Latest News
May Dinner Presentation: Donte' Hill on Leadership
Motivational speaker Donte' Hill will present "Contagious Leadership: Principles to Spreading a Winning Culture". Topics will include:
- Empowering Your Team to Communicate
- Being Contagious
- Knowing How to Wow
- Leaving a Lasting Legacy
Donte' Hill is CEO and founder of King of the Court Leadership International. A consummate leader, Hill now shares his leadership skills as a motivational speaker, author, and entrepreneur who develops positive people, leaders, organizations, and teams.
A former professional athlete with the CBA, he is also a scout for the ABA's Jacksonville Giants, as well as a popular and insightful color analyst for "Miller On Sports" with host Richard Miller.
Hill focuses on training and teaching upcoming leaders effective methods of teamwork, leadership, and communication in his recent book "Contagious Leadership: 13 Principles to Spreading a Winning Culture".
April AITP: InGuardian's John Sawyer to speak on Smart Grid Vulnerabilities
"Smart Meters" are already popping up in Gainesville as an integral part
of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) or "Smart Grid" that
promises to transform energy usage nationwide. But is the technology
safe for widespread usage? John Sawyer of InGuardians will explore some
exploitable AMI vulnerabilities and insecure configuration issues that can impact your security, your privacy-- and your wallet.
"The back-end resources are often vulnerable to all of the same threat
vectors as everyday web-based business solutions. Cross-site scripting,
cross site request forgery, insufficient network monitoring, and
questionable web server and database configurations all play a part in
increasing the risk to the AMI deployment and the electrical grid
itself."
Can anyone monitor my usage? Can the utility company
monitor usage and sell that data? What information do they really know
through the Home Area Network (HAN)? Can someone write a worm that
attacks these things? Can my neighbor turn off my power? Can the
business across the street stick my company with his electric bill?
This presentation will explore the vulnerabilities in the AMI
infrastructure and suggest ways to mitigate your risk at all levels from
the home through the enterprise.
John Sawyer is a Senior
Security Analyst with InGuardians specializing in network and web
application penetration testing. John's experience in enterprise IT
security includes penetration testing, system and network hardening,
intrusion analysis, and digital forensics.
John has developed
and taught cyber security training for a large university and spoken at
events for industry and law enforcement. He has consulted with federal,
state, and local law enforcement agencies on malware analysis, hacker
attacks, and digital forensics. John is the author of the popular blog,
"Evil Bytes", at DarkReading.com, and a member of the winning team from
DEF CON 14 and 15's Capture the Flag competition.
John Fitzgerald of SANS will present "Securing the Human" at our next dinner presentation.
"Its hard to do Security Awareness well! This talk will discuss how SANS approached this challenge and some of their learnings. It will provide the background detail for the new program that they have developed and also discuss how State & Local Government, Education and SME organizations can participate in a special program that significantly reduces the costs for this training."
NOAA to speak at February dinner meeting
Pete Wolf, Science & Operations Officer of the Jacksonville NOAA will talk about an exciting upgrade coming to the NWS Jacksonville WSR-88D.
Starting February 13, 2012, the radar will be transformed into a dual-polarization radar!
The new radar will:
- Improve the accuracy of identifying precipitation types.
- Improve precipitation estimation, which will ultimately improve flash flood warnings and river level forecasts.
- Identify precipitation types which will ultimately improve winter weather forecasting and hail detection.
- Filter out atmospheric targets like birds, bugs, and bats so forecasters can focus on weather only.
- Identify airborne tornado debris, which will assist in locating and tracking some tornadoes.
We hope you can join us for this fascinating presentation!
Meet-n-Greet Tuesday, January 24
Your North-Central Florida chapter of AITP will host a Meet-n-Greet at Beef O'Bradys in the Holiday Inn, 1250 W University Ave, on Tuesday, January 24, from 6 to 8 PM.
Meet the Chapter members and enjoy networking, fellowship, and learning in a relaxed, no-pressure environment. The first round of wings will be on us!
As you know, the North Central Florida Chapter, Region 7 and all of AITP lost a great friend and resource in the passing of Evan Eldridge this past month.
Many folks have expreseed interest in any arrangements for a celebration of Evan's life and here are the details. Evan's family asked that we pass these details along to you.
In case you have any trouble using the link above, here are the details of the event:
Celebration Of The Life Of James Evan Eldridge
Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 2:00 PM
Milam Funeral Home - Newberry
22405 W. Newberry Road
Newberry FL 32669
Join us as we celebrate the life of our husband, father, grandfather and brother. We ask that you come and share some of the wonderful moments you had with Evan.
Please call Scott 813-767-1011 or Deborah 813-767-8650 for any information on the event, hotels, or the Gainesville area you may need.
We would ask also that you pass this invitation on to anyone you feel would like to join us.
Thank you.
The Eldridge Family
The 2012 Board was nominated and elected at the December dinner meeting.
- President: Michael Lucas
- Vice President: Tammy Rutledge
- Treasurer: TBD
- Secretary: TBD
- Immediate Past President: Scott Sheridan
Sad news for the Chapter-- Evan Eldridge passes
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Mr. J. Evan Eldridge, a long-time and Life Member of the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) passed away suddenly on Tuesday, December 13, 2011.
Mr. Eldridge most recently served as Chapter Liaison for the North-Central Florida Chapter, and as Region 7 Secretary, for AITP.
A family member stated that an obituary notice has been placed and scheduled to run on Sunday, December 18, 2011 in the Gainesville (Florida) Sun, the Aiken (South Carolina) Standard, and in one of the Chattanooga (Tennessee) newspapers.
Services for Mr. Eldridge have not been finalized, but are expected to be private. A Memorial Service is planned for some time in February, 2012.
A special e-mail account is in the process of being established by Mr. Eldridge’s survivors to facilitate communications with friends and associates.
Please keep Mr. Eldridge and his family in your thoughts and prayers.
With deepest sympathy,
Stephen Flowers
Vice President and Treasurer
North-Central Florida Chapter
Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP)
Your North Central Florida chapter of AITP has been awarded the
Chapter Outstanding Performance Award for 2011! Our Chapter Liaison, Evan Eldrige, collected the award on our behalf at the recent Regional meeting in Orlando.
Altavian to speak at December meeting.
Our speakers for the holiday meeting scheduled for December 13 represent a local startup company.
Altavian manufactures and markets the services of small unmanned aircraft fitted with high-resolution cameras that can be used for property inspections at lower cost than current manned craft options. The aircraft can be used by farmers and law enforcement agencies, and is now being used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Recently founded by four UF graduate students, Altavian specializes in using unmanned technology for precision scientific and engineering applications.
Their systems provide high-resolution images for products like Google Earth faster and less expensively than alternatives.
Targeting the civilian market, Altavian joins the growing unmanned aircraft industry in North Central Florida.
The New Horizons discount offer for AITP members has been extended until Dec 30, 2011! Click here for more.
Allen Rout to present 3D printer
At our November dinner meeting, Allen Rout of UF CNS and Skillhouse Hackerspace will demonstrate a Makerbot Cupcake 3D printer!
Special New Horizons offer for AITP members
New Horizons has offered significant discounts on training to AITP-NCFL members through November 30. For more information, see the coupon in our Classifieds section.
New Horizons to present at October meeting
Don Pezet, Training Manager, and Andrea Dzavik, Senior Manager of Learning & Development at New Horizons Gainesville, will be our speakers for the October dinner meeting. The topic is "IT Process Management: Three Roles Critical to Success".
At the September meeting we will premier our new logo (based on the recently-updated AITP National logo) as well as our all-new Chapter Website.
Kevin Johnson to speak at September meeting
On September 27th, Kevin Johnson of Secure Ideas will present Don't Drop the SOAP: Real World Web Service Testing.
"From critical business applications like SAP to popular mobile applications, web services are becoming more of an attack vector than ever before. Unfortunately, penetration testers have failed to keep up with the popularity of web services, the recent advancements in web service technology, and the available testing methodologies and tools.
"In fact, most of the methodologies and tools currently available either don't work properly, are poorly designed, don't fully test for real world web service vulnerabilities, or lack appropriate testbeds."
In this presentation Kevin will discuss specific emerging security issues with web services. He will also release an updated web service testing methodology that will be integrated into the OWASP testing guide, new Metasploit modules, and exploits for attacking web services. In addition he will show an open-source web service that is intentionally left vulnerable so that penetration testers to test web service attack tools and techniques.