InfraGard is holding its 2nd Annual Conference on August 22-24 in Washington DC. One of the 11 tracks is SCADA and Control Systems Security. Once again I’m looking for interesting, innovative presentations to fill six open slots in this track. Feel free to email me at peterson@digitalbond.com if there is a presentation you would like to give or see.

I know, I know . . . there are some loyal readers who are thinking “You hyprocrite. You just blogged on how we didn’t need another summit and now you are shilling for one.” I did give this some thought before agreeing to organize the track again, here are my reasons.

- Infragard draws a very different audience than we typically see at ISA, PCSF, KEMA, etc. Last year at the first event the only “usual suspects” out of the 500 attendees were the speakers.

- The DC location is very attractive for USG attendees who can’t get money to travel to the other SCADA events. It is worthwhile to educate as many as possible in the USG about the importance of SCADA security.

- The lack of a SCADA security track would be a glaring omission.

So here is my early advice on attending:

- If you attend the other SCADA security conferences, you probably shouldn’t attend this conference for the SCADA information. There are 10 other tracks including a Computer Forensics track taught by the FBI, a GIS track, a Water Security track, and more. You may want to attend those tracks and hit one or two SCADA presentations, but don’t come just for the SCADA info. There probably will not be a lot of new information.

- If you are new to SCADA there will be two half-day intro to SCADA security courses. The information on the courses and teachers will be finalized shortly.

- The keynotes are usually quite good. Last year they had the DHS Secretary and FBI Director. This year they have the President of Shell scheduled, and they will announce the government keynotes as the event gets closer.

- Price is only $695 for 3-days if you are an InfraGard member.