Our Board's Focus for 2015-2016

Greetings to all of our stalwart InfraGard NCR members! I am incredibly excited to serve as president of your InfraGard chapter.

I have been a member of InfraGard for over a decade and have served on the Board as the VP of Partnerships and Executive VP. My past includes a deep bench in public works and the energy sector, including over 10 years in homeland security. It has been an honor to serve with the incredible members of our current Board of Directors - and I look forward to continuing this work with each of you through more information sharing, a (re)focus on our mission, and better collaboration.

While we have made considerable progress as a chapter, and as a nation, we have a tremendous amount of work to do as we continue to fight the onslaught of physical and cyber threats. Make no mistake - YOU - each of YOU - are on the frontlines of a new kind of battle: a battle that attacks from all sides and across geographic boundaries.

Your InfraGard chapter does not shy away from this responsibility. After speaking to members of our commercial facilities sector and our cyber SIG recently, I am energized at the level of commitment and willingness to engage among our members.

For the near term, we will be focusing on three simple areas:

Information Sharing

This is not a forum in which I need to argue for information sharing. We all "get it." We just don't "have it;" and that is unacceptable. As Carly Fiorina said in a recent debate, "sometimes people are so entrenched in the system they cannot see when it is truly broken." While I believe we are part of that system and it has its challenges, the information sharing among our members cannot be one of those challenges any longer.

We want to have a portal where members can share information within their sector, across sectors, and in special interest groups. We want to create avenues for you to share information by implementing a number of creative technology platforms like Flipboard and Twitter that will allow our Board members to communicate with you more, and for our members to share what they are reading and interested in on a common platform. If you want to engage with us to help get through the red tape of information sharing, please email me.

(Re)focus on Mission

For many of us, our "mission" involves protecting our personal and corporate assets. But as I mentioned earlier, these "individual" battles have become part of a larger onslaught of attack where we each become targets. If you work for the government, they have all of your personal data. If you work for a company, they may not only have your personal data, they may also have all of your intellectual property. We must start tackling and solving these problems. Need training? Need practical information? Need tools to educate all of your "users" on cyber hygiene? Need to know how your peers are approaching a security issue? InfraGard is where you should turn. We are your foremost resource for both tactical and strategic thinking on security because of the brain trust among our members and our partners in the FBI. And we will become even more so with your active involvement on practical, real projects and initiatives that help forward your technical, strategic, and intellectual capacity to protect and respond to the numerous and dynamic threat vectors.

Better Collaboration

I greatly appreciate the number of members who attend our sessions. We want to see this grow and expand. However, we do not want to just grow at the expense of the quality and utility of our offerings. Our events and training are top-notch, but we can do more. We want to know what you NEED to solve a problem. No more talking about the problems - we know what they are! Time to prioritize and start tackling them. Let's roll up our sleeves and start getting these things done.

Nice way to end, huh? No more talking. Let's get "doing." Please do not hesitate to reach out to me, or any of our Board members, with your ideas and needs.