As you may know, every year SANS Security Awareness hosts Security Awareness Summits in both America and Europe. What makes these events so valuable are not only the amazing talks and interactive workshops, but the focus on in-person community building and networking. In many ways these events are the gathering of a big family. With COVID-19, we had to make the challenging decision of do we make the event virtual, or do we postpone the event to later this year so we can support an in-person event. After much debate our illustrious Advisory Board and the SANS summit team has come up with a fantastic solution, we will do both – with an added bonus for the community!
- In-Person Summit: The annual summit scheduled for 5/6 August in Austin, TX has been postponed until 3/4 December in Austin, TX (same hotel). The Advisory Board felt strongly that the value of the Summit was in the in-person relationship building and networking, and we wanted to be sure we supported that. So we will be hosting the same speakers and agenda that was drafted for the August summit, just in December. In addition, we will be combining the European and US summits together for this event. As a perk Austin, Texas in December is the perfect place to visit in winter!
- Virtual Summit: However, we wanted to be sure we still supported the community in August. As such, we will also be hosting a half-day, free Security Awareness Summit on 05 August. We wanted a day and times that worked well for both North America and Europe. The theme of the event will be “Virtual”. With all the changes due to COVID-19, it has become key for our community to be able to virtually communicate to and engage a remote, global workforce. As such, all the talks will focus on how to leverage the latest technologies, modalities, and methods for virtual engagement. Not only will we be talking about virtual engagement, but we will be actually doing it leveraging technologies like Slack and Zoom, hosting the first global digital security awareness scavenger hunt and Video Wars!
We are super excited to be hosting both events. Expect lots of more information about the Virtual event soon as the Advisory Board is actively planning a huge series of fun, interactive activities. If you have a virtual activity or speaker you want to see us host, please reach out to us. These events are driven by the community for the community so we want your input.
