The buzz from Black Hat this year

Every year in the heat of the Las Vegas desert is the Black Hat Briefings, the premier computer security conference.  There's always interesting news from the briefings (and from the much less buttoned down conference, DEFCON, which runs immediately afterwards).

So what's the buzz from Black Hat this year?  It seems that Palo Alto Networks had Booth Bunnies at their display booth:

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Now I did my share of manning the booths (yes, I was a Booth Bunny, thank you for asking) back in the '90s and the '00s.  But even in the '90s we were considerably more buttoned down than this, and for good marketing reasons.  Sure, some of the attendees might like the scenery, but some will not - and some of them will very much not like the scenery.  This has been known to be bad conference marketing juju for literally decades.

Of course, the Palo Alto Networks' Chief Marketing Officer had to go full frontal groveling* in his apology:

PAN's chief marketing officer Unnikrishnan KP, or Unni as he's often called, issued his apology earlier this week calling it "tone deaf."

"Last week at Black Hat in Las Vegas, an unfortunate decision was made at a Palo Alto Networks event to have hostesses wear branded lampshades on their heads," he said. "It was tone-deaf, in poor taste, and not aligned with our company values or brand campaign. 

"I take full responsibility for this misjudgment and have addressed it with my team and am taking steps to prevent such misguided actions in the future.

"Please accept my heartfelt apologies for this regrettable incident."

Nikesh Arora, PAN's chairman and CEO, doubled down on the apologies on Tuesday, echoing the points made by Unni, adding that what happened was "unacceptable."

I expect the headcount at Palo Alto Networks' marketing department has gotten a spin.  We apologize again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

* See what I did there?  I crack myself up.