How do I systematically study network security technology and be able to use it at work?
This stuff changes all the time. Subscribe to some security alerts and newsletters, read the technical descriptions of attacks and exploits, try to reproduce them on your own systems. SANS is not too bad.Go to some conferences. DEFCON in Vegas is great value, though now incredibly popular. BlackHat tours the world, CanSecWest is in Vancouver, I'm sure there are others.On the other hand, some things never change. Read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu.
Should I bring my kid to DefCon 2017?
My Experience is going a long ass time ago, I went probably in 1999. Drove from Sacramento. I am trying to think of what could be inappropriate and unless you think that speakers giving information about exploits. (available on YouTube or other places) would be inappropriate. There is a dance party one night, I don’t remember why we didn’t go to the dance party, it might be because I wasn’t 21 and they wouldn’t let us in.Socializing with other hackers and capture the flag were probably the highlights. Capture the flag is a big network with maybe 5 computers that are targets and you try to get on the root drive and get a image. (I think, its been a while) Before he gets on that CTF network tell him to update his OS and harden the OS as much as possible. Yes there are specific targets but a good portion of people on there target everything, so no credit card info.We also got to benefit from Vegas buffets. We went indoor skydiving. I’m not sure if we were 17 or 18 or a mixture of both.I haven’t gone in so long, I am not sure how it has changed. Besides CTF, it may be a little on the boring side (Your son may be thinking I just listened to a hour speech when I could have gotten the same info with 15 mins on YouTube or a hacker forum) But you bringing your son to a conference is likely to be something he will never forget and is likely to be something he thinks his parent doing was awesome.