Teaching the future Information Security Professional is a challenging and frustrating task. As Information Security has become a “hot” career field educators of all types have quickly put together programs aimed at training the next wave of Security Professionals and “Ethical Hackers”. The market for “Hacker” courses is high and sometimes the standards are low, too low. Students come to expect to be taught the “test” and believe certifications are the road to the promise land. Universities are less concerned with knowledge consumption as keeping students happy and paying their bills. We will discuss some of the real world challenges encountered and some solutions to get smart and talented students to become future security professionals. We will also discuss how to weed out the posers.

Christopher Payne has held numerous positions in the Information Technology and Information Security fields over the last decade. Christopher currently works as an Information Security Architect, Adjunct Professor, Co- founder of GrrCON, President of GR-ISSA, and holds a myriad of industry certifications. Christopher is a regular speaker on Information Security topics and has been featured by multiple television, radio, internet and print organizations.