Hackathon

Can Alexa help keep your network secure?

That's the question! This year at IT/Dev Connections, we'll be bringing together our two diverse attendee groups to create an Enterprise-class Alexa skill!

Community Delivery: The IT/Dev Connections 2017 Hackathon is designed as a community event to bring together two different types of attendees (developers and IT Pros) to work together to produce a workable result.

Team Requirements: Must consist of both developers and IT Pros. IT Pros need knowledge of the Windows logs, logs format, security systems, and security mechanics. Developers need knowledge of Alexa APIs, AWS Lambda, file formats Alexa can understand, and how to deliver voice commands.

Project Goal: A service will run on a Windows PC/Server that retrieves security events from the event log. It will locate the security events that are critical and export them to an applicable file format (possibly XML) that can be read by Alexa. The file will then be delivered to a web location on a schedule where Alexa pulls it in and can read the daily updated file when queried. Examples of queries: “Alexa, are there any security problems I need to address today?” “Alexa, is our environment secure?” etc. EXTRA CREDIT: Using Amazon's new notification API, the skill could notify the security staff when more critical security issues (such as intrusions) are happening in real time.

When: The Hackathon will be announced directly at the end of the opening comments at the kick-off party for IT/Dev Connections 2017 on Monday – October 23 – evening. (6:00pm-8:30pm Kick-off Community Event/Welcome Reception). The Hackathon will continue throughout the week with the winning team announcement (and demo) on Thursday, October 26. During the winner announcement, teams will discuss the steps they took to come up with their solution, describe how far they got, talk about any difficulties, and demo the final product.

Signup Details: Sign up will take place on-site during the conference.