Special thanks to our hosts for the July RISE meeting – ABS Technology – who provided the venue, great food, and presentation. Attendees enjoyed their fill of hot dogs and hamburgers and were then treated to an excellent technical presentation by Lee Berdick.

The weather was fantastic for pre-meeting fellowship on the balcony looking over the Warehouse Historic District as the smell of freshly-grilled meat filled the air. As attendees rolled in the food started coming off the grill and was set out for quite the epic RISE feast.

Inside Lee Berdick fired up a presentation on Cisco ISE. Lee holds significant experience in developing secure networking solutions for customers as a senior consultant at ABS Technology. He knew the RISE members wanted technical details, not a glossy sales pitch. Attendees received an overview of ISE solutions for identity and secure network access solutions including details on the authentication process and handling of devices that don’t support 802.1X. Lee took all manner of questions during the brief and was not intimidated to go ‘into the weeds’.

The presentation was well-received by attendees who participated in several discussions during the brief to go into further detail on specific use cases or mitigations for attack scenarios. Some members who also had experience with ISE (and predecessors) supplemented discussion with some of their experiences and lessons. It was a fantastic evening of knowledge sharing that exemplifies the goal of RISE. Afterwards Lee remained for additional questions and one-on-one discussion as attendees broke into group discussions and networking.

Thanks to all who were able to attend this meeting – we hope you enjoyed the evening. If you missed this event we hope to see you at an upcoming meeting! Email roanokeinfosec@gmail.com to subscribe to the notification list for upcoming meetings.