I know there are a few guys here that couldn't go to defcon this year. We went again and won the Badge Challenge again, 3 years in a row. Here is this years write up http://elegin.com/dc22/
current favs are:
dogfish head; "burton baton" and "90 IPA"
Stone ; "Stone Ruination IPA" and self-righteous black IPA"
If you haven't had them give them a try.
This cracks me up. It will either never come out or should be out since the whole game is beta anyway. How bad is it for them to delay. My theory; it actually works and they have to go back and put in bugs.
Get a some sort of cert first to make sure it is what you want to get into. It sounds like you are interested locking down layer 7 which is just firewall stuff or app specific configuration ( cisco ) .
If you want to find security holes and fix them that is a whole different beast. Download...