AWS All Builders Welcome Grant & re:Inforce Newbie

Earlier this year, I was excited to learn that I was one of ~fifty applicants selected to receive the inaugural AWS All Builders Welcome Grant to attend the 2024 AWS re:Inforce Conference held in Philadelphia, PA in June of 2024.

Once upon a time, I imagined my tech career would revolve around computer graphics. In reality, I have been slowly migrating to securing cloud applications. My latest contract work to support the future of CISA Secure Cloud Business Applications (SCuBA) earned me the opportunity to apply for the All Builders Welcome Grant. As a veteran attendee of AWS re:Invent, I found the re:Inforce conference accessible with more options to hop between sessions if my first choice was full. Join me in a re-cap of re:Inforce!

Monday, June 10, 2024

Arriving at the Conference on Monday to meet fellow All Builders Welcome (ABW) Grant recipients was awesome! This was not your typical meet and greet, and the facilitation was excellent. We divided up into groups of 10 so we could get to know each other and answered prompts about who we were, and what brought us to the technical security field. I made new friends and had folks to run into and eat lunch with for the rest of the conference. It was a terrific start to the day. During the break, before the conference started, I visited the Franklin Institute to check out the "Art of the Brick" exhibit.
If you love legos like I do, then it was a nice opportunity to see artistic expression using legos. I recommend the experience.

The remainder of the afternoon was visiting sessions, including:
COM322 - Improving your Amazon S3 Security with cost-effective practices by Brian Tarbox. This was a nice take on Infrequent Access and how it can be used for cost savings

TDR302 - Detecting and responding to threats in generative AI workloads. This breakout session provided an overview of securing Amazon Bedrock using GuardDuty and Security Hub.

APS303 - Strengthen open source software supply chain security: Log4Shell to xz. If it weren't for my colleague, I wouldn't have attended this presentation and it was definitely one of my favorites! I learned that Rust is the open source language with the most growth. I wound up meeting David Nalley after the event as part of the AWS Community Builders group and it turns out we live in the same state and I will be inviting him down for one of our Columbia AWS User Group meetings.

Tuesday, June 11, 2024

Today - I joined fellow ABW folks for breakfast at our hotel

and then went to the Keynote.

There were a number of interesting facts shared, specifically that S3 has over 350 Trillion objects. This was trivia in a later session and "Encrypting Everything" that I attended and confirmed people did remember what was said during the keynote.. I appreciated the guest speaker, Ash Edmondson from Eli Lilly. She is the AVP of Security Architecture & Engineering. I enjoyed her talk about using security cameras to check on her pet while she was traveling. It was a great analogy for why cloud security is important as well as the concept of Trust and the different levels associated with trusting your friend to watch your dog and the level of trust you want in a cloud service provider.

I also attended a great session, ABW101: Diversity & Accessibility in the age of Generative AI. It did an impressive job of highlighting how those with different abilities need to be considered in the GenAI discussion. Kudos to Amani Johnson for presenting a great talk!

I attended DAP331 - Encrypt Everything: How different AWS services help you protect data. This was a great session that reminded me why I studied so hard for the AWS Security Specialty certification. Most of what was discussed was from my studies for that exam, and made me feel like I needed to hurry up and recertify.

I joined the gathering of WiCyS folks in the Expo Hall and learned about how I could support them as a WiCyS member at an upcoming conference.

Additionally, I have been working on a use case with Generative AI, and found the "Chaos Kitty: Security Battleground Edition", BLD206, exhibit that used Amazon Bedrock to parse through security procedures to find poorly secured infrastructure. It was great to see this type of gamified learning enabled through Amazon Bedrock.

I ended the day in an Executive Security simulation for Responsible Generative AI Usage, TNC294. The team I joined came in last, which was great because we learned a lot about how AWS views the approach to Responsible AI usage. I am still waiting on the read out from the session, and I can't wait for it to be ready.

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

I wasn't able to attend many sessions due to work meetings that required travel to DC, but I am watching a few things on demand now that my travels have wound down.

Overall, this was a great experience, and a refreshing one to engage with more of the secure cloud technologies. The presentations I witnessed helped me prepare for my AWS Community Lounge speaking engagement at the AWS DC Summit. (More on that in another post)