Steve Durning On Black Hat MEA's Record-Breaking 2024 Event

“If you come to Black Hat MEA, you'll experience cyber in a way that you won't in other shows.” 

So said Steve Durning, the exhibition director at Tahaluf who was responsible for organizing Black Hat MEA, in an interview with Inc. Arabia on the sidelines of the event, which ran from November 26-28 at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre in Malham, Saudi Arabia.

Durning pointed to how Black Hat MEA 2024 has pushed the boundaries of innovation, fostering meaningful collaboration, and sparking dynamic knowledge exchange in the global cybersecurity world. “An event like Black Hat MEA helps position Saudi as a hub for cybersecurity by offering a hand in partnership to the world to come here," he noted. 

Organized by Tahaluf in partnership with the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming, and Drones (SAFCSP), the latest edition of Black Hat MEA broke records as the world’s largest cybersecurity expo by size, occupying over 53,000 square meters of floor space. In its third year, the three-day event opened with an executive summit that headlined topics like the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in cybersecurity, evolving cyber threats, and even the complexities of hacking in space. 

Durning highlighted how Black Hat MEA serves the event series -- which also features mega events in Las Vegas and London -- with this year's edition welcoming 350 speakers and 450 brands, 80 percent of which were international. 

This year’s edition also featured the region’s largest Capture the Flag hacking competition that was organized by the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity Programming and Drones, which brought 1,200 of the world's top hackers to Saudi Arabia to compete for a grand prize of SAR 1,000,000 (US$266,146). 

Durning also noted how the exhibition aimed to connect education and real-world application and cultivate the next generation of cyber leaders through Black Hat Campus, which offers a content-focused setting that unites top vendors, universities, and consultancies in engaging sessions. “We have some of our biggest chief security officers sitting on the campus and having one-to-one sessions with some very young people in the Kingdom, which is an opportunity that doesn't happen very often,” he said. 

Looking ahead, Durning shared his aspiration for the show becoming a center point where all the tools are available to entrepreneurs to launch a startup in the cybersecurity space. “We want to be on this journey with people from the very beginning of their careers to launching companies," he added. 

Eager to know more? Check the full interview for more insights.