Last Thursday I attended the IEEE ENCS chapter meeting, for which the featured speakers were two Special Agents from the regional FBI office. The topic was cybersecurity: “Computer Crime, Computer Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Combating High Tech Threats”. The session was nearly full, as well-attended as recent smart grid sessions.
Both speakers kept the audience’s attention by adroitly mixing cybersecurity fundamentals with highlights of local cybercrime cases. I didn’t gain any new insights, but I did pick up a few good reference URLs I hadn’t yet explored: cybercrime.gov, consumer.gov, cert.org/homeusers, governmentsecurity.org, sans.org/newsletters/risk/ or sans.org/newsletters/ouch/, infragard.net, ncinfragard.org. The NC Infragard organization meets every month, alternating between Raleigh and Charlotte; membership is free, and they offer a free newsletter.
Bonus: At the end of the 90 min talk, the agent from the foreign intelligence squad offered this interesting suggestion for safe surfing without the overhead and system slowdowns of security software: run your browser through a VMware server (or, an audience member suggested, Knoppix).