Friday, 16 June 2006

After Lawsuit, Cisco Embraces Black Hat

The bad blood between Cisco Systems Inc. and organizers of the Black Hat conference appears to be a thing of the past. One year after suing the hacker conference for allowing security researcher Michael Lynn to disclose a security vulnerability, Cisco is returning to Black Hat -- this time as one of the show's top sponsors. Black Hat USA will be July 29 to Aug. 3 in Las Vegas. "Despite what happened last year we wanted to show our commitment and show our openness to working with the security research community," said John Noh, a Cisco spokesman.

Cisco has sponsored Black Hat in the past, but this is the first time it has shelled out for the show's most expensive "platinum" sponsor status, Noh said. This means that Cisco's name will be prominently displayed on conference materials and that the company will be given sponsorship credit for some of the show events such as coffee breaks.