SANS Institute to Host Inaugural Security Awareness Summit in Dallas

BETHESDA, Md., Aug. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- SANS Institute today announced its inaugural Security Awareness Summit taking place September 10^th in Dallas, TX.  In conjunction with the Summit, SANS will host an intensive hands-on security awareness training event September 8 – 17. This is the only security awareness-focused event that combines hands-on classroom training with a high-level summit. Top security awareness practitioners from around the world will teach attendees how to move beyond just compliance by changing human behaviors, how to measure those changes, and more.

"The simplest way for cyber attackers to hack into an organization is to target employees. Therefore, one of the most effective ways to secure an organization is to build an active awareness and education program that goes beyond just compliance and changes behaviors," said Lance Spitzner, chairman of the Security Awareness Summit and Training Director, SANS Securing The Human Program. "In addition to changing behaviors, this summit will provide attendees with the knowledge to build long-term programs that change culture while offering metrics to measure that change."

The summit brings together some of the industry's top security officers from around the globe as they gather to share the latest techniques, tools, and ideas for enhancing awareness programs. Summit discussions will include creating programs that appeal to all types of learners, how to turn a survey into a human vulnerability scanner, effective communication campaigns, tools to help calculate the business value of a security awareness program, how to successfully leverage gamification, and methods for ramping up existing phishing programs.

Summit speakers include:

• Cheryl Conley, Business Area Information Security Officer, Lockheed Martin
• Lori D. Rosenberg, Information Security Education & Awareness Team, eBay
• Lance Hayden, PhD, Solutions Architect, Cisco Security Solutions
• Matt Beland, CISSP, Chief Security Officer, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
• Ashley Sudderth, Chief Information Compliance Officer, Michigan Tech
• Jonathan Homer, SecAware Team, Idaho National Laboratory
• Dan deBeaubien, Director, SANS Institute

For a complete list of presentations and hands-on training courses, or to register, please visit: http://www.sans.org/info/165532

About SANS Institute
The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. SANS is the most trusted and, by far, the largest source for world-class information security training and security certification in the world, offering over 50 training courses each year. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, is a certification body featuring over 27 hands-on, technical certifications in information security. SANS offers a myriad of free resources to the InfoSec community including consensus projects, research reports, and newsletters; it also operates the Internet's early warning system—the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners, representing varied global organizations from corporations to universities, working together to help the entire information security community. (www.SANS.org)

SOURCE SANS Institute