It’s always good to step outside of your usual bubble and try something new every once and a while. I recently took this step and submitted for the AppSec USA 2015 conference happening in San Francisco on September. My topic? PHP security, naturally but it’s to a much more diverse audience. At PHP conferences its easy to take a lot of things for granted. You’re able to assume that most of the people in the room are developers and understand what PHP’s all about and have at least a little experience with it. At AppSec I don’t really have that guarantee so it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.

Here’s my prospectus for those that are interested:

PHP Security, Redefined

Let’s be honest, PHP has had a rocky history with security. Over the years the language has been highly criticized for it’s lack of a focus on security and secure development practices. In more recent years, however, a resurgence has happened in the language and community, bringing secure development back into focus. With PHP 7 on the horizon, the language is making even more strides to improve some of its wayward ways of the past and reinvent itself. I’ll share practical code examples, tools, libraries and best practices that are making it easier than ever to keep PHP applications safe.

Come along with me as I guide you through both the language improvements and community encouragement making PHP a more secure place.

I’m hoping that, while the talk is more specifically about PHP security, that it will also be a good platform to help some in the information security community shatter some of their own misconceptions about PHP (ones that are probably stuck in the late PHP 4 to early PHP 5 days). I’m excited to get to talk about PHP7 too which, if all goes well, should be in its final stages by the time the conference rolls around in September.

When I got the acceptance email, I felt that same feeling down in the pit of my stomach I felt when I first was accepted to php[tek] so many years ago. Now it’s a good feeling, though – one that’s more excitement than worry, more encouragement than stress.