Giving my first Cyber Security Talk

Now the title is quite misleading… but it isn’t fully inaccurate.

On April 1st I gave a presentation on how Capture The Flag (CTF) events work, which was a bit of a curve-ball for me since I was expecting to actually present it. I had helped behind the scenes to create them but was thinking our MC would be presenting it.

How It Went

Considering I had never given a cyber security presentation before (aside from a university assignment), I would say it could’ve gone a lot worse. Did I ramble for some parts? Yes. Did I maintain consistent eye contact with the audience? No. Did people actually find it helpful? No clue.

In terms of audience engagement, they did look very engaged which probably increased my anxiety about it, but I had to solider on. At some point, I had also forgotten the order of the slides, which made it difficult to figure out what parts I could talk about ahead of time.

Halfway through however I found my rhythm and found it easier to speak to everyone and started slowing down my normal fast talking. Nerves finally calmed down, I could continue with the presentation.

Was it helpful? I don’t know. I believe it cleared it up for a lot of people coming in, but for many it was information they already knew, aside from maybe the tools we listed.

Retrospective

Do I think I can do better? 100%

I’m kind of looking forward for the next talk I can give, and hopefully improve it a lot more as well. There’s still a lot for me to learn about it but I think with a more practice, it might even become easy. Who know’s maybe I can give a talk at a hacker conference. But that’s a long way away.