Welcome everyone to NYC InfraGard's Cyber Defense Initiative of 2009. During the fall of 2009 we will be focusing on developing a number of skills using Video, Audio, White Papers and other materials to support our education and communciation programs that will be ongoing. Look for us to develop more fully a landing page for this initiative as we move forward during 2009 and definitely as 2010 arrives.

We started the year off addressing issues in the Energy Sector, talking with the Cyber Side of the Insurance Industry during February and moved quickly onto CISSP preparation with IP3, then focused in on the national and international aspects that Organized Retail Theft can have on the market place and individuals as well as a wide variety of security and risk management concerns.

During July we held our first Capture the Flag event with wonderful support from White Wolf Security. This was a network security event and just to give you an idea of what people thought about this event we received this post:

Joe,
I wanted to take a moment and thank you, Infragard, Whitewolf Security, Tenable, Core and Cisco for making my first New York Metro Infragard membership meeting so valuable and enjoyable. I had no idea when I joined Infragard that I was about to have access to one of the most informative and realistic training programs I have attended in my 12 years of working in IT operations, security and compliance.
On the second day of the capture the flag training, I decided to sit on the defender (blue cell) side of the room with a few other brave souls. As an IT security professional the thing that really stood out for me in the training was how quickly malicious attacks can be launched against a network. The sophistication of the hacking and attack tools, coupled with the skills that the attackers (red cell), made startlingly quick work of the un-patched and poorly defended blue cell network. The team I was working with simply could not keep up with the speed at which the attackers moved. We would harden a system and move onto the next one only to find that while we were working, the other systems had been compromised. The ‘understaffed’ blue cell really illustrated how challenging it is for security practitioners to secure and protect networks with a low engineer to server ratio.
This day of training has already had direct implications on my Information Security Program and has created a more secure, reliable computing experience for my company.
Thanks again for all your effort and I look forward to seeing you at the next New York Metro Infragard meeting. If there is anything I can help you with before then, please do not hesitate to ask.
Regards,

Christopher Oswald, MCSE, CISSP, CISA
Manager, IT Operations, Security and Compliance

 

We have surveyed our membership in NYC and InfraGard Presidents and have discovered there is incredible demand out there for developing the CTF's around the United States and for InfraGard to take the lead. Well, since we're not too shy we've already begun talking with DHS and are in the middle of putting together a grant solicitation.....this would be referred to as an "Unsolicited" grant request....so we're not too sure of what our success will be. But we are trying and trying very hard to accomplish this and much, much more so that we can extend our reach to anyone within InfraGard that needs the access to subject matter experts.

We have a great Prevention Poster developed. We finally slugged it out and came up with what we thought were some very basic things that alot of people technical and not could use a friendly InfraGard reminder about. This project will start being hosted by NYC Public Schools at the High School level.

Infra-wear: Yes, its part of CDI 2009. Buy a shirt and expand the awareness of and importance of business and personal data. The shirt is simply a reminder, a great gift and a geniune way to say we support you InfraGard!!!

Your NY InfraGard Team