Are you hungry?

Good afternoon,

It's that first Wednesday of the month when I get to share with you what we've been up to and continue the drumbeat for you to get involved with your InfraGard chapter! So first, thank you if you attended our Annual meeting at FBI Headquarters last week. Huge thanks to Amy, Kara and Brandon for putting that together to include both briefings on recent terrorist investigations, an overview of what's happening at NCR, and of course a fabulous tour of the FBI Experience.

At that meeting I asked our members a simple question: Are you hungry? Those of you who know I'm a foodie probably assumed I was talking about breakfast but really I was taking our members on a short visualization exercise. I asked everyone to close their eyes and walk through their morning - waking up in their home, getting coffee, getting to the metro or driving to our meeting, making time to join us for an update. Then I asked them to imagine waking in a desolate part of Russia - with no economy, no job, no opportunities - yet the same desires for a nice car, a great bed, a hot cup of $5 coffee from the local Starbucks (there are no Starbucks but hey, work with me). So you wake and hack. Whether by directive from a nation, for fun, or simply to make money so you can hit the nightclub on the weekend, the adversaries wreaking havoc on our network systems, sending ransomeware, stealing proprietary information, setting up fake news sites for google ad dollars or much much worse, all of these bad actors are hungry. They wake to no coffee. They wake to no opportunities. And so they use their energies to attack and survive.

These are YOUR adversaries. The people who are hungrily taking advantage of rich targets for money - or worse - to destroy systems and wreak havoc for excitement. And they may pick you today whether by design or arbitrarily. Your enterprise may be the one that is taken hostage for money. Each of you has become a warrior on the frontlines of this battle in the ether - a battle that is costing our nation billions in both actual gain and actual opportunity. In the long run as the Chinese steal IP from across the private sector one could argue that they are stealing our future as well.

So at 8:30 am last Thursday, our challenge to each of you was to stay hungry. To engage with InfraGardNCR to help you combat these adversaries and meet them with the same hunger to prevent this gloomy scenario each and every day. Our chapter's pledge was that we would never stop fighting on your behalf, to fight for resources, to provide you the tools you need to do your job, to keep beating that drum so that you get what you need to fight this battle. TO STAY FOCUSED ON MISSION.

We also urged everyone to reach out if they wanted a cyber hygiene campaign for their enterprise, if they needed specific training, if they want to help assure our next generation is prepared. We're working on all of these things and pledge to continue to do so as long as InfraGardNCR is around.

P.S. Thank you to all of the members who volunteered to write and contribute to HSToday.us! We look forward to amazing content, great collaboration, and sharing the information you need when you need it!