October 2009 Archives

Over on his blog, Matt Johansen announces the startup of IsleSec. Rather than paraphrasing, here is his post verbatim:

"For those of you who are familiar with CitySec meetups, I've been pondering starting up IsleSec here on Long Island. I know there is NYSec in the city but it is a hike for us islanders.

For those of you unfamilar with CitySec meetups, they are informal meetups of local security professionals at whatever bar will tolearate us. It is a great way to meet others in the community and grow your professional network. To quote Chris Hoff while talking about BeanSec up in Boston: "Unlike other meetings, you will not be expected to pay dues, "join up", present a zero-day exploit, or defend your dissertation to attend." Show up, get some wings, drink some beer and add to your business card collection.

I wanted to write a quick post to see if there is any interest around to meet up to make sure I'm not sitting at a bar drinking alone. Feel free to post comments here or hop on the Google Group to express interest.

Judging by people's location who are interested we can adjust the bar location as necessary. I vote we start at Croxley's Ale House in Farmingdale. Following the model of other CitySec meetings we will start by meeting the third Wednesday of every month which works out perfectly because Croxley's has a 10 cent wing special on Wednesdays.

So what this all comes down to is that the first IsleSec meetup will be at 6:00 PM on Novermber 18th at Croxley's Ale House 190 Main St Farmingdale, NY 11735 (516) 293-7700. (Get Directions).

If you plan on coming please leave a comment or send out a message in the Google Group so that I know I should show up. (I'll probably show up anyway just in case but it would be nice to know ahead of time.)"

If you are a Long Island information security professional, please consider joining the li-infosec mailing list.

The Learning Tree generously hosted a SANS COINS event in New York City last week. The COINS program (community of interest in network security) allows organizations to invite a SANS instructor to deliver a presentation or teach a class on a specific topic. The COINS events typically bring together individuals with a passion for the security field.

Of all the professional events that I attended, this one had by far the most fantastic view of the Statue of Liberty with the Verrazzano bridge in the background and the New Jersey coastline. The 30^th floor of One New York Plaza, New York, NY might just do that :)

The event itself was attended by about twenty participants, which gave it a nice level of direct interaction. Ed Skoudis, SANS Faculty and one of the founders of InGuardians, presented a though-provoking talk titled The Bad Guys are Winning: So Now What? about the changing information security landscape.

Many organizations expect security professionals to be generalists who are able to perform internal pentests, audit systems, ensure compliance, perform incident response and forensics, develop security policy and awareness programs and much more.

One of the key point that Skoudis drove home is that not that not all information security practitioners have to be generalists. For the sake of the presentation, Ed distinguished three main groups: Penetration Testers, Enterprise Security Professionals and Military. Each of these three groups should have different focal areas. For example, a pentester needs to have detailed knowledge and skills of how to identify and exploit vulnerabilities and of how to assess (and communicate) the business risk of those vulnerabilities. An enterprise security specialist must also know about exploiting vulnerabilities, but does not need to possess the same in-depth exploitation skills that pentesters have. Instead, they must be much more familiar with preventing and identifying attacks and responding to them.

In addition to the generalist vs. specialist-discussion, Skoudis covered some more topics.

For me, it was interesting to finally meet the primary author of the material that I teach as a SANS mentor.

Ed Skoudis will be back in New York City from November 2 - November 7, when he will be teaching his course Hacker Techniques, Exploits and Incident Handling bootcamp style.

The SOURCE Boston CFP is now open.

As you may know, SOURCE Boston is one of the premier information security conferences in existence today. The small scale of the conference, combined with the high-quality talks, make it an event that allows participants to meet many highly regarded professionals and attend great talks.

I was fortunate enough to attend last year's event, when a proposal of Adam Dodge and myself to do a talk titled Information Security in Higher Education, Baby Steps was accepted.

This year, I would like to go again and I am planning to submit another talk. I haven't made up my mind yet, but I'd love some suggestions. Is there something that is on your mind and of which you would like to hear more? I'm open for a presentation, a panel, or something else!