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A glowing blue Sophos overhead LED sign, one face listing security acronyms, above a Cybersecurity as a Service LED wall and white seating on the show floor

Deep Dive — Black Hat USA 2022 · Las Vegas, NV

Black Hat 2022

The Two Jax booths at Black Hat 2022 were the ones you spotted from across the hall: flown LED signs over Axonius, Sophos, and ReliaQuest, more than seven hundred tiles in all. We ran booth A/V and LED for nine exhibitors and wired dedicated internet across more than thirty booths.

By the numbers

30+
Booths on our network
405 Mbps
Dedicated bandwidth
9
A/V & LED booths
700+
LED tiles deployed
192
Tiles, ReliaQuest's flown LED
96
Tiles, Sophos's overhead sign
40 × 50 ft
IBM's networking lounge
7
Days on site

You could find the Two Jax booths by looking up. Our LED flew over the 2022 floor: a four-sided sign over ReliaQuest, a green cube over Mimecast, a ninety-six-tile banner over Sophos, more than seven hundred tiles in all. We built and ran booth A/V and LED for nine exhibitors.

Underneath all of it ran the quieter half of the job: dedicated, hardwired internet for more than thirty booths, pulled by the same crew that hung the signs.

Axonius: big, and a little playful

The illuminated Axonius logo sculpture with glowing white lobes and an orange hub, the upper deck and Axonius sign behind it, under an overhead LED strip
The Axonius booth, lit from above.

Over the Axonius booth we hung two eighteen-foot LED strips running rotating one-liners, from "How does Amy Bream control complexity?" to "What does Simone Biles have to do with cybersecurity?" Below them, two seamless walls of forty-six-inch displays ran live demos.

We also built them a working podcast studio on the floor: cameras, audio, lighting, and a crew running picture-in-picture playback. A booth that produced its own content while the show happened around it.

An Axonius booth with an overhead black LED strip running a rotating question, an illuminated cross-shaped logo sculpture, a black reception desk, and a monitor wall The two-story Axonius booth from the aisle, with a backlit Axonius sign on the suspended black LED canopy, the lit sculpture beside an open staircase, and demo touchscreens An Axonius booth corner with the canopy sign and an overhead LED strip running a cybersecurity question, the logo sculpture at right A close view of the Axonius upper deck with a red-to-orange backlit panel reading Complexity is inevitable, control it with Axonius, a wall monitor, and a demo table

Sophos: a sign you read like a word cloud

The Sophos booth with a large blue overhead LED cube sign, a blue demo wall, angled touchscreen kiosks, and white cube seating on a blue floor
Sophos, over the aisle.

Sophos flew a sign you could read from across the hall. Our ninety-six-tile LED cube hung over the booth, one face cycling the industry's alphabet soup of MDR, XDR, SASE, and EDR, the next just reading SOPHOS. A "Cybersecurity as a Service" LED wall anchored the floor below, with booth audio and a hardwired line to keep it all running.

The Sophos booth with the overhead cube showing the Sophos shield logo, a demo wall, a reception counter, and attendees in the booth

ReliaQuest: the heaviest build on the floor

The ReliaQuest booth with a blue overhead LED banner reading Security Operations Platform, the ReliaQuest sign, a demo wall, and a backlit counter
ReliaQuest's flown LED, four sides over the booth.

ReliaQuest ran the biggest single LED build of our week. A four-sided sign flew over the booth, one hundred ninety-two tiles cycling the brand's message on every face, with a smaller LED wall, custom lighting, and four demo stations below. A frosted-glass briefing room sat off to one side for private conversations.

Like every booth we touched, it sat on a hardwired line we pulled and locked down ourselves.

The ReliaQuest booth corner with a black overhead canopy, the teal logo, and an enclosed briefing room with frosted-glass walls An upward view of the ReliaQuest four-sided flown LED sign with Make Security Possible and Manage Risk panels above a demo kiosk An upward angle of the ReliaQuest overhead sign reading Make Security Possible, with a demo panel and a backlit counter below The ReliaQuest booth from the aisle showing the blue LED banner, the canopy sign, and a demo kiosk, with a neighboring booth at left

Mimecast: green, and overhead

The Mimecast booth with a large white overhead hanging sign above a blue Work Protected valance, a Work Protected LED wall, a bar counter, and blue floor uplighting
The Mimecast cube, hung overhead.

Mimecast went up. A green mimecast cube flew over the booth with a one-hundred-twenty-tile LED array on its underside, a curved eleven-by-five LED wall anchored the presentation area, and three demo LED towers carried session content out toward the aisles.

The Mimecast booth from the aisle showing the suspended sign and blue cube, and a tall red curved LED tower listing session times The Mimecast booth with the overhead sign's underside LED array, a curved demo LED wall on a faceted base, and the counter at left A wide view of the Mimecast booth showing the hanging sign, three vertical demo LED towers, and a red overview screen A low upward angle of the Mimecast overhead LED array showing a bright green graphic on its underside, with a red LED wall at right

Human: framed in LED

The Human booth with a white overhead canopy carrying two Human logos, a magenta-to-purple LED wall reading 350 Algorithms, foliage panels, and purple accent lighting
Human, framed in LED.

Human wrapped the booth in screen. A seven-by-five LED wall ran the headline numbers, and two tall vertical walls, two wide by seven high, framed the space in the brand's Modern Defense content, with touchscreens for the hands-on demos.

The Human booth interior with a curved overhead arch, a purple Modern Defense LED wall, hanging spherical lights, and Human banners The Human booth from the side showing a suspended Human logo sign, a tall vertical graphic tower, and a portrait LED panel

IBM: a lounge, through an old partner

The IBM Security booth with a circular white overhead ring carrying the IBM Security logo, a clear strip-curtain privacy wall, white lounge seating, and a wall monitor
The IBM Lounge, built through George P. Johnson.

IBM came to us through George P. Johnson, the exhibit house we have worked with for years, and the brief was a lounge. We built the IBM Lounge as a forty-by-fifty networking space: an eight-by-four LED wall, a run of monitors, a dozen iPads and a bank of laptops for hands-on demos, all behind a printed strip curtain carrying IBM's eye-bee-M motif. IBM also took its own dedicated twenty-megabit line, kept separate from the show network.

The IBM Security lounge head-on showing the white ring sign, blue vertical posts, a strip curtain, a central counter, wall monitors, and modular seating The IBM Security lounge with the curtain wall printed in IBM eye-bee-M motifs, a Threat-Driven Protection header, and two men on white sofas

Rapid7: two stories of content

The Rapid7 booth with a sculpted white overhead canopy carrying the Rapid7 logo, a curved demo wall reading Assess Detect Respond Automate and Be Future Ready, and a lit reception counter
Our LED walls under Rapid7's canopy.

Rapid7 took a big corner under a sculpted canopy. Our part was the content: two LED walls, one of them fine-pitch 1.5-millimeter, running "Assess, Detect, Respond, Automate" and "Be Future Ready" over the demo counters, with booth audio to carry over the floor.

A low upward view of the Rapid7 booth showing two Rapid7 logos on the wavy canopy underside and a Secure the Future demo wall

Under the floor: the network

Most of what we did at Black Hat never made it into a booth photo. More than thirty exhibitors ran on internet we designed, pulled, and supported: dedicated, hardwired lines mapped booth by booth, more than four hundred megabits of uplink in all, each booth on its own managed switch behind a security gateway.

At a show where the public Wi-Fi is treated as a live threat, a hardwired line you control is not a convenience. It is the job.

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