I am very excited to be going to RSA Europe this year, and not only that I am thrilled be taking part in a debate.  The topic of the debate is “Should you train your employees on security awareness?” on Tuesday October 9th at 13:10hrs. It takes place with five other folks in the information security field;

• Christian Toon, European Head of Information Risk,Iron Mountain Europe;
• Javvad Malik, Senior Security Analyst, 451 Research;
• Rowenna Fielding, Information Security Manager, Alzheimer’s Society;
• Kai Roer, Senior partner, The Roer Group;
• Geordie Stewart, Principle Consultant, Risk Intelligence.

I am partnered with Geordie and Rowenna against security awareness training. I could well have argued either side of the debate, but I seem to be constantly disappointed even in cases where common sense should prevail and that is what swayed me in the end. Either way, it should be informative and above all fun, especially given those that are involved.

The official synopsis is as follows:

Training your staff in security awareness is an accepted and often mandated requirement of compliance in any organisation. Its effectiveness however has been increasingly questioned and its limitations highlighted. The Acumin Risk and Network Threat (RANT) community brings together six thought leaders from across Europe to debate the conflicting and opposing views of this challenging topic.