Highlights from the 2019 Security Professionals Conference included a lively first-time attendee orientation, evening Birds-of-a-Feather sessions, and an expanded game night.
The 17th annual Security Professionals Conference took place May 13–15, 2019, in Chicago, Illinois. Attendance has almost doubled over the past six years, with 900 people from more than 335 institutions joining us from around the world. This year's program offered three days of higher education security-related content, including preconference workshops, 85 conference sessions spread across four tracks, Tornado Talks, and a keynote and community discussion with Duo Security's Wendy Nather.
Participants engaged in lively social activities such as a first-time attendee orientation, evening Birds-of-a-Feather sessions, the ever-popular "hallway track" between sessions, and an expanded game night with card games, board games, cybersecurity awareness escape-room tabletop exercises, and a lockpicking village.
Future Leaders
The 2019 Security Professionals Conference program committee created a new opportunity for students who are interested in pursuing careers in cybersecurity or data privacy. Six college students were selected to attend this year's event and serve as track facilitators. These student volunteers acted as conference ambassadors, assisting EDUCAUSE staff, program committee members, and speakers. They were also able to attend and participate in two full days of the conference, an experience that provided them with opportunities to network with campus security, privacy, and IT leaders and meet potential mentors.
As this conference grows and evolves, so do the tracks and topics. In order to provide more content for CISOs, managers, and aspiring community leaders, the program committee created a track with a dozen sessions focusing on strategic leadership, professional and organizational development, and personnel management. A full-day workshop (Effective Leadership Seminar: Building Your InfoSec Leadership Style) was presented to a small cohort by Cathy Hubbs and David Seidl. Tara Hughes's session on imposter syndrome became one of the conference highlights. Her talk focused less on cybersecurity or technology and more on personal well-being, which led to an authentic, meaningful discussion among the attendees.
Building Community Year-Round
The Security Professionals Conference is just one way to reconnect with friends, meet new community members, and find inspiration among your peers. There are many other ways to keep in touch with this vibrant community of information security and privacy professionals throughout the year:
1. Continue the conversation by joining one of the public EDUCAUSE Community Groups:
- Security CG
- Privacy CG
- Identity and Access Management CG
- HEISC Awareness and Training CG
- HEISC Governance, Risk, and Compliance CG
- HEISC Technologies, Operations, and Practices CG
2. Volunteer for a Higher Education Information Security Council (HEISC) working group and contribute to key community resources like the Higher Education Cloud Vendor Assessment Tool (HECVAT), the Information Security Guide, or an information security or data privacy awareness campaign.
3. Join the Research and Education Networks Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC), which offers private information sharing within a community of trusted representatives in higher education.
Save the Date!
The 2020 Security Professionals Conference will be held April 21–23, 2020, in Bellevue, Washington. Don't miss this opportunity to collaborate, network, and catch up with colleagues.
Next year's conference will introduce new offerings, like an expanded leadership workshop and "reboot areas" that provide a quiet place to reset and recharge. In addition, the program committee will invite more student volunteers—the future of this community—to attend and learn more about career opportunities in higher education.
The 2020 call for proposals will be announced in mid-September, so start thinking about potential workshops, track sessions, or lightning talks that celebrate your institution's successes!
Jacqueline Pitter is Chief Information Security Officer and Senior Network Administrator at Reed College.
Jesse Bowling is Security Architect and CSIRT Program Manager at Duke University.
© 2019 Jacqueline Pitter and Jesse Bowling. The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 International License.