What they're saying...

"How cool is this?! Kudos to
  Vanguard! You guys ROCK!!!!
  Sure wish I could join you -
  hope the conference goes as
  great as always!"

"Your recent announcement
  about the scholarship program
  that you are offering is
  fantastic and shows that VIP
  has taken the lead in providing
  education to unemployed
  security professionals.
  My congrats go out to everyone
  at  Vanguard and I wish you
  continued success with this
  program. Its a  remarkable   effort."

" I really like it. Ronn and
  Vanguard deserve a
  resounding 'well done' from
  the INFOSEC community. "

Vanguard’s Scholarship Program is part of our commitment to attack our nation’s unemployment crisis and help secure our country’s critical computing infrastructure.

We plan to provide training for up to 50 unemployed cybersecurity professionals who have been impacted by the worst unemployment crisis in two decades.

What you’ll learn

The Vanguard training event will address mainframe-specific technical security skills that attendees can put to use immediately. Security professionals (without mainframe experience) and mainframe professionals (without security experience) will be cross-trained with the most up-to-date procedures, improving their qualifications, and making them strong candidates for re-employment. Scholarship recipients will also gain insights into the latest government regulations and industry developments that impact day-to-day business practices.

Scholarship recipients will be able to choose from multiple training tracks designed specifically for their needs, as well as government tracks designed to keep them current in government regulations and standards. Vanguard will track the scholarship recipient’s attendance and issue a ‘Certificate of Completion’ at the end of the training program. CISSP®, CISM® and CISA® certified attendees will also be able to earn Continuing Professional Education credits.

Vanguard has hosted this premier annual mainframe technical security training conference for the last 24 years. Vanguard’s Enterprise Security Training Programs were a finalist for best professional training program in the 2010 SC Magazine Awards. 

Vanguard is also developing partner relationships with employment companies to assist in job placements, as well as notifying employers of the available pool of qualified security professionals.

Research Findings

This Scholarship is especially timely in light of recent findings by both Gartner, Inc. and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. These agencies pointed out three key issues, which we plan to address with our program:

• Many mainframe professionals from the baby boomer generation are retiring and there is a lack of skilled people to replace them.
• There have been significant cuts in security resources due to the impact of the recession
• There is a serious need for cross training for both mainframe specialists and distributed security specialists. This is directly related to:

• —	Security specialists (Linux, Unix, Windows) who don’t know mainframes.
  —	Mainframe specialists (system and storage administrators and system programmers) who don’t know security.
  —	Mainframe professionals who need tools and skills to be current on the newest government regulations and standards.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies: “Two-thirds of the IT executives surveyed said that there had been cuts in the security resources available to them as a result of the recession.”

A recent CNN cybersecurity program said that 85% of our nation’s critical information infrastructure is under the control of private enterprise. We also know that virtually all government agencies run most or all of their mission-critical workload on mainframes. According to Gartner, “The IBM z/OS mainframe continues to be an important platform for many enterprises, hosting about 90% of their mission critical applications… Thus, the incidence of high-risk vulnerabilities is astonishingly high.” In short, it is clear that the current state of mainframe security directly impacts national security threats.

Gartner’s Report said that mainframes are “complex and esoteric to many security professionals weaned on only on Windows and Unix OS, and likely lack the knowledge to identify best practices or to recognize mainframe—specific control weaknesses” They also said that “those who are mainframe specialists are rarely also security specialists… Many errors likely flow from a poor understanding of the security consequences.”

One of Gartner’s recommendations is that enterprises need to “invest in mainframe-specific technical security through recruitment or cross-training mainframe specialist and security specialists.”