These are often useful fora to gain an understanding of the sentiments of influential congressional staffers on relevant cyber security topics. The format is usually off-the-record and informal, but informative. Comprised of both Senate and House offices from Homeland Security, Judicial, Energy and Commerce, Banking and Finance, Appropriations, and Armed Services committee's.

April 28th, 2006

To promote and increase awareness of the Insider Threat, the ISAlliance hosted a briefing before Congressional staffers comprised of both chambers and from various committees. The briefing was conducted by Dawn Cappelli, Senior Member of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Not only were influential staffers briefed on the culmination of over 3 years of research by Carnegie Mellon University and the United States Secret Service, but staffers were encouraged to raise questions of relevance to the Congressional Members drafting legislation affecting information security.

June 23rd, 2006  

The ISAlliance hosted a briefing on Defense and Cyber Security given Sponsor level member companies representing the Aerospace and Defense sector, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.

The CISO of Raytheon, Jeffrey Brown, provided staffers with an Aerospace and Defense perspective on the current information threat landscape and the unintended consequences of mitigating against those threats.

The Chief Security Architect with Northrop Grumman, Vance Field, provided staffers with the unclassified version of the state of play with regards to Identify and Access Management.  

October 2nd, 2006

The ISAlliance hosted a briefing on IT and Telecommunications Cyber Security. ISAlliance Sponsors VeriSign, Verizon, and Nortel briefed staffers from House and Senate Homeland Security, Judiciary, and Energy and Commerce among several others.