NATO IA Symposium 2009 (NIAS09). 21-24 Sept 09
The NATO IA Symposium is an annual 3 day event, currently in its 6th year and growing all the time. This year saw a record 700+ attendees with over 40 vendor stands. The Symposium was held in the SHAPE Club and utilised the SHAPE Club tennis courts for the main vendor marquee. With the main audience being NATO personnel from NATO HQ, NCSA, NC3A, SHAPE but including member countries MoD’s and NSAs, the symposium is an ideal opportunity for the IA community to highlight IA concerns, developments, improvements and other related issues.
This year’s NIAS kicked off on the Monday 21 Sept with the inaugural NCSA Information Assurance golf competition at the Royal Golf Club du Hainaut (RGCH). This was an ideal way to break the ice, with a variety of NATO/NCSA personnel and vendors taking part in a friendly team event. The team of David Franeau, RGCH, Laurence Pender, Guidance Software, Christophe Armslag, SERCO, and Jamie Gallegos, NCSA, winning with a net score of 57, and were subsequently presented the Guidance Cup (Sponsored by Guidance Software) by Gen Herrmann, Dir NCSA. An evening BBQ followed the prize giving.
Tuesday saw the NIAS opened by L.Gen Herrmann, Director, NCSA, with the focus of this year’s symposium being the ‘Return on Investment’ (RoI). Each morning saw several keynote speakers raise RoI and related issues for the audiences consideration. Some highlighted the problems facing NATO whilst others provided insights into possible solutions and the current thoughts on the way forward.
The afternoon sessions took the form of workshops with several different streams including Cyber Defence, Secure Management Infrastructure and Cross Domain Issues. Closed group sessions covered Information Sharing and Legal Aspects.
A Gala Dinner was held on the Tuesday evening with over 350 attendees, each table of 10 being sponsored by a different vendor. The SHAPE Club staff provided an excellent service whilst the magician and two caricaturists provided entertainment for the attendees.
Wednesday saw the gathering of most of the attendees for the group photograph in the SHAPE Club car park. This year the gathering took a full 7 parking spaces, as opposed to the 4 spaces used in the past few years. Because it’s such a large group the photo had to be taken in stages. Can you spot the person appearing at both ends?
Wednesday also saw a panel session with the audience asking questions of an expert panel consisting of Mr Dick Schaeffer, IA Director, USA NSA, Ms Melissa Hathaway, former USA Senior Director for Cyberspace, Mr John Stewart and Mr Christopher Burgess, CISCO & Mr Patrick Arnold, Microsoft.
The NCSA stand was well attended with numerous NATO entities interested in the VOIP system that has been jointly developed by CISCO and NITC.
Thursday opened with a presentation by MGen Hines, Director NHQC3 Staff and concluded with NITC’s Nuri Fattah, discussing Social Engineering and obtaining of private data via social websites (Facebook, Twitter, etc). In addition an exchange visit with the NCSA Open Day was arranged. Approximately 50 NIAS attendees visited the NCSA Open Day. MGen Hines returned leading a team of approximately 30 from the NCSA Open Day for a short visit to the Vendors marquee. Closing remarks were given by MGen Ioannou-Sioutos, COS, NCSA. Feedback from the majority of the vendors and attendees was positive with some vendors already asking about booking stands for next year.
The NIAS09 DVD, obtainable from NITC, has copies of the keynote presentations and video of the actual presenters as well as details of all the vendors and includes a selection of photos taken over the 4 days.