Northport, NY—May 15, 2019—Laurin Buchanan, Principal Investigator at Secure Decisions, will be presenting at the New York State Cyber Security Conference, hosted by the New York State Office of Information Technology Services, the University at Albany School of Business, and The New York State Forum, Inc. The conference will take place June 4th and 5th in Albany, N.Y.
For the presentation entitled, “Compete Your Way to Success: Building Tomorrow’s Workforce,” on Wednesday, June 5th at 3:30 p.m., Laurin will team with Jake Mihevc, Associate Dean for Business, Cybersecurity, and Computer Sciences at Mohawk Valley Community College. Both are members of the Competitions Sub Group of the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Working Group, which promotes the use of competitions in order to nurture and expand a diverse national talent pool by advancing knowledge, skills and abilities. Laurin and Jake will share how organizations of all kinds are now using competitions to both recruit new talent and provide valuable training and practice opportunities for current employees. Using case studies drawn from personal experience with different types of games, exercises, and competitions, they will illustrate how these activities benefit both participants and sponsoring organizations. They will also share general information and resources about competitions and how they fit in with certifications and the NICE Workforce Framework.
Now in its 22nd year, the Annual New York State Cyber Security Conference offers something for everyone: technology users, IT professionals, government employees, and business owners. More than 1,300 professionals from the public and private sectors are expected to attend this conference.
About Secure Decisions:
Secure Decisions was created as a division of Applied Visions, Inc. to conduct R&D and develop innovative technologies in cyber security, including application security, security education, network defense, and infrastructure protection. Secure Decisions develops cutting-edge technologies to automate manually-intensive security processes and support the analysis and visualization of large amounts of complex security data.
Laurin Buchanan spent two decades managing IT operations and information security in the corporate sector, most recently for a Fortune 1000 company and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional. She uses her operational background as Principal Investigator at Secure Decisions, leading R&D efforts for novel solutions to improve the cybersecurity decision making by humans. She has led research efforts in cybersecurity education, including development of Comic-BEE, a web application for creating interactive, branching comics for cybersecurity education and evaluation that accommodates diverse age and expertise levels. She has twice received funding from the National Science Foundation to evaluate the use of Comic-BEE to broaden exposure of middle school students to cybersecurity concepts and careers. Laurin served as a subject matter expert during initial development of the NICE Workforce Framework that describes the work of cybersecurity practitioners; she is now a member of the NICE Working Group and served as co-Chair of the Competitions Sub Group. Laurin is a frequent speaker at conferences and events, and also serves on the Editorial Board of the Cybersecurity Skills Journal published by the National CyberWatch Center.
