Eighth Annual ISSA-LA Summit Next Month

Attention, security professionals in Southern California: If you want to hear some high-value talks, the next ISSA-LA (Information Systems Security Association) Summit is May 20 at the Universal City Hilton. LA chapter President Richard Greenberg, also chapter president of OWASP LA, has done a great job organizing the event in recent years.

Attendees can choose from a variety of talks on such topics as security governance, application security, security awareness and risk management. Full details are on the ISSA-LA website.

Lots of great speakers are in the lineup this year, including my friends Jack Daniel and Mark Weatherford:

• Keynote Speakers

  Jack Daniel, Leading Technology Community Activist
  

  Jack Daniel works for Tenable Network Security, has over 20 years’ experience in network and system administration and security, and has worked in a variety of practitioner and management positions.
  A technology community activist, he supports several information security and technology organizations. Jack is a co-founder of Security BSides, serves on the boards of three Security BSides non-profit corporations, and helps organize Security B-Sides events.
  Jack is a frequent speaker at technology and security events. An early member of the information security community on Twitter, @jack_daniel is an active and vocal Twitter user. Jack is a CISSP, holds CCSK, and is a Microsoft MVP for Enterprise Security.

  Cory Doctorow,  Sci-Fi Novelist, Blogger and Technology Activist
  

  Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, Wired, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He is a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He holds an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Professor; in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

  Speakers

• Ira Winkler, President of Secure Mentem and Co-host of The Irari Report
• Mark Weatherford, SVP, Chief Cybersecurity Strategist at vArmour, former DHS First Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity, and the former first CISO of California
• Bob Bigman, Former CISO of the CIA
• Malcolm Harkins, Global Chief Information Security Officer, Cylance, Inc.
• Jim Manico, Founder, Secure Coding Instructor, Manicode Security
• Jeremiah Grossman, Founder, Whitehat Security
• Brian Engle, Executive Direcdtor, R-CISC, Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center
• Rafal Los, Director, Solutions R&D, Optiv Inc
• Dr. Robert Pittman, CISO, Los Angeles County
• Carey Nachenberg, Symantec Fellow
• Chenxi Wang, Chief Strategy Officer, Twistlock
• Pamela Fusco, Founding Partner, Gid Grid
• Andrea Hoy, ISSA International President and CEO of A. Hoy & Associates

I attended the summit in 2012 and walked away with a lot of perspective that has served me well. If you live in the area or have time to take a trip to LA, I highly recommend it.