ISS State of Security Seminar
Today, a couple of co-workers and I attended the ISS State of Security Seminar at the Ritz-Carlton in McLean, VA. What a waste of time! The best part was actually being in a Ritz-Carlton and eating the wonderful breakfast.
The seminar was suppose to cover the ever-changing hacker community, which it didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. It was more of a marketing and sales pitch. I guess since ISS is the largest IDS vendor in the world, they can afford to splurge on locations like the Ritz and serve breakfast for approx. 100 people. I look at from the point of view that you will pay for the breakfast in the long run, if you haven't already!
Patrick Gray was the first speaker and he is the director of X-Force operations for the office of the CTO at ISS. This guy was pretty entertaining, but didn't really say anything that blew my skirt up. He talked alot about his career in the FBI and "morons" he had help prosecute. His most interesting statement was linking organized crime to cyber crimes here in the US. I guess ISS believes this will be a huge problem in the future, very similar to the problem in Russia.
The next speaker was Scott Paisley, who is the TD of America for ISS. His whole speech was pretty much an add campaign. He spoke at length about the ISS X-force. Sounds like their main problem is finding morally sound individuals to work on "The Force". They have alot of applicants who are technically proficient, but can't pass the dreaded ISS background investigation. I wouldn't mind working on the X-force, but I can't even write a program that echos "Hello World"!
Something I thought was interesting is the ISS AlertCON tool on their website. This similar to the Homeland Security Threat Advisory system. What I think is interesting is their alert "forecast". This isn't the freakin' weather! I guess they believe their infinite insight into the hacker community allows them to perform a predictive analysis of what is coming down the pipe. Sounds more like blowing smoke up their customers, well you know. I'm sure their disclaimer statement relieves ISS of any responsibility for "forecasting" the future cyber threat level. I'm not a lawyer and would rather read an RFC while doped up on Dramamine than read ISS' disclaimer statements.
I will be attending the Cybersecurity Imperatives for Federal Agencies on April 5th. I believe this may provide much better information because of its vendor transparent atmosphere. I hope. I know it is sponsored by Sourcefire, Intellitactics, and Intelliden, but the guest speakers are from various companies and these type of events usually allow for more broad discussion and information sharing.
The seminar was suppose to cover the ever-changing hacker community, which it didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. It was more of a marketing and sales pitch. I guess since ISS is the largest IDS vendor in the world, they can afford to splurge on locations like the Ritz and serve breakfast for approx. 100 people. I look at from the point of view that you will pay for the breakfast in the long run, if you haven't already!
Patrick Gray was the first speaker and he is the director of X-Force operations for the office of the CTO at ISS. This guy was pretty entertaining, but didn't really say anything that blew my skirt up. He talked alot about his career in the FBI and "morons" he had help prosecute. His most interesting statement was linking organized crime to cyber crimes here in the US. I guess ISS believes this will be a huge problem in the future, very similar to the problem in Russia.
The next speaker was Scott Paisley, who is the TD of America for ISS. His whole speech was pretty much an add campaign. He spoke at length about the ISS X-force. Sounds like their main problem is finding morally sound individuals to work on "The Force". They have alot of applicants who are technically proficient, but can't pass the dreaded ISS background investigation. I wouldn't mind working on the X-force, but I can't even write a program that echos "Hello World"!
Something I thought was interesting is the ISS AlertCON tool on their website. This similar to the Homeland Security Threat Advisory system. What I think is interesting is their alert "forecast". This isn't the freakin' weather! I guess they believe their infinite insight into the hacker community allows them to perform a predictive analysis of what is coming down the pipe. Sounds more like blowing smoke up their customers, well you know. I'm sure their disclaimer statement relieves ISS of any responsibility for "forecasting" the future cyber threat level. I'm not a lawyer and would rather read an RFC while doped up on Dramamine than read ISS' disclaimer statements.
I will be attending the Cybersecurity Imperatives for Federal Agencies on April 5th. I believe this may provide much better information because of its vendor transparent atmosphere. I hope. I know it is sponsored by Sourcefire, Intellitactics, and Intelliden, but the guest speakers are from various companies and these type of events usually allow for more broad discussion and information sharing.
posted by John Collins at 3/22/2005 11:33:00 PM
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