SecurePuter

I recently attended the DISA partnership conference held in Anaheim California. This year the event was a bit scaled back from previous years, but still a worthwhile attendance. My sincere thanks to LT General Carroll Pollett for hosting the conference and his great leadership of the Defense Information Systems Agency.

If you have a chance to go to next year’s event, it is well worth it. The mornings are filled with excellent high level and motivational speakers, such as the CEO of Verizon, CTO of Amazon.com, CIO of Boeing, and the CIO of Fedex. The afternoons are packed with roughly 15 – 20 tracks per hour that focus on a number of more technical aspects of information security. The evenings hold networking opportunities and leading market vendor exhibits complimented with food and drinks.

I personally took more away from the leadership and business driven presentations during the mornings. Technical skills can be taught, but great leadership and business sense needs to be absorbed from the best of us. The exhibitors were great as well. I was able to explore first hand some products that my company would be interested in and (if you have kids) take home many gizmos, gadgets, and other free giveaways.

Overall I give it a 8.5 out of 10.