Posted by David Rusting, Chief Information Security Officer, UCOP. On June 16 and 17, the seventh bi-annual IT Security Symposium broke the record in attendance, bringing in over 350 technical professionals from nearly every UC campus and medical center. Taking place at UC Davis, the symposium featured over 80 sessions, and keynotes by an expert in cloud analytics from FireEye and representatives from the Sacramento Division of the FBI.
The symposium provides a forum for the exchange of privacy and security enhancement ideas and solutions, and is an opportunity for IT professionals from all UC campuses to meet and discuss computer, network, and information security issues. This year, there were nearly 30 sponsors, including UCOP and a tech startup from UC Davis. Attendance grew by 40 percent since 2013.
“Several people said that this event had a real professional quality to it, and they were very happy with it,” said Dewight Kramer, Information Security Analyst at UC Davis (pictured left). “One key takeaway for me was one of the keynote speakers stated that moving to the cloud requires some due care to ensure security, but most of the top cloud services have full info sec teams that can offer better security than most institutions.”
I was able to attend for the first day. My impressions: 1) Great event (kudos to the planners); 2) Demand for the topic is crazy high & we could make the event bigger; 3) Great speakers – enough to spook you good when it comes to the threats; 4) We have lots in the UC to share – with each other and with other Higher Ed institutions (like e.g., CSU and CCC)
Great job everyone. Really enjoyed the event while I was there and will make sure I don’t double book myself for the next one
Tom