Building Security Awareness Through Social Engineering
Valerie Thomas & Harry Regan – VP of Security Services Securicon, LLC

Description* "Tech2 - Session #3 - Harry Regan & Valerie Thomas Organizations must establish an effective security awareness program. As security professionals we've likely heard (and said) it more times than we can count. But how often do we stop to think about what it actually means or how it can be implemented? The media is littered with reports of attacks, which emphasizes that it's time to change the way we approach awareness training. It's time to lose the never-changing slide deck and think outside the box. In this talk we'll examine the art of influence at a group level and use social engineering to create positive change."

Bio: Valerie Thomas is a Principal Information Security Consultant for Securicon LLC that specializes in social engineering and physical penetration testing. She is also coauthor of - Building A Security Awareness Program. After obtaining her bachelor's degree in Electronic Engineering, Valerie led information security assessments for the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) before joining private industry. Throughout her career, Valerie has conducted penetration tests, vulnerability assessments, compliance audits, and technical security training for executives, developers, and other security professionals. Additionally, Valerie has presented and trained at multiple BSides events, Derbycon, Black Hat, Defcon, HackMiami, and several other conferences.

Mr. Harry Regan, CISSP, CISM, PSP is an information security, asset protection and systems operations professional with over 35 years of commercial, federal, and defense experience. In addition to enterprise security environments, Mr. Regan has extensive experience in industrial and process control systems protection, cyber and physical security programs, and operations in critical infrastructure organizations and for regulated industries. Mr. Regan has direct experience in defensive and offensive security techniques; technology-based countermeasures; System Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems; building and industrial infrastructure systems; NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC-CIP); and a number of regulatory compliance programs. Additionally, Mr. Regan has substantial expertise in high performance and high reliability system architectures; disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Mr. Regan received a BA in Economics from Catholic University and an MS in Information Technology and Operations Research from American University. Mr. Regan has received recognition for his expertise and has been featured in interviews on CNN and NBC regarding the operability and effectiveness of biometrics and other security technologies.

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