolve the online crackme previously available online.
Our roundtable where students got to ask some of our speaker’s industry questions turn out to have an 80% female attendance go ladies!
All this would not have been possible without our supporters Namely our strategic partner Dubai government entity, Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC), whose mission is to make Dubai the safest electronic city in the world. And our community Partner Dubai government entity Dubai future Accelerators. Whose mission it is to push Dubai forward!
