Understanding and Mitigating Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Threats to U.S. Critical Infrastructure

CISA updated an alert issued for Critical Infrastructure.  DHS Critical Infrastructure includes many of our member industries, such as:

• Defense Industrial Base
• Communications and Energy
• Critical Manufacturing, which includes automobiles

Review the alert to stay up to date on best practices recommendations.

September 21-22, 2022

Join Women in Cybersecurity for WiCyS Northern Alabama live, their first face to face event. Network with cyber professionals and learn more about WiCyS. There will be Amazon gift card giveaways. Pizza and charcuterie on WiCyS! Beverages on you! There will be alcoholic and non-alcoholic options available.

Thursday, June 10, 2021, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM at Innerspace Brewing Company 2414 Clinton Avenue West Huntsville, AL 35805

This is a FREE event. 

NAC-ISSA’s May lunch will be held live on Thursday, May 20, at 11:30AM.  We will return to 655 Discovery Drive with Walton’s Southern Table catering.  For this event, our sponsor will be virtual but you can join your peers for food and networking as we hear about Arista’s Awake security solution in the 655 Discovery auditorium.  Thank you to i3 and Allen Cloar for being our host at the facility.

Awake Security is the only advanced network detection and response solution that delivers answers, not alerts.  In the demo of Awake’s AI-driven platform we will showcase the capabilities with a demonstration of the key use cases and workflows designed to help customers speed up detection, response and remediation.

Join this session to learn:

How Awake delivers correlated, autonomous threat detection and visibility with the greatest accuracy and lowest false positive rates.

How Awake’s Ava, the world’s first AI-powered security analyst, performs autonomous threat hunting for complex threats.

How Awake optimizes the detection to response workflow while providing you with the ability to customize detection and hunting through Awake’s unique Adversarial Modeling Language.

This event will be hosted both virtually and face to face.  There are two links on the calendar so you can sign up for whichever feels right for you.

Click here for the virtual link.

Click here for the face-to-face link

If you have previously registered to attend virtually but prefer to attend in person, please register again with the face-to-face link so we can get an accurate count for catering. 

NOTE:  following this event, we anticipate moving back to our regularly scheduled third Tuesday of the month if you want to mark your calendar!

Looking forward to seeing everyone at 655 Discovery Drive on May 20! 

Cyber Huntsville 

NAC-ISSA will resume in person lunches with the April Sponsor, MarsSuite. This SIEM/asset discovery/vulnerability management/risk management tool is an essential part of your security compliance management and a great addition to your CMMC suite of solutions.  Rosies will be catering.

Register here if you plan to attend in person. There is another registration for this event if you prefer to view the demo virtually.

Location: Radiance Technology, 310 Bob Heath Drive, Huntsville, AL

Start Time: 11:30AM End Time: 12:30PM

Registration Closes On: 4/20/2021

BSides Huntsville will be presented by NAC-ISSA on February 5-6, 2021. BSides Huntsville is the conference for those that work in the trenches of Cybersecurity. This is the opportunity for you to engage in fierce discussions about the next big ideas or the worst product you've ever seen, but in a friendly and informal setting.

This will be BSides's 7th year in the Rocket City and they intend to make it a great virtual event. All the BSides volunteers are working hard to put together an educational and exceptional virtual experience. Virtual meeting expands the possibility to include more training, workshops, talks, capture the flag, or moderated panels. So if you are just getting started, trying to level up or are already a mad scientist of Cyber Security looking for the next project, go ahead and grab your ticket, there is a hard limit and once they are gone there will be no more. Visit the BSides Huntsville NAC-ISSA site to register for the event.

CMMC stands for “Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification”. The CMMC will encompass multiple maturity levels that ranges from “Basic Cybersecurity Hygiene” to “Advanced/Progressive”. The intent is to incorporate CMMC into Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) and use it as a requirement for contract award. The official website can be found at https://www.acq.osd.mil/cmmc/

This past week, several Cyber Huntsville Board members were on a TEAMS call with the creator of the CMMC, Katie Arrington. She provided an overview of the Cyber Resiliency Project that included online training modules and CMMC guide.

• Training: https://projectspectrum.io/#!/pilotProgram
• CMMC Guide: https://projectspectrum.io/#!/abtcmmc

The DOD is planning to migrate to the new CMMC framework in order to assess and enhance the cybersecurity posture of the Defense Industrial Base (DIB). The CMMC is intended to serve as a verification mechanism to ensure appropriate levels of cybersecurity practices and processes are in place to ensure basic cyber hygiene as well as protect controlled unclassified information (CUI) that resides on the Department’s industry partners’ networks.

We encourage all Cyber Huntsville members, and the entire Tennessee Valley community, to submit comments to the CMMC/DFARS Interim Rule.

Alabama A&M University will be hosting the 2020 NASA Space Apps Hackathon Challenge this year on October 2-4. The event will be held virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Dr. Pearson at Alabama A&M would like to invite interested members of Cyber Huntsville and Cyber Huntsville member companies, other academic institutions and partners to serve as either a judge for the competition, or serve as a mentor for the teams participating in the challenge. The mentor will provide assistance to the team by answering questions and providing guidance on completing the challenges.  

The judging will take place on Sunday October 4^th from 12pm to 2:30pm. The mentors will be needed for both Saturday the 3^rd and Sunday the 4^th. NASA will soon be providing Dr. Pearson more details on judging and mentor responsibilities. As soon as he receives them, these details will be provided.

Register Here: https://2020.spaceappschallenge.org/locations/huntsville-al-at-alabama-am/

Contact Dr. Ed Pearson at ed.pearson@aamu.edu for questions.

DC Blox recently held an event with Huntsville Utilities on August 28th, 2020.  The panel discussed why the partnership between DC BLOX and Huntsville Utilities is so important to Huntsville businesses.  The event can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/453820063

Simple Helix is partnering with the North Alabama Chapter of the Information Systems Security Association (NAC-ISSA) to host a virtual discussion panel event. During the event, the CMMC discussion will be examined through the lens of the subcontractors that are currently working towards CMMC compliance. A panel of 3 small contractors and subcontractor representatives will be moderated by a Simple Helix Subject Matter Expert (SME) as they elaborate and discuss their journey to compliance.

The speakers:
• Moderator: Scott McDaniel – Vice President of Technology, Simple Helix
• Panel Member: Josh Reinoehl – Technical Manager, Canvas Inc.
• Panel Member: Lloyd Sanders – CTO, Offset Strategic Services
• Panel Member: Michael Rawls – GIS PM/AFSO/ITPSO, Ethic Tech

The subs will be asked questions like:
• Why did you decide to work towards CMMC compliance now?
• What are some of the hurdles you’ve been able to overcome regarding CMMC?
• What are the tools you’ve chosen to use to become compliant and why?
• How has this new compliance standard changed the way you operate?

Date – Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Time – 11:30am to 12:30pm

To explore these questions and gain insight on the subcontractor’s journey to CMMC Compliance, please register.