Bob Gourley, The Metaverse: Infinite attack surface and boundless risk

The Metaverse is coming. What is the Metaverse? A massive, infinitely scalable, shared virtual world where land, buildings, bots, avatars and other property can be bought sold and persist. Think of it as the future convergence of all of today's virtual worlds, interconnected with a single settlement layer for totally interoperable transactions.The Metaverse will be accessible by billions via any web browser, mobile device or virtual reality system. All indications are that the metaverse is destined to become a driving force in how humanity interacts with each other. It will influence education, healthcare, government, commerce, and entertainment. How big will the Metaverse be? One indicator is the recent announcement by Mark Zuckerberg that he is shifting Facebook to be a Metaverse company. With all the other major players in delivering Metaverse capabilities today this will very quickly become a trillion dollar market. It will also be an incredibly enticing target for the criminal element.The Metaverse needs the involvement of the security community in ways few are conceptualizing today. This presentation will provide security practitioners with foundational knowledge that will help accelerate the contributions of security professionals to this rapidly developing shared virtual space. About the speaker: Bob Gourley is an experienced enterprise CTO with extensive past performance in optimizing technology in support of global businesses. As CTO of OODA he leads engagements focused on improving the security and functionality of enterprise IT. He also advises clients on technology due diligence and leads the technology research and reporting activities at OODAloop.com Bob is the former CTO for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Bob has received the Infoworld top CTO award and was named one of the top 100 "Tech Titans" in DC by Washingtonian magazine.