DETROIT – Eastern Michigan InfraGard’s board of advisors met Jan. 31 for the first time in 2008 to put together a plan for the new year. The overall theme for 2008 will be monthly events to provide value to InfraGard members and allow professionals to grow and hone existing skills.

Working with Western Michigan InfraGard, as well as InfraGard in the Upper Peninsula provided some additional ideas and opportunities.

Starting in February, InfraGard is working with Jackson Community College on a Cyber Defense event that will be jointly hosted. More info to come on a date and time.

The InfraGard March event will most likely occur at Walsh College’s Novi campus and will focus on Business Continuity planning. We will be working with Walsh to identify a mutually beneficial date/time for the event.

April – has an event currently scheduled only for Western Michigan InfraGard, with a theme of ‘meeting your emergency managers’. Eastern InfraGard may still try to put something on the calendar for April, so if you have any ideas please let me know.

May – will be the Eastern Infragard version of ‘meet your emergency managers’. A tour of the CREST facility in Oakland county is planned, where several emergency response exercises are done each year.

June – is currently an open month on the plan. Again, ideas are welcome – please let me know if you have suggestions.

July – Currently open

August – Biggest InfraGard event of the year, the Cyber Summit, to be held in Lansing. This event is primarily for State employees, but InfraGard members are also invited to participate.

September – ISEC / InfraGard joint event being planned around a DHS software development grant.

– An upper peninsula event will occur with assistance from Eastern InfraGard.

October – SecureWorld, with InfraGard as a primary sponsor.

November & December are currently open.

Discussion also revolved around getting word out to the community in new ways, expanding our infrastructure participants involved (water, agriculture, etc..), and finding ways to support some of the legal community that are involved with Cyber crime and other DHS related work.

If you have ideas for InfraGard, suggestions, or want to help out, please let us know.

If you?d like to share your security column ideas with Hans, email [email protected]<

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