Dr. Eric Cole leads off SANS CyberCon 2012. There are few local Information Security (Info Sec) education opportunities for IT professionals in Saudi Arabia. That's why the upcoming virtual event from the SANS Institute is so important. SANS CyberCon 2012 will take place October 8 through October, 13, 2012. This is SANS' first live online global training event. The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. Its programs now reach more than 165,000 security professionals around the world. SANS is by far the largest source for information security training and security certification in the world. SANS CyberCon 2012 is featuring some of the top Info Sec practitioners in the industry. The virtual event kicks off with a keynote address from SANS Faculty Fellow Dr. Eric Cole, plus there are vendor presentations and evening thought sharing sessions. During the event SANS is offering four of its top courses: l Management 414: SANS +S Training Program for the CISSP Certification Exam (GISP). l Security 504: Hacker Techniques, Exploits & Incident Handling (GCIH). l Security 542: Web App Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking (GWAPT). l Forensics 408: Computer Forensic Investigations – Windows In-Depth (GCFE).All courses will meet live in virtual classrooms and will be fully interactive. Participants may ask questions, network with classmates and master new skills. Students in the virtual courses will receive the same materials and complete the same labs and exercises as all other SANS students. Four months of access to an online archive of the class is provided at no extra charge. These recordings of the class presentations and discussions allow a playback of the class later if it's necessary to step away from the computer for a few minutes or to review a challenging concept. In addition to the online classes, evening talks are part of the SANS CyberCon 2012 experience. These presentations are intended to help security professionals broaden their knowledge and hear from experts not beholden to vendors. Two evening talks scheduled during the event are “Everything they told me about security was wrong," with John Strand and “Ninja Assessments: Stealth Security Testing for Organizations," with Kevin Johnson. SANS Institute has created a test environment to ensure that a user's system and connectivity are powerful enough to support participation in the event. Go to the SANS CyberCon website – https://www.sans.org/cybercon-2012/ and click on the Elluminate room tab on the right-hand side of the page to access the test environment. The courses aren't cheap – about $4,000 each. However, when Saudi organizations consider the travel costs of sending staff to international education seminars, the online course costs become extremely reasonable. Compete in the SANS CyberCon 2012 Twitter Trivia Contest to be entered to win a free training seat. The hashtag is #cybercon2012 and a new question is posted every Monday through September 17. Respond with an answer at [email protected] by 9 P.M. EST that Monday. Every trivia question answered correctly results in a contest entry. The winning name will be drawn on September 18. For complete details on the trivia contest or to register for training, please visit: www.sans.org/info/110675
