Written By Glenn Boylan, PMP
The January Technology Forum was held on Tuesday, January 31st, and featured a very interesting keynote presentation titled “We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us: Cyber Security Issues and What You Can Do About Them” presented by David Scott.
Steve Kruger and Nancy Berlin kicked off the event which was hosted by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise in their new café at their office in Alpharetta. The café has been completely re-done and is a beautiful facility for both HP-E and HP employees. Our thanks to HP-E for sharing it with PMI Atlanta.
The Forum also wants to thank the Rezult Group which sponsored the food for the event, and provided some great swag for the meeting attendees. The Rezult Group provides staffing solutions for companies seeking talent in healthcare IT, finance, accounting, and of course, technology. They have just opened an Atlanta office. For more information, go to their web site at www.rezultgroup.com.
Steve and Nancy reviewed PMI Atlanta volunteer opportunities and events, including this year’s Technology Forum schedule. The Tech Forum will meet on the fourth Tuesday of the month except for August (when Nancy will be at the beach) and December. Melody Cookson announced that there will be an Alpharetta series of the popular “PM in the AM” breakfast meetings on the third Wednesdays of each month, starting April 19th. For more information on volunteering and upcoming events, go to the chapter web site at PMIAtlanta.org.
Nancy then turned the meeting over to David Scott of Mission Advantages, LLC. David got everyone’s attention by asking the question “Are you aware of the greatest threats and risks to your organization?” and he kept it by linking The Varsity, a rubber duck, and Mountain Dew to the key basic principles of cyber security.
The Varsity is famous for saying “Whaddayahave?” when you go up to the counter and that was David’s first key topic. What does your organization have that is valuable? What is worth stealing or messing with? More than you might think. Things like: personally identifiable information (name, address, phone number, social security number); an organization’s intellectual property; and access, account, and location information are all valuable by themselves and/or because they provide a jumping point to additional information.
David talked about the stereotypical hacker bad guy image we all have, which usually involves some combination of a Russian and a young person wearing a hoodie. These, however, are not the main problem. Harkening back to the title of his presentation, David said the main problem is us. The people in an organization are the ones who leave doors open with regard to cyber security – and David says this can lead to up to 80% of security problems. As he succinctly summarized the issue: “’Oops!’ is the #1 problem.”
The good news is if we are the ones leaving doors open, we can close them as well. Making employees aware of the most common security threats such as spam, phishing, advanced persistent threats (APT), ransomware, viruses, and malware can go a long way to closing the doors those young Russians in hoodies are looking for. Raising awareness through training, building security into your projects in the design and planning phases, and making it easy for employees to report abuse are fairly simple and inexpensive ways to increase your organization’s security.
The Technology Forum thanks HP-E, the Rezult Group, and especially David Scott for a great meeting to start 2017 on a high note.
The next Technology Forum meeting will be Tuesday, February 28th. We hope to see you there.