Speaker Electrifies Audience

July 3, 2007
From their perspective everything was going swimmingly. Keynote speaker and Cyber-security pioneer Winn Schwartau had the audience of tech leaders in rapt attention. Heads were nodding in knowing agreement as his presentation covered in graphic detail today's threats, International actors, technologies and lack of will on the part of the U.S. to adequately engage our enemies.

Participants at ISC2's Secure Americas Conference in Washington, D.C., didn't realize they were about to be astonished.

From their perspective everything was going swimmingly. Keynote speaker and Cyber-security pioneer Winn Schwartau had the audience of tech leaders in rapt attention. Heads were nodding in knowing agreement as his presentation covered in graphic detail today's threats, International actors, technologies and lack of will on the part of the U.S. to adequately engage our enemies.

Schwartau, the visionary author of Information Warfare and founder of the InfowarCon Conference & Exhibition, spoke in stunning detail on current U.S. vulnerabilities including: espionage, nation-state cyber-warfare, cyber-terrorism and Internet enabled critical infrastructure attacks.

Only one problem. The speech wasn't new. Actually, it was old. Really, really old.

The ISC2 audience was amazed when Schwartau revealed "You should all know that this is the same exact presentation I gave 15 years ago. The only things I changed were the title and a few graphics. That's it."

Slowly, the lesson of Schwartau's stunt began to sink in. Fifteen years later, we are still way behind the curve.

"We have really lost this round of the Cyberwars," said Schwartau. "If we want to survive the bigger Infowar we only have a short window in which to adapt our posture."

This September 19-21, Schwartau and his posse of Information Warfare experts that includes luminaries like: Major General Charles Dunlap, U.S.A.F. JAG, Richard Forno, infowarrior.org and Professor Daniel T. Kuehl, National Defense University are bringing back their unique brand of cutting-edge cyber-warfare education with the revival of InfowarCon (www.infowarcon.com). Before its cancellation in 2003 it was a must attend event for information operations professionals and über geeks.

Schwartau wouldn't comment on the cessation of InfowarCon back in 2003, saying only "after three long years of protecting my trademarks from infringement, InfowarCon is back. And as a country it's obvious we have a lot of catching-up to do."

InfowarCon Advisory Board: Dr. Dan Kuehl, National Defense University; Amit Yoran, NetWitness; Howard A. Schmidt, Former White House Cybersecurity Advisor; Mark Rasch, FTI; Dorothy Denning, DoD; Freeman Mendell, InfraGuard; Richard Forno, Infowarrior.org; Lars Nicander, CATS

InfowarCon Partners Include: Purifile, Tec Sec, Homeland Defense Journal, Government Security News, Homeland Defense Week, Officer.com, Continuity Insights, Infraguard, ISSA NOVA, Terrorism Research Center and National Defense University.

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