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Vantage Point: One Year In & A Lot To Look Forward To!
A year ago, our InfraGard chapter began this monthly Vantage Point blog series as a means by which "to share ideas and perspective that may be of interest and of value to our community addressing notable events and issues that align with our Chapter mission and those of InfraGardNCR members." A year later, it is encouraging to see members from our Board continue to share insights and perspective as we develop new member programs and build upon previous years' efforts. Through this blog, Chapter officers Steve Bieber and Brandon Ahrens have addressed the following:
Vantage Point: 'Tis the season to protect your pipes! Know the 3 Cs!, 21 Nov 2018
Vantage Point: New Year, New Goals, 12, Dec 2018
And we've gotten fresh perspective from new Board Members including:
Vantage Point: Do Information Sharing and Collaboration Have a Future?, 16 Jan 2019, by new Chapter Chief Financial Officer, Boykin Jordan.
Vantage Point: Protecting critical infrastructure through process, 14 Mar 2019, by Steve Raia.
As well as additional thoughts including:
Vantage Point: 7 Ways Business Owners Can Educate Their Teams About Terrorism, 15 June 2018, by Chapter member Joseph Delia, Senior Director of Security Consulting for Whelan Security
Vantage Point: Happy Drinking Water Week!, 11 May 2018, by Steve Bieber, InfraGardNCR Executive Vice President & Sector Chief Program Chair.
In the months ahead, our chapter will continue to build upon and add to previous activities, purposely aligning those with our Chapter's Mission, Goals, and Objectives.
Chapter Mission. Our mission is to facilitate, improve and extend information sharing among critical infrastructure stakeholders and the government to assist in protecting infrastructure assets. Through this connect-to-protect approach, stakeholders from the public and private sectors, as well as academia, benefit from relationship building, collaboration, and information sharing focused on physical, human, and cyber-based threats and vulnerabilities. As a result, this exchange provides timely information and intelligence to help move critical infrastructure protection ahead of the threat while also augmenting investigations, strengthening relationships between law enforcement and infrastructure owners/operators, and securing our national security interests.
InfraGardNCR Goals:
Goal #1: Promote information sharing and collaboration
Objectives:
Provide relevant and timely information sharing
Promote mutual learning opportunities
Develop and maintain multiple avenues of sharing between members, the government, and other stakeholders as appropriate
Goal #2: Enable protection of critical infrastructure starting within the area of responsibility (AoR)
Objectives:
Alignment of efforts with current and emerging threat picture in AoR
Increase outreach to and collaboration with other chapters
Engage the SMEs in our AOR to encourage more active participation and to further InfraGardNCR's goals through projects, activities, events
Regional Leadership Summit. Among some of our other projects, this summer our chapter will hold an InfraGard Southeast Regional Leadership Summit, bringing together leaders from InfraGard chapters throughout the Southeast to discuss experiences, programs, successes, and lessons learned, in order to help one another continue to develop and more effectively support our partners at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), one another, our members and our communities.
Information Sharing. The Chapter is advancing a number of information sharing and collaboration efforts that directly support our goals and the associated objectives.
Our Chapter continues to support real-time, peer-to-peer collaboration via listservers. We're copying our Cyber Health Working Group model to set up two new groups: the Cyber Finance Working Group (for InfoSec professionals in the finance sector from any InfraGard chapter) and the NCR IT listserver (for any IT professional in our chapter).
The Chapter is also doing a lot to further the mission of information sharing and partnerships through a number of efforts, including:
1) The Whelan Speaker Series;
2) The AOBA Be A Good Neighbor webinar series;
3) Our planned, upcoming, cybersecurity webinar series; and,
4) Additional webinars on high priority issues to our community.
Through these partnerships, we will reach over 10,000 people with training and information on high priority threats to critical infrastructure and continue to further the protection of critical infrastructure starting within the area of responsibility.
Information Sharing Initiative. In conjunction with the Regional Leadership Summit, we'll hold our first Information Sharing Initiative (ISI). ISI events have been held across the country to promote information sharing and collaboration, both via private-public partnerships and within the private sector. Our chapter's ISI will include a series of five panel discussions with great insights from partners at the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, representatives from critical infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Centers, the Virginia Fusion Center, as well as other infrastructure leaders and operators, and expert perspective from physical and cyber security leaders from industry. Register here and join us on June 7th as the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) kindly hosts us in Washington, DC for discussions addressing:
Information Sharing from a Government Perspective;
Information Sharing from an Industry Perspective;
Information Sharing from a Legal Perspective;
Persistent and Emerging Cyber Threats; and,
Implementing Security Programs, from a security, human resources and legal perspective.
Cyber Camp! The following month, new Board Member, Kristi Horton, will lead two weeks of Cyber Camp, helping to develop, educate and prepare a new generation of security leaders. Read background from last year's Cyber Camp here and more on this year's event here (and register while spaces are still available!)
And that's just getting us into summer. From our annual members' meeting at Capital One Arena this January, through our summer activities, and via this blog, we hope to continue to develop, communicate, and execute great programming to support our (mission, goals...) and support our members and broader community.
If you have ideas, please contact our Board anytime. More motivated? Let us know if there are projects you want to develop or help support. Want to help guide the Chapter's development into the future? Consider running for a Board position during our next round of elections this fall!
Thank You For Being A Part Of This Chapter and for your commitment to our community, our Nation, and our homeland security mission. On behalf of my Board colleagues, and our fantastic FBI coordinators, please know we are thankful for the opportunity to contribute to this mission, and here to help make this the best chapter it can be. Let's keep getting better, together.
