CMHSecLunch is Monday & a Quick Question

Just a reminder that CMHSecLunch is Monday, December 9th at North Market. The party starts at 11:30am Eastern and will run through about 1pm Eastern. Come on out and hang with us! 

We usually eat upstairs on the side nearest High Street and the end near the elevator. Look for a group of security geeks hanging out in that area and sit down for a snack and a chat.

Hope to see you then!

And now for the quick question. What would you think of also having a webex during the same period of time for those who are unable to attend physically or who are friends who have moved away? If that would interest you and you might enjoy it, drop me a line on Twitter and let me know (@lbhuston). I am considering this, but I won’t pouch forward unless at least 10 people ping me on Twitter or some other way. 

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you on the 9th!

** You can find out more about the event or RSVP by visiting our eventbrite site here

CMHSecLunch for December is the 9th

Just a reminder that the CMHSecLunch for December will be on the 9th at North Market. As always, admission is free and everyone is welcome. Come on out and see your friends.

As usual, to RSVP and let others know you are attending, or to view more information about the event, you can visit the eventbrite site here.

See you there! Or, on Twitter with the hashtag #CMHSecLunch if you can’t make it or are out of the Columbus area. The more the merrier!

Brent Huston to Lead ICS/SCADA Honeypot Webinar with SANS

Our Founder and CEO, Brent Huston (@lbhuston) will be leading a SANS webinar on ICS/SCADA honeypots. The webinar is scheduled for November, 25th, 2013 and you can find more information and register by visiting this page.

The webinar will cover when honeypots are and are not useful, basic deployment strategies and insights into using them for detection in field deployments and control environments. 

Check it out, tune in and give Brent a shout out on Twitter. Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoy the webinar.

Thanks for Making the 3rd Mid-West ICS/SCADA Security Symposium a Success

Thanks to the attendees and speakers who participated yesterday in the 3rd Annual ICS/SCADA Security Symposium. It was another great event and once again, the center of the value was in the interactions of the audience with the speakers and each other. It’s great to hear asset owners discuss what is working, what is challenging and what is critical in their minds.

Thanks again to those who attended and contributed to making this event such a wonderful thing again this year. We appreciate it and we can’t wait until next year to do it all again.

Thank YOU!

CMHSecLunch is Monday, November 11th

Mark your calendars now!!!!

The next CMHSecLunch is Monday, November 11th at the Tuttle Mall food court! Starts at 11:30 and runs to about 1 PM.

Come out and see your old friends, make some new ones and generally have a little InfoSec FUN!!!!!!

This is even a great food court, with COFFEE and ICE CREAM!!!! Fun and dessert!!!! mmmmmmmmmm 🙂

Sign up here, or just drop by and surprise us all! 🙂 

See ya then! 

Come Out and See Us at NE Ohio Security Summit

Brent will be speaking at the NEO Security Summit again this year. He will be concluding his set of presentations on the History of Cybercrime and Toffler’s Cell Theory as its basis. TheSummit is October 24-25, 2103 in Westlake, Ohio. 

Brent speaks on Thursday at 1:15 PM in “The Champagne Room A”. (Get the thought out of your mind.. You know what Chris Rock says… NSFW…)

This is the 11th annual Summit for NEO and it has history of being a fabulous, affordable event. Come out and learn some stuff, get a ton of CPEs and re-connect with old friends. You can find out more about the event and register here. 

As always, thanks for reading and we hope to see you at the event!

UPDATE: Looks like I’ll be doing back to back sessions on Thursday at NEO Summit: 1:15 Crime History in Champagne A, 2:30 Defensive Tampering in Bordeax A. Come out and see me. That’s 2 chances in one day to get your heckle on!!!!

Save The Date: Midwest ICS/SCADA Security Symposium 2013

Just a quick announcement that the 3rd annual Midwest ICS/SCADA Security Symposium date has been announced. We will be holding the event on November 14th, 2013 in Columbus, Ohio.

It is a single track, single day event which is highly focused on peer to peer interaction between asset owners, utilities, manufacturers and other interested parties. The attendees usually span the various types of ICS asset holders from water, power, natural gas, chemical, automated manufacturing and other critical infrastructures. The focus is on real world threats, changing regulatory guidance, what controls work and work less, scenarios and tactics that have helped improve security and overall changes in protection strategies in the last 12 months.

The conversations are often candid, to the point and the open forum leads to passionate and real world discussions.

All attendees are vetted to ensure confidentiality and maintain focus on real content minus vendor sales pitches. The cost to attend is FREE and coffee, snacks and lunch is provided.

To learn more about the event or to qualify for an invitation, please drop us a line via email (info A T microsolved D O T com) or via aTwitter (@lbhuston or @microsolved). If you have attended or qualified in the past for the event, your invitation will be forthcoming shortly.

Speaker selection is now underway, so watch this blog for the agenda in the near future. 

Three Talks Not To Miss at DerbyCon

 

Here are three talks not to miss this year at DerbyCon:

1. Bill Sempf (@sempf) presents a talk about pen-testing from a developer’s point of view. (PS – He has a stable talk too, catch it if you sell stuff in the Windows store) His work is great and he is a good presenter and teacher. Feel free to also ask him questions about lock picking in the hallways. He is a wealth of knowledge and usually friendly after a cup of coffee in the morning. Beware though, if he asks you to pick the lock to get to the pool on the roof… This talk is Saturday at 6pm. 

2. Definitely catch @razoreqx as he talks about how he is going to own your org in just a few days. If you haven’t seen his bald dome steaming while he drops the knowledge about the nasty stuff that malware can do now, you haven’t lived. I hear he also may give us a bit of secret sauce about what to expect from malware in the next 6 months. You might wanna avoid the first couple of rows of seating in this talk. He often asks for “voluntolds” from the audience and you might not look good in the Vanna White dress… His chrome dome presents on Friday at 7pm.

3. Don’t miss the Keynote by @hdmoore. His keynotes are always amazing and this time it appears he is going to teach you how to port scan the entire Internet, all at once and all in an easy to manage tool and timeframe. He probably will astound you with some of his results and the things he has seen in his research. It’s worth it! The Keynote is Friday at 9am. Yes, 9am in the morning. It rolls around twice a day now… I know… 🙂

Lastly, if you want to see me speak, you can find me on Friday at 1pm as I discuss and unveil the Stolen Data Impact Model (SDIM) project. Check it out! 

PS – There will be plenty of hallway talk and shenanigans at the con. Come out and sit down and chat. I can’t wait to talk to YOU and hear what you have to say about infosec, threats, the future or just what your thoughts are on life. Seriously… I love the hang out. So, drop down next to me and have a chat! See you this weekend!

 PSS – Yes, I might wear my “hippy hacker”/”packet hugger” shirt. Don’t scream “Packet Hugger” at me in the hallway, please, it hurts my feelings…. 

Hello from DayCon!

I have spent some time this week at DayCon in Dayton, Ohio. This is a small hacker conference, with attendance by invitation only. This year the event was focused on attack sources, emerging trends and new insights into the cutting edge of dealing with cyber-crime across many vertical markets and countries.

I speak later today, and I am focusing on the history of cyber-crime, the crime stream, the criminal value chain and how information coalesces before an attack. I look forward to my talk, especially given how engaged the crowd has been thus far with the other speakers. The hallway conversations have been great! 

Lots of variety in the speakers here, with professors, researchers, hackers and even some ICS/SCADA folks in attendance. Lots of good insights floating around and even a few new product ideas!

I’d highly suggest you check out DayCon next year.

PS – Also, looking at the calendar, we are prepping for DerbyCon next week. Come out and see us there. I will be speaking on the Stolen Data Impact Model (SDIM) project and other topics. Plus, as usual, we will be haunting the halls and swinging from the rafters! 🙂 See you in Louisville! 

3 Reasons I Believe in #CMHSecLunch

Around a year ago, (I know, it is hard to believe it has been a year), I started a quick and informal meet up group in Columbus, called #CMHSecLunch. The idea was simple:

  • Re-Create the “Hallway Con” effect on a monthly basis.

In this scenario, the Hallway Con is the best part of security events. It’s the one where you see old friends, make new ones and have great, warm and personal connections with them. I believe this is the core of why security events and conferences are so valuable. Beyond the skills training, marketing hype and presentations ~ the value of friendship, camaraderie and personal relationships remain.

Thus, I thought, what better way to encourage that part, than organizing events that focus on those goals. And thus, #CMHSecLunch was born. We have been meeting on the second Monday of each month at a rotating mall food court around the city. Response has been great! Sometimes there are a few of us (4 has been the smallest) and sometimes many of us (around 20 have been the largest meetings). But, people have gotten new jobs, found solutions to difficult security problems, met some new friends and saw people they missed.

Overall, it has been fun, entertaining and worthwhile.

We will be continuing the process into 2014 and here are at least three reasons I believe this approach and the #CMHSecLunch events are worth doing:

  1. I have gotten to see people connect, smile and re-unite for a quick bite of food, some laughs and great conversation. Since I am often referred to as the “Hippy Hacker”, you have to know that this alone makes me happy and makes me believe that the events are worthwhile. Whenever we connect with another and share with the community, good things happen! 
  2. New threats have been discussed that brought to light attacker motives, techniques and the width of their activity. If we don’t have lunch and discuss what we are seeing, then the bad guys win. They win even less, if we also have coffee and dessert afterwards. Nuff said! 🙂
  3. New projects have originated from the #CMHSecLunch discussions. In fact, several new projects. People have aligned, worked out some of their ideas and started working together to build talks, mathematical models, risk documents and various other useful tools. When a bunch of smart people eat and play together, often the outcome is stuff that helps all of us. So, being the origin of projects and stuff that helps the community is a fantastic thing. 

Why haven’t you attended (again)? 🙂

If I still haven’t persuaded you to check out the next #CMHSecLunch, (which you can find by clicking here), how about these quotes from people who have attended the event?

@TSGouge: Interaction with real live human beings, no screens involved! Food, jokes (that only another geek would get), getting my butt out of the office chair, and dialogue more rich than any conference or lecture…these are people who will now reach out and collaborate on problems or projects. To sum it all up: connections with people who get it.

@Cahnee: CMHSecLunch is a great way to get away from the craziness of work and spend time with infosec peers to talk about whats on everyones mind. We talk about current events and what each of us see as challenges facing us both professionally and personaly from an infosec perspectice.  Talk about encryption, mobile devices, NSA, DOD, etc.

@gisobiz: CMHSecLunch is a great thing! You meet with the like-minded people, or like-minded people wannabes and enjoy the food (great or not), but most importantly, the awesome conversation. You will get to know better people you already know, or make new friends.  Talking in an informal friendly environment takes the pressure off “being right” or “saying the right thing” which one encounters in a professional environment. Nobody will laugh at you or criticize you; in fact everyone is interested in your fresh (or stale) perspective on InfoSec or current events related to cyber security or anything else you care to share. And the really best thing is you get to learn from your colleagues, something you may not have an opportunity to learn otherwise.  It is like a miniature “geek” party in the best sense of the word. Or if you like – a mini-Black Hat conference. With food.

So, come on out next month and support the community. Have fun, grab a bite and engage with us, we are waiting for the view and insight that ONLY YOU can provide. Join us!