The reality is, they are out there. Lurking in the shadows of your company's firewall or in the depths of your WAN, waiting to compromise your infrastructure and access your company's most vital information. The best defense is to arm your staff with the tools and knowledge they need to thwart these shadowy adversaries. The choice is yours. You can live in fear of them. Or you can learn from them.

The Black Hat Briefings, one of the leading computer and Internet security conferences in the United States, brings its unique blend of cutting-edge computer experts and "underground" security specialists to Europe in Amsterdam for the second time this fall. Bigger Hotel, and more talks mark this years show.

Black Hat presents practical security information, without the intrusive vendor pitches that may hamper presentations at other security conferences. The speakers at Black Hat are vendor-neutral experts in their field who concentrate on providing concrete technical details designed to arm your staff with the latest insight into todayâs security issues, giving them the knowledge they need in order to defend your companyâs infrastructure.

Prior to the Black Hat Briefings, Black Hat Training on specific topics are taking place on November 19^th - 20^th.

The conference and training will be held entirely in English. 

The Black Hat Briefings conference series is designed to assist computer professionals in developing a better understanding in order to defend their computer and information infrastructures against potential risks. During the conference, we will assemble a group of vendor-neutral security professionals in the same room and let them talk candidly about the problems businesses face by current security threats and concrete solutions they see to those problems. No gimmicks, just straight talk by people who make it their business to explore the ever-changing security space. 

A strong way to counter security threats is to stay in communication with others, exchanging experiences and ways of counteraction. Supporting this idea, an informal get together at the Kraznapolsky Hotel Bar will be held on the 20th of November 2001 starting at 7 P.M. At this informal cocktail reception you can meet other Black Hat Briefings participants and make contact with personnel from different companies that share your background and concerns, as well as the conference presenters.

The following evening, Nov 21st will be a more formal reception with food and drink. These receptions are a tradition to any Black Hat Briefings Conference and has always provided a strong kickoff to the conference festivities. Again, the exchange on security issues can be intensified. Discussions with the speakers that began in the conference sessions can be continued in a more casual atmosphere. 

All the talks offered at the Black Hat Briefings 2001 Amsterdam will be distributed as printed material and CD-ROM.  The CD-ROM will contain all the presented slides in electronic format (the same materials will be made available after the conference in the Black Hat archives) and provide a collection of security references suggested by the speakers, including an interesting link-selection and tips on literature. A selection of practical tools that have been presented by the speakers will be made available on the CD-ROM as well.