Issue 21  June 1st 2022

IMPRESSIONS OF NJ SECON 2022 By Mark Schleisner, CISSP, PMP

On May 11, 2022, I attended one of the best all-day cybersecurity conferences I've experienced in a long time. It was NJ SECON 2022, a joint effort presented by the New Jersey chapters of (ISC)² and ISACA, as well as Kean University in Union, NJ. I've been to several all-day cyber events (organized by professional conference organizations) where I couldn't wait to leave after two or three boring sessions. So what made this conference so good?

1) Great volunteers: Ken Fishkin, the NJ (ISC)² Chapter President, led a group of dedicated volunteers who worked -- hard -- for months to plan and put together this event. They designed the conference so that attendees could enjoy themselves in a relaxed atmosphere while networking and learning. Additional volunteers helped with logistics on the day of the event, from greeting attendees to supporting the guest speakers. Their work was complemented by the financial support of multiple conference sponsors, as well as the generosity of Kean University, which provided a great conference venue. And considering that this was NJ SECON's first time conducting a hybrid event, it was remarkably well-attended, thanks to the volunteers' impressive publicity campaign.

2) Great conference presentations: I attended every session held in the conference auditorium, and I enjoyed the variety of topics and the presenters' enthusiasm in discussing them. For example, "Third Party Risk Management" featured a lively discussion by four panelists with diverse risk-related backgrounds, in finance, law and cybersecurity. There was even an audience interactive incident response game called "Backdoors and Breaches", expertly presented by Jason Blanchard of Black Hills Information Security. I was one of six volunteer "defenders", and our goal was to solve, in ten guesses, what was causing a cyberattack by the "Incident Master" (Jason). We failed, alas, but we learned a lot about incident response!

3) An audience-friendly conference venue and schedule: I traveled from New York City, yet it was remarkably easy to get to the conference. (NJ Transit's Union train station is only a 15- minute walk from Kean University's conference venue.) There were ample opportunities for participants to mingle with each other, the conference sponsors, and the guest speakers. There were so many interesting folks to meet! Conference sessions were no longer than 50 minutes. Participants were treated to breakfast and lunch, and there were multiple breaks throughout the day.

I enjoyed SECON 2022 very much. It was a great educational and network-friendly experience, and I'll be back for SECON next year!

ISC2 NJ Chapter