Don't You Know That You're Toxic? Moving Towards Positive Security Practices w/in Your Organization
Channel: FIRST
Date: 2021-06-17

Speakers: Nicole Harris (GEANT, UK), Sigita Jurkynaite (NRD-CIRT, LT)

When thinking about “new defences” for security it is natural to immediately think about new technologies and tools, whereas not much time is spent on thinking about the human side and making employees themselves the new defence.    

In this talk we will highlight 10 common toxic behaviours that open up vulnerabilities for organisations. These will cover: how we manage and train employees, how we allow employees to behave, and how we ignore employees.  We will also suggest some simple changes to attitudes that can yield significant and proven improvements to the security standing of an organisation or team.  

About the Speakers
Nicole Harris joined GÉANT in March 2013 as a Project Development Officer to support the global GÉANT Community Programme. She works primarily in the security and middleware areas and specialises in managing global IT initiatives, policy and legal issues and open source developments. Nicole is responsible among other activities for TF-CSIRT, GÉANT’s forum for CSIRTS, and works to support GÉANT’s successful TRANSITS training programme as well as managing a variety of security related projects for National and Research Education Networks (NRENs). Prior to joining GÉANT, Nicole worked at JISC for 10 years, supporting a range of programmes and services in the middleware, research and open source spaces.

Nicole holds a Master of Arts degree in Children’s Literature, which has been more useful in her technical career than people might think.

Sigita Jurkynaitė is the Director of CyberSOC, NRD CS Security Operations Center. Prior to joining NRD CS, she worked for GÉANT, the European Association of Academic Networks. Sigita has international experience in managing cyber security projects, coordinating expert communities, and organising and conducting cyber security trainings in Europe and Asia. Sigita frequently presents at international conferences and is an active member of international CERT communities. Sigita holds two Bachelors of Arts degrees.