Infosec-Samurai

AtlSecCon 2018 AtlSecCon has come and gone again, April 26-27th, 2018 was the eighth consecutive year for the Atlantic Security Conference. We have seen organic growth year after year and this year was no exception. The attendees this year were easily the most diverse group to date and I feel very grateful to be involved with AtlSecCon as one of five directors. (Founder - Travis Barlow, Directors - Andrew Kozma, Steve Quinn, Darryl MacLeod, Nick Gyorfi). New Venue This years conference was held in the new Nova Centre, all I can say is wow! It really is a fantastic space and some of the views of Halifax from the ceiling to floor windows are nothing short of spectacular. It really is a first class venue and I am confident visitors to Halifax will feel the same. The new space can accommodate our conference for years to come, and hopefully we will continue to grow in both size and quality. More info about the centre can be found here: The Halifax Convention Centre Sponsors

 Regarding the real world application of skills undoubtedly the most famous of all samurai Miyamoto Musashi states in The Book of Five Rings  that "You can only fight the way you practice." As security professionals when performing assessments and audits we request and review a client's Security Incident Response Plan, if there is one. Just this week the Ponemon Institute released " The Third Annual Study  on The Cyber Resilient Organization " indicating that 77% of organizations lack a proper incident response plan. I suspect that of those organizations with a plan few have actually tested and put it to practice. Different incidents require different responses, this can result in plans that vary significantly from those addressing minimal incidents to plans that become bloated attempting to tackle all possible scenarios. Incident response must be approached strategically with the goal of improving the organizations overall ability to operate even whi

HP Canada recently hosted a Printer Security tech day for a small number of participants that they considered influencers. Recognizing my contributions to both the Atlantic Security Conference (AtlSecCon) and the Halifax Area Security Klatch (HASK) I was fortunate enough to be included as one of the seven attendees. After it was identified that some of my friends and peers would also be attending I agreed to participate without hesitation. A free lunch and some time to catch up over drinks with friends sounded like a great idea, besides Mississauga in early February what could go wrong right? Well after a few flight delays for some we were all welcomed to the HP Canada offices located in Mississauga. Having worked in the office equipment industry very early in my career (yes, I was “The Copier repair guy”) I must admit I was not expecting to learn anything new, boy was I mistaken. To HP’s credit they were completely transparent and after a few presentations a clear secur

Hello World! (The extent of any coding language I have ever learned). My first blog post! Welcome to my blog, I have been active in the local infosec community here in beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia for a number of years and have decided it is time to grow both professionally and personally. This blog will feature my thoughts feelings and opinions on Cybersecurity, Information Security and recent trends and happenings within those fields. Occasionally where applicable I will refer to books and movies that I feel help support the narrative for the topic at hand.  I would like to emphasize that the content at Infosec-Samurai does not reflect the opinions of my employer (past or present) or any associations that I am directly or indirectly affiliated or associated with.   Why Infosec-Samurai? I have been an avid martial artist, fan of Samurai, Ninja and Kung Fu films since I can remember, the name represents my own personal doctrines and personality. Those that have at