Another great SABSA World event last week! An informative talk about cyber resilience and an open discussion that started from the common issue of how to get started with an ESA before covering diverse topics such as communicating with and influencing stakeholders and combining security architecture with agile development. Many thanks to our speaker, Anton Tkachov, and our hosts for the evening KPMG. We’re hoping to hold our next event in late June or early July so get in touch if you have a proposal or can offer us a room.
SABSA World London was conceived in a bar at the SABSA World Congress in 2017. In hindsight that was at a time of a great explosion of security meet ups in London. What do we offer when there are so many other good quality meet ups in London? Wiktionary lists two options of collective noun for a group of architects – argument and confusion. I think anyone at our event last week would disagree with both. Our first event back in 2017 was in effect a reprise of two talks from the world congress for a local audience. While that was a strong proposition, it is unsustainable, and we’ve broadened out to include a workshop on trust, an open discussion on the direction of the SABSA institute and last week an open forum discussion for the first time. One of the hardest challenges many security architects face is working alone and having an opportunity to meet other architects and discuss problems is of huge value. At SABSA World a better collective noun is a collaboration of security architects.
To anyone wishing there was something similar in their region I’d encourage you to have a go at organising something. We’ve been fortunate with venues and speakers in London and have followed a fairly structured approach, but we’re open to organising unstructured events. If our last event demonstrates anything it is that if you get a group of architects together in room, they will start interesting discussions and go in directions you likely couldn’t have foreseen. So why not arrange a meet up in a bar, see who comes and work out what will work for you. The institute can help you with promoting the event and with registration if that is applicable. Building a local community of SABSA minded architects with shared experience delivers real value – now where have I heard that before?