ITpalooza 2014

Here in my local area, we have an event aimed at IT people during the holidays called ITpalooza.  Now in it's third year, this event aims to bring together the various user groups and professional associations, along with vendors and recruiters, and have various speakers.

ITpalooza 2014 will be held December 4th at Nova Southeastern University.  It runs all day, with speakers, training, fun stuff and more.

Check out the website.  The event is FREE.

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2014

For those not aware, October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month.

"NCSAM is designed to engage and educate public and private sector partners through events and initiatives with the goal of raising awareness about cybersecurity and increasing the resiliency of the nation in the event of a cyber incident. October 2014 marks the 11th annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security in cooperation with the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC)."

Now, locally, Nova Southeastern University's Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences is hosting a series of events that tie in with NSCAM.

Among their public events are:

* September 30- FBI Special Presentation on "Cyber Security Threats and Trends"
* October 22- DHS Special Presentation on Cybersecurity: A Shared Responsibility

In addition, they have had other events for selected groups, like high school students and college students.

What is happening locally for you??

SL Powers IT Security Lunch & Learn event

Tying in with my recent posting on getting involved with local security events, today I attending a "lunch and learn" event organized by one of our local IT services companies, SL Powers.   They apparently do these events in our local area about once a month, in different locations.  This one had two presentations, both were pretty good.

First up, we had Silka Gonzalez, President & CEO of Enterprise Risk Management, a local company focused on helping their clients with risk management and assessments.  She gave a good overview of some of the various regulatory compliance standards out there that many of us have to deal with:  GLBA, FACTA, SoX, HIPAA/HITECH, FERPA, FISMA, and PCI-DSS.  What I particularly liked was how she pointed out the similarities among many of these, and what are the basic underlining concepts that are common in all of them.

The second talk was by Tom Leffingwell of Juniper Networks.  Now, I have known Juniper as a competitor to Cisco in terms of networking equipment.  What I wasn't aware of was their work in the area of network security.  So it was good to learn more about what they do in this area.  As with these kinds of presentations, you run the risk of being more a sales pitch then a technical overview, and I think he did a good job of staying more technical then sales.

I will keep my eye out for further sessions like these.  SL Powers also has a series of sessions called "Tech on Tap", which also sounds interesting.

I found out about this event via Eventbrite.  If you aren't familiar with this site, check it out.  Great way to find out about events in your area, both free and fee.  As IT people, we need to keep up our skills, so attending these events have multiple benefits.