Tag Archives: cybersecurity

The Treats of Cybersecurity Month

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The scariest thing in the month of October used to be Halloween. Since first being recognized as cybersecurity awareness month in 2004, October has served to educate the public about the very real threats in cyberspace.[Tweet "The Treats of Cybersecurity Month - Protect yourself from the threats in cyberspace #GovEventsBlog"]

Spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the cyber events held nationwide throughout October serve to engage and educate public and private sector partners and raise awareness about cybersecurity. These events aim to provide tools and resources needed to stay safe online, increasing the resiliency of the Nation in the event of a cyber incident. DHS has organized the weeks of the month around themes to help direct this education. This year's themes are:

  • Week 1: October 3-7, 2016 - Every Day Steps Towards Online Safety with Stop.Think.Connect.™
  • Week 2: October 10-14, 2016 - Cyber from the Break Room to the Board Room
  • Week 3: October 17-21, 2016 - Recognizing and Combating Cybercrime
  • Week 4: October 24-28, 2016 - Our Continuously Connected Lives: What's Your 'App'-titude?
  • Week 5: October 31, 2016 - Building Resilience in Critical Infrastructure

We wanted to highlight a number of the events taking place across the nation throughout the month of October that will tackle these tough and important topics.[Tweet "Take a look at some of the events taking place during Cybersecurity Month. #GovEventsBlog"] Continue reading →

Defense in Depth: A Look at Defense Industry Events

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While the defense community is well acquainted with meeting and defeating big challenges, the dynamic nature of the cyber world is proving to be a daunting adversary for our military. From arming soldiers at the tip of the spear not only with weapons but also with data to fending off threats to cyber networks, defense professionals are in a constant learning mode while being on constant alert.[Tweet "The defense community is well acquainted with meeting and defeating big challenges. #GovEventsBlog"]

At GovEvents we are proud to be the defense community's one-stop-shop for finding training and networking events. We hope that our site takes some of the strain of this new tech frontier off their shoulders.

In this post we want to highlight some of the key events coming up for defense professionals through the end of the year.[Tweet "In this post we highlight some of the key events for defense professionals. #GovEventsBlog"] Continue reading →

A Check-Up on Healthcare Events

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Healthcare is a critical topic in the federal market. From the Affordable Care Act to HIPAA compliance, to cyber threats, the federal healthcare community is facing an enormous amount of change and outside pressures.[Tweet "Federal healthcare community is facing an enormous amount of change. #GovEventsBlog"] While providers need (and want) to focus on delivering more personalized medicine leading to better patient outcomes, all of these "back-office" issues need to be addressed to help them do just that.

Like any topic, there are a wide range of events that meet the education and training of the healthcare community. HIMSS is widely recognized as the must-attend event for the healthcare IT community. But beyond this annual event, there are many other options for the government health community to learn about and discuss the latest trends in care and health IT management.[Tweet "There are many event options for the government health community. #GovEventsBlog"]

We've pulled together a number of valuable events happening through the end of this year that span the wide range of topics that impact the federal health community. Continue reading →

Your Privacy and the iPhone–What You Need to Know

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Cybersecurity practices, privacy policies, intelligence community best practices are all hot event topics on GovEvents.com. These topics are also garnering intense media focus with the ongoing battle between the Justice Department and Apple to provide access to data on the phone of the main suspect in the mass shooting in San Bernardino, CA. While the back and forth between the FBI and Apple has been well documented in the media, it is a complex issue in terms of what it really means for us as citizens and government professionals.[Tweet "Your Privacy and the iPhone -- what it really means for us. #GovEventsBlog"]

The background: Following the San Bernardino shooting, the FBI realized there may be critical evidence on the shooter's iPhone, which they have been unable to access.  The FBI hopes this information will shine a light on the motivation and any terrorist ties.

The reason the FBI cannot get into the phone without Apple's help comes down to one setting that anyone can turn on or off in seconds. Within Settings, users enter their passcode to lock the phone. Once that's done, a screen appears with the option to "Erase Data. Erase all data on this iPhone after 10 failed passcode attempts."  This makes traditional hacking attempts useless. However, the shooter had an older version iPhone and iOS, which, according to the FBI, means Apple has the ability to override this erase feature and access this phone. Newer phones, and those that have updated iOS, would not be accessible as this 'loophole' was eliminated as part of a 2014 operating system update. Continue reading →

2016 Federal Event Market

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Since we did fairly well on our predictions last year, we decided to drag the crystal ball out of storage and take a look at what we think the federal event market will look like in 2016.

  • More creativity in events - with budgets loosening up for travel and training and event attendance rising, the stress level of the federal event industry is going down. Between adapting to the new normal of longer approval cycles and knowing that events are again on the "need to have" list for federal professionals, event planners can once again turn their attention to innovation. From better integration of social channels, to creative ways to present information, we expect to see some changes to business as usual for federal events.
  • Cybersecurity remains hot - The OPM breach drove home how vulnerable federal systems are to today's threat landscape. With the completion of the Cyber Sprint, agencies have cleaned up their basic security hygiene and now are focused on implanting the policies that came out of the government-wide security exercise. Look for cyber events to be more tactical and less theoretical in nature to support the action-oriented plans of federal IT teams.
  • Video - while MTV may not be showing videos anymore, federal events will be utilizing this medium more and more. With video becoming affordable and easier to produce and stream, even with just a smartphone, federal meeting planners will take advantage of the medium to draw more eyes to their content and expand the life of the information presented at shows. Bandwidth concerns being a thing of the past and the creation of cloud-based, user-friendly video apps makes video a viable option for training.
  • Physical security - as much as we hate to think about it, in the past year we've seen lone gunmen and terrorists target large gatherings. In 2016, we expect to see event planners take a number of additional security steps including taking a closer look at attendee lists, more detailed emergency communication plans, use of metal detectors and security screenings, and more overt reminders of emergency exits, etc., for audiences in large venues.

We'd love to hear your feedback on our predictions and feel free to add yours in the comments. Here's to an exciting 2016!