ISC2 NJ Chapter Issue 1

Ken's Korner

Message from the President

At a time when we are all feeling disconnected from our friends, families and colleagues, we need to start being more creative about keeping a sense of community. After attending hundreds of video conferences this year, they all seem very transactional, and I feel that we are losing our sense of belonging. Our primary goal for this Chapter, in the upcoming year, is to rebrand ourselves by bringing back that sense of community in a new format. While rebooting the Chapter during a pandemic is proving to be challenging, I have discovered some new opportunities that were not available to me during “normal” conditions. People are now much more accessible and our attendance at our meetings is growing faster than expected. As we all look forward to returning to a much safer world, let us start developing relationships with our colleagues by continuing to learn and share from each other.

Chapter News

The most in-demand certifications for CyberSecurity pros

Every year, cyber-attacks become more sophisticated and frequent. In 2020, more than half (54%) of business owners from a range of sectors reported an increase in attempted cyber-attacks. Dogging everyone from large multinationals to small businesses, the attacks and breaches keep on coming, and with so much riding on sturdy cyber-defenses, business leaders have realized the importance of CyberSecurity positions within their ranks.

New Ransomware Threat Jumps From Windows To Linux—What You Need To Know

Barely a week goes by without news of yet another organization falling victim to the cyber threat of the day, ransomware. Although there will always be outliers such as the security researcher who managed to execute a ransomware attack on a coffee machine, and yes, you read that right, the vast majority will have targeted users of one Windows operating system or another. That is changing, however, and now ransomware is adapting to compromise Linux servers.

Upcoming Events

Sign up for December 17th, 2020 Event

We have finalized our program for our final event of the year and we're going to go out with a bang!

Thomas Flynn, Assistant Special Agent in Charge - US Secret Service - New York Field Office, who brings with him over 25 years of military and federal law enforcement experience with over 20 years dedicated to the United States Secret Service. For his full bio, read the agenda in Eventbrite.

Yatia (Tia) Hopkins, VP of Global Solutions Engineering at eSentire. She has been recognized as one of the top women leaders in cybersecurity by multiple publications. She's also an adjunct professor of Cybersecurity at Yeshiva University and is currently pursuing her PhD in organizational leadership.

While the December meeting is free, you will need to pay a nominal annual fee to attend future live meetings. But students will continue to attend the meetings for free! Please visit our site at isc2chapternj.org to become a Chapter member.

Member Contributions

Why are more job seekers not considering a career in CyberSecurity? By Rasheen A. Whidbee

Not too long ago, CyberSecurity wasn’t the most desirable field to work in. CyberSecurity professionals were often relegated to some back office seldom heard or seen, but that is no longer the case. With the proliferation of technology, the increase in cyber attacks and the transition from working in an office to working from home due to the Covid pandemic, nowadays CyberSecurity professionals are in high demand.

“Thousands of information-security jobs are going unfilled as the industry in the U.S. struggles with a shortage of properly trained professionals. By one estimate, there will be 3.5 million unfilled CyberSecurity jobs by 2021.” (SecurityMagazine, 2019)

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My AWS Cloud Security Certification Journey Learnings By Mallik Prasad

Digital has been the buzzword for a couple of years and the current pandemic situation will further accelerate its journey across Fortune 1000 enterprises. This also presents a unique opportunity to Bake-IN security rather than expensive approach of retrofitting, Bolting-ON security or classical approach of perimeter security. Being an admirer of Zero Trust Security Framework, advocated by Chase Cunningham & Forrester provides context to securing the most important asset “Data” as it Egress/ Ingress’ enterprises boundaries & multiple clouds.

AWS being a cornerstone of many Enterprise Digital Journey, AWS Certified Security — Speciality, both security learning and certification becomes an important enabler. My personal journey was around 2–3 months of focused preparation (my AWS background also helped I guess). This test could be probably new territory for some, hence I would compare AWS Security Fundamentals to Level 100 /200 progressing into AWS Security Essentials / Security Engineering, AWS Certified Security Speciality Testing and Certification could possibly map on to 300 /400.

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The Evolution of California’s Privacy Regulation By Todd Emge

Despite news headlines of data breaches being commonplace and the US Congress is in gridlock about passing a federal privacy legislation, California voters recently approved Proposition 24, which will amend the existing state privacy law in the US. This amendment will strengthen the existing state privacy regulation and rename the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).

While the CCPA was a good start for US privacy legislation at the state level, critic consensus was that there were opportunities for improvement in comparison to the European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), which is often seen as stricter from a consumer protection perspective. The overarching goal of CRPA is to have it be on par with GDPR.

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Recordings and Slides From Prior Meeting

October Meeting 2020

Josip Matosin
Votiro