To those who are not aware, I am first and foremost an independent consultant who also organizes a security conference. For 13 years, the ICS Cyber Security Conference has been a labor of love, but also a significant time consuming effort. Fortunately for my consulting business but unfortunately for the Conference, I have several large projects that will prevent me from putting in the necessary time to make the Conference as successful as I want. The projects I am working on are first-of-a-kind projects that will be ready to discuss next year. The test beds will have more information available as well as results from the Aurora hardware mitigation projects and input from end-users that had to recover from significant ICS cyber incidents.
I continue to believe there is a significant need for a cyber security conference from the perspective of the control systems engineer that focuses on the impacts of electronic communications on system performance, reliability, and safety. The Conference is unique in that it provides a trusted venue for sharing actual end-user information.
In this rapidly changing world of ICS cyber security, this hiatus will also provide me time to reassess if any changes in conference direction are warranted to keep the Conference relevant to multiple industries and multiple countries. Please send me your thoughts on content or direction. I expect to hold the Conference approximately the same time next year, late October 2015, at Georgia Tech.
I look forward to seeing you in 2015.
Joe Weiss
(408) 253-7934
