11th International West Coast Security Forum

"The Threat of Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism"
It's a dangerous world we live in and each passing day, some new threat seems to appear. The terms cyber terrorism, information warfare and cyber crime seem to get used quite a bit in today's media. Whether it's hackers in Estonia conducting a massive distributed denial of service attack on their nation's systems for revenge, the CIA reporting that hackers breached power grids Africa for extortion, a bot-net herder renting out your family's PC for a denial-of-service attack, or a disgruntled job-applicant in Australia who hacked into a sewage treatment plant and reversed the flow into public parks, streams and the backyard of a prestigious hotel, no one can deny these events happen. There are countless more examples that support this assertion. Of course, invoking the word "terrorism" either inspires eye-rolling or flag-waving among many with little middle ground left for serious consideration. Unfortunately, these issues are very real and can affect even small and mid-size businesses.

But can these things happen to your organization? In varying degrees, cyber crime and cyber terrorism or information warfare can easily affect you. In the end, motive - politics, profit, revenge, etc. - is the only difference between the three, but the impact on you occurs regardless. Why would anyone attack your company? What are the means and motives of these criminals? What can you do to protect yourself and your organization? All these questions and more will be answered by the collection of professionals and experts at this year's International West Coast Security Forum.

Themes include:

Executive Level Track - Are you a Target? What are the organization's responsibilities?
Security starts at the top. A firm governance model stipulates the controls needed to ensure compliance with Legislation and regulations specific to your agency. This has raised information security to the forefront of may organizations' operations. But many questions remain surrounding what is applicable to you and how to succeed. Key issues:

• Security governance & risk management
• Security awareness & training
• International standards & best practices (ISO 27001, Cobit, COSO, BS7799-3, etc)
• Law & Liability
• Auditing & Assessment
• Legislation & Regulation (SOX, PCI, NERC, etc)
• The role of government & law enforcement
• Policies, Standards, Guidelines and Certification

Management Track - What can you do?
At a management level, being responsible for securing the enterprise can indeed be a daunting task. Some of the content to be raised will ease your burden and provide some guidance to making your program successful. Topics include: