OWASP held its annual international event in New York at the Park Plaza Hotel in September. With about 650 attendees, it set a new record by almost doubling the attendance from the last year's event in San Jose. Many people braved the obscene hotel rates of New York (typical during the Fall season) and represented various geographies within the U.S. but also from all over the world. The enthusiasm around Web application security is contagious. People were very energized and most of the sessions (3 concurrent tracks on both days) were packed with the audience. Topics ranged from Google Hacking to Forrester Research to PCI to things you need to know about appsec employment (most employers were trying to keep their employees away from that session). The industry panel with representatives from Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, DTCC, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Barclays Capital, and Euronet was interesting - thankfully the questions were around app security only. All the slides, pictures, and videos will soon be up on the OWASP site. Check them out. A reasonable and manageable number of sponsor vendors on the trade show floor including my company Cenzic, that displayed their latest technolgies and had good discussions with the potential buyers. All in all, I thought Tom Brennan, the NY Chapter leader and the team did a great job of hosting the event with limited resources. With a few minor glitches here and there the event ran smoothly with excellent content, good location, and great participation. Now, only if he had gotten a 50% subsidy on the hotel rooms - just slide it into the bail-out bill ;-) I am amazed but not surprised with the enthusiasm of all the volunteers of OWASP (I happen to be a volunteer as well). It's a non-profit organization run by all volunteers with one purpose - build awareness for Web application security. The board members including Jeff Williams, Dinis Cruz, Dave Wichers, Tom Brennan, and Sebastien Deleersynder along with a very small adminstrative staff of Kate Hartmann, Paulo Coimbra, and Alison Shrader have done a great job of growing this organization into a successful and credible association. All the chapter leaders in each region in the U.S. and in each continent dedicate their time and energy to OWASP's cause and to make it even more succesful. My challenge, as the chapter leader for the San Francisco Bay Area, is to double the attendance we had in New York next year when the annual conference comes back to the West in 2009. I'm looking for volunteers! by
Mandeep Khera, Chief Marketing Officer
Mandeep@cenzic.com | 
