If IT security is your main focus, then the Black Hat conference, which takes place regularly in Las Vegas, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Washington D.C., may be a destination you should consider.

Jordan Wiens, UF senior security engineer, attended Black Hat 2007 in Las Vegas. As reported in this article, Wiens also attended DefCon 15, another "hacker" conference. "Black Hat has much of the same content as DefCon, but because it is much more 'corporate', you also get to meet with all of the security vendors, the people who make the tools you use."

The Black Hat Briefings, as it is known, is also a smaller gathering, with approximately 4,000 attendees to DefCon's 7,000, perhaps because of its significantly higher cost, according to Wiens. "What makes Black Hat stand out is the really in-depth security presentations," said Wiens.

According to the company's website, topics are diverse and range from RFID Security, Windows Vista Exploits, Forensics and Anti-Forensics, Root-Kits, Zero Day Vulnerabilities, Anomaly Detection, Hardware Hacking and much more.

If you won't be able to make it to the next Black Hat gathering (scheduled for Tokyo in October of this year), don't worry. Much of the audio and video components of the Black Hat briefings are made public on their site.