Renowned Authors Dr. Hugh Thompson and Nate Silver to Deliver Keynote Presentations at UNITED Security Summit 2013

Rapid7 Security Conference Will Deliver Actionable Advice and Threat Intelligence to Power-up Security Programs

Boston, MA — May 30, 2013

Rapid7, a leading provider of IT security risk management software and cloud solutions, today announced that Dr. Hugh Thompson and Nate Silver will deliver the opening and closing keynote presentations at the UNITED Security Summit 2013. The conference, which will be held on August 19-21, 2013 at the Seaport Hotel in Boston, MA, will focus on helping attendees achieve a higher level for their security strategies.

Dr. Hugh Thompson, author, information security expert, and chief security strategist and senior vice president at Blue Coat will give the opening keynote, “Attackers, Plateaus, and the Future of Information Security,” based on his just-released book, The Plateau Effect. Hugh will share what he has learned from the fields of psychology, insurance and competitive sports for insights on how to counteract the plateau effect and deal with a highly adaptive adversary.

Closing out UNITED’s powerful agenda, will be a keynote delivered by Nate Silver, New York Times statistician and political forecaster known for his award-winning FiveThirtyEight Political Calculus column and best-selling book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't. In his keynote session, “Big Data - Powerful Predictions through Data Analytics,” Nate will take attendees on a tour of modern prediction science, uncovering surprising connections among humility, uncertainty, and good results.

Other sessions include:

  • John Halamka, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, sharing his experiences of protecting his users’ and patients’ privacy when the hospital was treating the Boston Marathon Bombing suspects and victims. 
  • John Pescatore, director of the SANS Institute, partnering with Dana Wolf, director of assessment products at Rapid7, to present how to build a threat model and how it relates to optimizing security programs.
  • Scott Erven, manager of Information Security at Essentia Health, John Walton, principal security manager for Office365 at Microsoft, and Zate Berg, manager of security operations at Rapid7, will invite attendees to “Ask the Practitioner.”
  • HD Moore, chief research officer of Rapid7, Josh Corman, director of security intelligence at Akamai, and Dave Kennedy, founder and principal security consultant at TrustedSec, will once again tackle the pressing security questions of the day in their popular Rapid Fire debates session.

The full agenda will continue to be updated and can be found at: www.unitedsummit.org/agenda.

The conference will deliver valuable, actionable advice and best practices for security practitioners and CISOs in every industry, including federal, financial, healthcare, higher education and technology. This year’s theme, “Level Unlocked: Power-Up Your Security,” will investigate how defenders can maximize their security investments and make real progress in reducing risk. 

In addition to providing insights from industry leaders, the new Customer-to-Customer track will enable attendees to learn from the experiences of Rapid7 customers. Attendees will also get a preview of the latest threat research and new tools being developed at Rapid7 Labs and see how Rapid7 software integrates with other leading security solutions.

Every UNITED attendee is eligible to earn 16 CPE credits, depending on how many sessions are attended. Attendees can also register for a training class after the conference, held August 22-23, 2013, to earn an additional 16 CPE credits. Training packages include Nexpose Advanced or Metasploit 201.

Sponsors for the event include the largest and fastest growing independent security information and event management (SIEM) provider, LogRhythm; security management and risk analysis company, FireMon; and customized information security and governance, risk and compliance provider, Sentry Metrics. Further sponsorship opportunities are available. For more information, please email info@unitedsummit.org.


About Rapid7

Rapid7 security analytics software and services reduce threat exposure and detect compromise for 3,000 organizations across 78 countries, including over 250 of the Fortune 1000. We understand the attacker better than anyone and build that insight into our solutions to improve risk management and stop threats faster. We offer advanced capabilities for vulnerability management, penetration testing, controls assessment, incident detection and investigation across your assets and users for virtual, mobile, private and public cloud networks. To learn more about Rapid7 or get involved in our threat research, visit www.rapid7.com.

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