Rick Forno on SchmooCon 2016 closing panel

This past weekend, Dr. Rick Forno, CYBR GPD and Assistant Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, joined Dr. Matt Blaze (UPenn), Dr. Jeff Foster (UMCP), and COL (Ph.D) Greg Conti (USMA) on the closing plenary panel for Schmoocon 2016 in Washington, DC.

ShmooCon is an annual east coast hacker convention offering three days of an interesting atmosphere for demonstrating technology exploitation, inventive software and hardware solutions, and open discussions of critical infosec issues.  The first day is a single track of speed talks called One Track Mind.  The next two days bring three tracks:  Build It, Belay It, and Bring It On.

The panel examined the current state of information security programs in academia. Along the way they discussed issues around dealing with administration and the peculiarities of information security, the current state of information security research, attracting and vetting students/faculty, and generally what it’s like to be growing the next generation of information security professionals in a time where academia frequently is placed in the position of “building the bus while going down the road.”