The number of "security industry professionals" at the ISC West 2023 (see show report) surged over last year, with the show reporting 27,000+ attendees. Positively for the show, the subset of actual attendees increased even faster. To explain, this we start by looking at 3 groups of reported numbers that are often done.
(1) Registrants - this is all the people that register online (often for free) saying they plan to go to the show. ASIS deceptively reports this which materially inflates and distorts the real number (a significant minority of online registrants do not actually come to the show). This is also the reason why some people at the show said the 2023 show actually had more attendees than pre-COVID, because they conflated registrants with those actually at the show.
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