Information Security Sessions at TechEx Offer Ideas and Insight

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One of the best parts of my job is to engage with the community on their best ideas and challenges. I get to do this through program committees, working groups, meetings, and day-to-day interactions with community members. This year I was the Internet2 liaison for the information security track for the 2023 Internet2 Technology Exchange (TechEX) being held in Minneapolis, Minn., Sept. 18 – 22.

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I worked with Charles Mewshaw from Fayetteville State University, Fatema Bannat Wala from University of Delaware, and Taurean Russell from Winston-Salem State University. Many thanks to Charles, Fatema, and Taurean! Because of their contributions and those of other community members, we have relevant, content-rich events, offering ideas and insights for information security professionals in the research and higher education community.

Information Security Track Highlights

Together we crafted a timely program for the information security track at TechEX, and I’m really looking forward to the sessions. Here are some highlights:

• Creating and Managing Secure Research Engagement – Helen Mitchell and Allen Karns will discuss how they’re leveraging the cloud to provide researchers at Vanderbilt University with secure computing environments that are consistent, compliant, and manageable at scale.
• A Holistic Cybersecurity: SOC-RNP – Emilio Tissato Nakamura from Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa, the Brazilian national research and education network, will outline the process for establishing a security operation center, which involves a holistic approach that integrates different cybersecurity technologies, teams, and processes.
• Security Posture Improvement in Higher Ed – Marina Krenz of Indiana University will provide an overview of the current higher education security landscape and discuss several options for evaluating and improving higher ed’s security posture as well as several security measures that could benefit institutions of different sizes.

Further, the sessions in the track address cloud security, cybersecurity threats, incident response, multifactor authentication, network monitoring, research computing and security collaborations, risk management in research environments, secure computing environments in the cloud, security operation center creation, and zero-trust. Our lineup also includes several sessions from international presenters to give us the global perspective.

Other Tracks + Tutorials

Some sessions that may be interesting to the information security community are covered in other tracks more focused on cloud, identity, networking, and research, so be sure to look through the whole program. 

There are also pre-conference tutorials that may be of interest, such as the Security & Resiliency in the Cloud Tabletop Exercise. Working meetings and special interest groups are scheduled during meals for people to gather for more informal discussions like the Security Special Interest Group session on Thursday at lunch. 

Meet Me in Minneapolis

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any feedback or questions about the information security track, especially if you’re a first-time attendee. We have a TechEX 101 session on Monday for first-time attendees and a Newcomers Breakfast on Tuesday. And of course, I would be happy to show you around the conference. I’ll be a presenter for two sessions, Collaborations in Information Security with Paul Howell, EDUCAUSE and the REN-ISAC and MFA Evolution on Campus along with a NET+ cloud vendor risk management working group meeting, so I hope to see you in Minneapolis!