TITSSN expands their Secure Minds Initiative outside its network and into primary social networking sites

Link: http://titssn.net

Good day to you,

On December 1st 2008, TITSSN will initiate a major promotional campaign to promote our Secure Minds Initiative across the 3 primary social networking sites LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace, in an effort to gather broader visibility/support of the cause. In 2005 TITSSN initiated its Community Outreach Program that created a more personal access and information for/about its security professional members in their local communities so that the needed information/awareness/education/resources for/about IT Security could be effectively disseminated to its residents.

Over the past three years we have integrated this program more deeply into our network as our beliefs in being a physical presence in times of need provides a more comforting and valuable feeling for people. People developed a sense of comfort in talking about their security issues/fears/concerns which in turn allowed us to relay the message of safe internet usage practices and the issues file sharing and illegal downloading of applications, movies and music presented.

As a result of the successes gathered from the Community Outreach Program, we decided to take this a step further and enacted the Adopt an Institution Program in 2006 to create a more seamless integration of this technical knowledge and resources into our educational institutions. As a part of our Adopt an Institution Program, we launched an industry IT Security Scholarship program in 2006 which is geared towards providing financial aid specifically towards IT Security professionals in the institutions that we adopted. In working with the administrative staff and technology teachers we selectively pick students who we see are heading towards higher levels of expertise in the security space and award them with a scholarship that will help towards the financial burdens of getting the training, education and becoming certified. Through our partnership with training and certification leaders such as Training Capital and Netcom we extend these opportunities to these institutions and scholarship winners.

We understood that this needed high level education and awareness was being provided at the college and university levels but there was something critical missing from the converged network, our youths in middle/high schools. These are people who have just as much access to internet connected resources as much as everyone else and in some cases (if not most) they are unmonitored and unprotected while in the home who are developing a sense of style to become tomorrow’s parents, professionals, business executives and educators. These are the people with curious minds who have downloaded malicious codes and other compiled malware/spyware kits and started playing with them in an effort to see what they do and how much of a problem they could really cause.

Over the years we have seen these curious minds creating major issues/impacts on the global technology sector rendering some companies/organizations helpless as they tried to defend against the newly created threats and new waves of attacks/exploits. These young curious minds are craving for a piece(s) of the technology resources/infrastructure and if not nurtured to understand what they are and how to choice between being on the good or bad side then we’re in for a very hectic future riddle with nonstop problems and critical effects from these young creative and curious minds.

As a part of our Adopt an Institution Program, we launched an industry IT Security Scholarship program in 2006 which is geared towards providing financial aid specifically towards IT Security professionals in the institutions that we adopted. In working with the administrative staff and technology teachers we selectively pick students who we see are heading towards higher levels of expertise in the security space and award them with a scholarship that will help towards the financial burdens of getting the training, education and becoming certified. Through our partnership with training leaders such as Training Capital and Netcom we extend the training and certification opportunities to these institutions and scholarship winners.

No one knows how much this is problem more than we do as we’re the ones being called in to fix the issues, explain how they happened, what are the impact(s) and how to fix/mitigate them going forward and putting the needed technology and resources in place to block/stop/prevent them from happening again. TITSSN’s advantage in the IT Security space is that we work with everyone and does not care if it is a home user, consumer, small business, educational, government or enterprise, our mission is to deliver the needed security to every device with internet connectivity and help with the education and awareness of how to properly use these resources to be safer and more secure while maintaining the full user experience of the World Wide Web. The more devices come into the technology space with these connectivity features is the more ways in which the bad guys can exploit them and use them to create severe issues with critical impacts/effects.

This is an issue in the home, schools, business places and everywhere that the internet presents its access/resources and with this access/resource should be the associate knowledge/education/awareness as to what it is and the problems it presents and why it is very important to stay on top of them.
Do not be naïve to these issues, the internet is here to stay and is the future of our connected/converged world and it is only going to get worse unless we start the education and awareness early.

In 2007 TITSSN decided to take this initiative to a more formal level and started working on the Secure Minds Initiative and how to integrate it into the school system which we further launched in 2008 as a featured program/initiative. The mission of the Secure Minds Initiative is to create an educated/aware resilient global network of IT Security Minded people who can secure and protect themselves from IT/Internet threats. The year 2008 was a very rough one for our network as we had major changes in our local chapters across the US that removed key leadership members and we had to create quick responsive backing and support for those chapters. This created a bottleneck for us and so we didn’t get to launch a few key programs as we had planned but will be doing so in early 2009 as we’ve restructured the network and is now fully functional and running full speed on all processors.

Now that we have this program and its mission embedded into the networks initiative, we have reached out to our network (vendors, consultants, VARs, business owners/executives, technology advisors, educators, mentors, professionals) with a request to help in the adoption, support and promotion of this initiative and we are very happy at the receptive responses so far.

The contributions gathered have and are being used in our community outreach programs to host and sponsor IT Security specific events, scholarships, forums and groups as we work to disseminate the message of why IT Security is a critical issue that needs to be addressed today for a safer and secure future tomorrow.

So it is with this mindset that we call on you to help in this initiative by joining us on either LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1397757, Facebook http://apps.facebook.com/causes/164545?recruiter_id=22179324 or MySpace http://www.causes.com/myspace/causes/164538?e=00fd116d&recruiter_id=33080893 as we build on it.

This initiative will hit every major social network by the end of the year so look forward to seeing much more info on it as we continue to contribute toward its mission.

Thank you and have a great day,

~Brett A. Scudder~
The IT Security Attaché
President/CEO/Chairman/Founder
TITSSN ~The IT Security Suite Network~