BSidesNoVA 2021 | Panel: Non-Profits in Cyber

let's start kicking this off um just want to welcome everyone to the breakup session uh panel uh discussion today is nonprofits insider my name is ian i am with the besides organization team uh and yes to answer the questions that have come in on twitter yes i am larger than life that's [Music] from four amazing non-profits that i've been able to talk to briefly over the past couple of days and i want to get them into a conversation as quickly as we can um the the ground rules are basically this uh those who who are listening as attendees you are the reason we're here uh you are the reason why we want to reach out and talk

to you and give us some of your stories etc ask your questions uh however mundane or textual or detailed music it might be go ahead ask the questions i will uh i will get to your questions as the priority a request for our speakers if you hear anything going on in the conversation that another speaker is talking about feel free to step in and feel free to add your two cents crossed separate from there if we ever get to that point of the you know uncomfortable silences i do have stuff that i could possibly get to but my goal is never to have to come down to this page whatsoever so what i'm going to do briefly for this

first part is go to each one of you one by one just ask you to introduce yourself introduce the nonprofit organization you are with the concept of the nonprofit and maybe the origin story either the origin story of the non-profit or the origin story as to how you became involved with the nonprofit and since uh mary is sidetracked for a moment i will pick on mary galloway so yeah we're in a hotel in san diego on vacation right now uh so that was my other half that walked by um but mary galloway i am the ceo and a founding board member for the women's society of cyber jitsu we are a national 501c3 cyber security community for women and

girls encouraging them providing support and resources to get them into cyber security get them to grow in cyber security and get them to stay in the industry my day job i work for palo alto as a customer success architect helping customers implement their xor products so security orchestration opera automation and response tools and if you don't mind so the genesis of uh women's society of uh cyber gypsum yeah that part um so we got started in 2010 2012. lisa jiggets is the founder um she's a hacker by trade military vet soccer player and an artist i don't know if people know that so she might get mad that i said that um and she started the organization

in northern virginia as a way to continue to get hands-on with pen testing and learning a lot of the meetups that were there at the time either they fizzled out or she just didn't feel comfortable participating um and she wasn't getting what she needed from that and so she said let's start a meet-up let's see what happens and it was it was a virtual meet-up as well as an on-site meet-up and that kind of blossomed into um more workshops study groups that's how i joined the group i failed cissp the first time and she had a study group going on and i was like let me join this really quick and um that kind of spun into

conferences and more study groups and workshops and chapters and um pretty much all that people see when they see cyber jitsu mentioned anywhere um in in the world at this point so it was started out of a need for a place for us to go and learn and really get deep into the hands-on technical stuff cool okay so i'm going ouch here i'm going to pass the wand over to jack uh introduction uh who you're with and the um genesis story for you within that organization or the organization itself all right well uh hi everyone i'm jack robertson i'm the vice chairman for veterans tech we have my nutsack we are a non-profit and then also a pretty

vibrant community about 3000 members we're primarily slack-based and then a good way to think about it is that we have this non-profit rapper over at some sort of epithelial arms in that sense what next oh my day job i'm us i'm a security engineer at a block flying and i live up in new york and prior to that uh other security engineer dropped before that in grad school and then an army officer for five years in the artillery in upstate new york and the genesis of our organization was i think initially it started back in february 2018 i actually looked at the slack logs for that and i think there's probably about like 10 people initially

and our founders keith adams who um well one of our founders i think he initially steers through the early years he's known i think in some cyber education areas but how we really got from you know uh like a slack hangout to what i think is a pretty formalized community at this point in quality facets is when you're trying to leave the military or you're a veteran in a job that you're not necessarily satisfied with you're trying to get somewhere and i think when i say veteran here i think it's really broadly applicable to anyone that's trying to get from something a non-tech to a tech job so hopefully this advice is an engineer if that helps people um

everyone's certified collective collectively similar experience especially in terms of people that actually manage to make that week than you know not everyone does so why we exist is to kind of be that one-stop shop of depending on where they're at in that process going from you know something they're not quite happy with or let's say they're in the military and they have this target wherever they're at in that process we do a pretty good job at providing the railroad railroad tracks into that you know it's a mix of how do i install kali linux uh i've got the oscp study group i also uh horribly failed uh no cpa attempted two years ago so i emphasized with that system

experience and um yeah now i think the last year was was definitely interesting i'm glad the community was able to grow in my kit i won't say survival but i think everyone everyone had knocked off space for that challenging year so at this point you know we're looking at the next stage of formalization where there's a lot of interest in what we do and you know it's a mission that really matters and helped me immensely so that's why i volunteered for it um and yeah very good all right thank you very much um let's go ahead and stay on the couch for a moment jump over to the far side and talk to stephanie thank you ian um my name is stephanie

lewis i am originally from or i'm over sdcon 202 also called setcon i'm originally from detroit michigan and while i was there i actually did a meetup group in the city of detroit just trying to get more afternoons into coding and so i ran that around i think it was like 2010 to 2013 ish 14. um then i came down here uh to dc you know and you know you guys had a lot of different meetup groups definitely more than in michigan and uh i met tyrone when i first came down here wilson who's an excellent mentor uh to have and i decided that hey you know why we get another cyber group you know

started so i actually went to defcon 2009 met with some of my friends from you know dc and detroit it was like it was amazing just all of us them getting to know each other and stuff and so um while i was there i saw jason street he was giving a talk late at night it's like 11 p.m something like that at uh planet uh hollywood and i was like i want to go to bed but my friends were like no let's go hear him talk so i'm so glad i went after a long day of you know deathmatch just wears you out sometimes and um went there and he's like yeah go get the group

started and it's needed and he he just kind of lit a fire underneath me and i just really enjoyed that panel discussion that was like one of the best panel discussions you know i've ever heard um just about cyber where it is where it can go and you know the future in a way and so um i left there i'm like okay i'm going to do this so it so acid time it stands for southeast um dc that's where we tried to meet so we were meeting in the libraries but then obviously covet happened so we were on twitch and i'm not the best at obs yet so i got it streaming down so that

videos really are up there recording and things like that but um what the group is for is just for um focusing on encouraging more african-americans you know in cyber in that area um and so we do the workshops and the workshops are just focused on configurations or the latest tools it's not so much like a demo so to speak i really want the participants to really leave with something you know that they can go home and take further so the future of the group um i hope to keep up with the twitch but i also meet in person uh i think the libraries and some open community centers are kind of testing the waters on opening up

which is great um so that's just what you know we hope for i hope to put together kind of a simulation i know a lot of people do uh conferences are great we're not big enough to do to do a conference yet but i was hoping to do some type of a simulation just get a group of 25 people together we all do something both like a lot you know lucky hacking and you know on the on the web so that's just the future thank you uh i'm going to make one request for those who are here in person as well since we are dealing with one mic that we're passing before back and forth

rather than passing it to me to ask a question if we get to that point from the channel or from everywhere else um uh i will uh ask it just ask you to repeat the question for those listening on the screen and we'll go from there um and uh we have already some feedback from you from uh uh marquez on uh thank you for sharing how you took a call to action and ran with it uh one final introduction here uh we're about a little bit in but i want to make this here as well uh cheryl uh good afternoon i would love to hear more on you on your organization what brought you into uh

the the background story or the origin story if you will and uh let's let's hear some more okay great um you can hear me all right we can hear you fine okay excellent thanks for having having me today and i'm here to represent the diana initiative i'm one of the founding members and what we are is um we've grown as an event that is we celebrate the diversity that brings all of us together and we are focused on on women non-binary peoples and inclusion in our fields and what we want to do is elevate and inspire and support our attendees from every race every culture every level of skill to enable them to learn to grow to

network and each year we try to do something bigger and better so uh this year we're very excited because our our conference team is about sparking the journey and we wanted to put something uplifting because it has been a really rough stretch for everybody and we kind of symbolize it with the um the emergence or the metamorphosis of all of us coming out of this pandemic and just taking flight and soaring to where it is wherever it is that we want to go and that kind of dovetails with i guess my own origin story when i discovered cyber security after going back into the field as a stay-at-home mom for 10 years because we needed the income

and just discovering this place that captured my imagination was an endless source of growth and learning which is what i love and finally a place where i felt like i truly belonged because i was always at weirdo who and i discovered this is a whole community of weirdos who love to learn and want to break things and ask the most fabulously infuriatingly challenging questions that that is everything i could want and more and that's why being able to give back through an organization like the diane initiative means so much because my first experience i took myself down to to defcon in uh 2015 and there was a group of us sitting at a food court under valleys

just getting away from the madding crowds talking about all the things that we were interested in and we were learning and sharing that passion and discovering this feels so good what if we could do this again like make an event that that feels safe and comfortable like this where we could all get together and talk because for women for non-binary people to share their ideas and and out of that germ of an idea a conference took hold and then we will be celebrating the fifth year of the diana initiative where we have talks and we encourage people to come and give talks and we mentor new speakers because it is really hard to get to do that and we have

villages because people want to learn things about lock picking or try their hand at a ctf and have some encouragement and guidance and that is what our organization is all about and i i warmly invite everybody to come and join us again we'll be doing a virtual session this year we've got fantastic keynotes as well and and virtual villages for you to take part in to just come and learn and grow with us and and i have to uh also add it's amazing because i i have i had the opportunity over the past couple moments to sit down and talk briefly with each of the panelists today and even talking with cheryl there a bit as a

queer professional myself i've watched over the past uh three and a half decades now uh the changes in society and the changes in culture the changes in tech etc from a point where it was the surest way to get fired if you have a conversation in that sense to the embracing especially at companies such as where i am now in a major u.s financial i won't be able to mention it but they're out there well we are right now um so uh i don't have any questions yet off of the chat yet so i want to drop one just here because we have uh we have a wide range i mean you you're jack you're with an

organization that's what about three thousand participants uh cheryl and mary yearbook organizations that are international as well and stephanie you're with an organization that is now two individuals yeah we have a lot of oh yeah it's like i said we just started towards the end of 2019 so yeah it is me and uh another individual but our participants are are about 25 you know online in person it's a was a little bit less obviously because we had social justice before the pandemic so we're hoping to uh like i said grow locally and um really focusing on the developing the skill sets learning the new tools um and actually getting better even at like python for example because that's

i just i'm partisan i'm not a java person by any means i'm you know loyal to python i guess but so yes i'm getting more confident with that i think what i'm finding out in the cyber community uh they're very good at maybe doing certain types of configurations but they could be stronger and you know actually programming in something such as python so if you don't let me ask you to repeat that what have you had to do in order to make that introduction from i have an idea to i now have a community of 25 and what are you doing to turn that into a now i have community of 250. yeah so what am i doing basically to grow the

community from you know 25 to 250. for me i i'm not one about the numbers because i'm learning that when i have somebody come in and do a workshop you can really only teach like seven people you know what i mean for them to really go deep i'm more concerned about the depth how how deep can we get into mma or how deep can we get into um learning about phishing and the various kinds of malware so that they come away feel like they mastered something so that's my biggest um that's at the course is death death and breath how how much can we really dig into it and the raising the confidence levels i

think when you spend time and knowing the mindset i think people forget like there's a certain mindset that goes into um hacking that i have other people kind of talk about in with the workshop um so that's i mean if it grows to 200 great but the goal is to have them come have you come really develop grow and then be you know wicked good on their job right now yeah okay did you have anything that were good yeah actually i would agree with the depth approach i think the really cool thing about that sec is you see this uh you know pretty logical longitudinal day i say that but over time if you will uh you see a lot

of people kick off their cyber attempts and you know a lot of make it and you know some of them don't and i think what's really important for the people that do stick it out is they a lot of motivation comes from actually you know closing out a topic and moving on to the next ones the trend we see a lot is they they get one-third of the way through the python book and they jump to something else because they've read the job description and they know they need to do they also use aws what happens is that over six months you know you get these they almost feel like they're training water and then their motivation starts

to snap out and that's as you know non-profit that's not what you want so i think the direction we definitely recommend is like yeah you know explore that go deep there's gonna be time to uh one of the rest of the topics but it's really important to check that box on like a basement so fully agree what's worse from a mary's persport that individual from the first time they walk in the door to an individual who has matured and improved and progressed and gained the benefit out of your organization and whether they turn around and are able to give back immediately et what is that nurturing process like for you too um so for us we we like to

make sure that we stay in constant contact with them because like like the other two jack and stephanie said you know they'll start and then they may like be like i'm done let me go on to the next topic right so we try to make sure we have resources available to keep them focused on those tracks whether that's our slack channel whether that's additional workshops whether that's individual um small tribes that we just launched at the end of last year we just want to make sure that they have the resources and they know that even if they don't like this topic anymore there's still other areas in cyber security so like most folks that come into the

industry they want to go in to be a pen tester it's like well there's there's like a plethora of other opportunities out there besides just pin testing let's tap into some of those other skills and see where a better fit might be for you

sure you know that's a that's a really good point um i do threat intelligence and that's just based out my absolute fascination with bigger picture and learning all i can about threat actors and having a an overview understanding and then being able to communicate to a diversity of audiences that is not pen testing that is not scripting and it speaks to you can do a lot of really good work in this field and you don't have to just look out at one area and and they're all really fascinating and then i get to speak to pentesters and i get to speak to red teamers and we get to exchange our um observations on what we're learning and

if the diana initiative we don't have a formalized uh training or curriculum program so much as we are about uh we mentor our first time speakers but we also are more of a community so we find resources we encourage one-on-one and we're looking at how can we um what are our attendees or the people who are in our group asking for and how do we meet that and then what's coming to us from like outside from the community as a whole what are the kinds of issues that are being raised where are we going further down that road and i'm looking at it from that perspective so from what i understand the suggestion there cheryl is that the

organization is built more organic to the needs of the individuals as they come in and then you can modify and change your structure to help them find one links to another um i guess the question would be there's a secondary question in there and i think that it's a it's a phenomenal business model or a model that you're working off of there cheryl but my question for the others and it would be just i'm wondering from my own perspective there's a you come in you have an idea you have a focus you go out you establish that idea you establish that focus you're at a point where it's the possibility is there to grow now or to

expand how do you do that intelligently without overreaching or or without deflating or you know what you need to to to to to to to without watering down that initial intent etc i'd be interested to hear your feedback on that yeah sure so um a mentor of mine who works who does he's an executive director for a non-profit called operation code it's similar but it's not a cyber security focus necessarily more generic tech uh conrad holloman if he's watching us i doubt he is he did a lot thank you so he he said uh a buzzword he had was managed scale and what that means is that uh as a non-profit the uh to use another buzzword that the

veneer legitimacy is pretty easy to create you know there's it's not too hard to register one of these things you can get a lot of services through g suite that that's only you got the email address you know you have the slack grip and you hear out to the races and the other side of that where you have to really think about in the leadership role is you know if you build it you have the right mission and you're you have a target population that other people care about or other entities of the nonprofits you'll start to get that interest pretty organically assuming you have a lock on like a good cause you know growth isn't everything

if you do a hyperlocal mission i think i've done that as well in boston i think it's really really rewarding but let's say you're gone technical difficulties i wonder if they can still see us let me check the phone and all right okay okay hold a sec

hey you know what this is the stuff that this conference is special you know and this is this is this is pretty awesome because you don't have this issue when you're in sight right but you never know that's another thing about being a non-profit that you have to work with is understanding okay how do you bounce back from from it it's not good though let's see i'm gonna see if i can see us um oh no it's not showing up on my schedule okay i see something so on a side note um i'd like for us to work together figure out how we can work together a little bit more oh my god i love that i love you

hey ian killed that oh no no no there you are live now i i'm aware of that but i want to see our session all right how about now that's okay

yes hold on and now i need my volume turned on we had a conference last year

all right are we back hey it now becomes a little bit more cozier and you get to see the wonderful ring above the window etc so um jack if you've been talking about how about how to grow

in terms of things that other organizations want to see before they'll interact with you pretty easily uh it just you know it takes it takes a couple weeks of work and what's important once that interest comes in you have to be able to match that intake really effectively because that's your shop to uh to have a local company x or you know library it really doesn't matter the level but they they're going to start staking their reputation in their organization uh by interacting with you and you really have to respect that so mesh managed scales were how that works and that you're able to absorb their interest you're able to do something with it and

then you're able to like actually make an impact such that they're what you're doing so that's that's really how i think about this uh however uh you know everyone else does leadership stuff here too so i'd be definitely interested in here i just kind of go i just kind of wing it [Laughter] whatever sticks to the wall works i i i agree on that in another area but not too not wise yeah no it's not efficient for growth but um for scale you gotta have a plan right you have to and the plan may change over time um we had a plan in the beginning and that plan has changed and evolved and grown and um and it's gotten us to where we're

at now but you still have to continue to build a plan and you got to i think you have to have a really strong team um most non-profits are volunteer-run and so it's sometimes it can be difficult to run solely on that in scale at some point you have to start thinking about okay how can i get funding in to hire an executive director that manages the day-to-day operations of this stuff because all volunteers have jobs they have responsibilities they have other things they have to do and so sometimes if you want something done today it may take a couple of days to do so having a solid team in place um helps grow the organization tremendously if

that's the goal of the organization um and then having support of other non-profits and other organizations plays into that as well now is there a is there a good clearinghouse or a good method by which non-profits are discovering each other and their intents etc i mean they're that what's the communi what is the community of non-profit like does that exist um so there are associations for that but twitter and linkedin i don't know cheryl honestly the the networking for example um we have a lot of connections besides las vegas the people who have been involved in that the core def con group and the people involved in that and and there's a lot of mentoring and knowledge sharing

that's perhaps one of the most wonderful things i can speak to about this community is is that they are willing to help people who are starting and and share what they know to get them on the right track it's huge that's what we got to do yeah i think for me it's um i would love sponsors you know i so we're trying to figure out okay how do we how do we initiate that you know um what do we do uh for something like that so that's what we're kind of looking at in the future what we're doing now is we're trying to build up our discord um and also support people taking certs i know i'm trying to take the

cissp you know and one other one right now so just being there for the participants in in that way and um yeah but i think so i think it for i feel very good at getting people together but that next step that where the other groups are is okay now how do you get sponsors or how do you that's an important question how i mean i'm sure there are people who are listening in the attendees uh list or the or the group chat etc for who uh you know have this vision or have this hey i could do something like this i could do for my particular area of interest or my desire whether it's

cyber or whether it's another area of interest etc but it's just how do you make that how do you make that transition from i have this idea to let's make it happen and part of it is the gumption to go out and do it but then there's that point of how do i finance this or fund this moving forward um what any thoughts as to how to make that iterative jump into the next that next area sure i'll let you go because you guys get responses what it comes down to really is um you know that you're going to need to have a plan you're going to have to have something like a prospectus to present to anybody that you're going

to ask help especially financial help and the other thing is asking people you know who are in the roles of uh sponsorship funding or running this kind of an event um start with somebody that that you know or just hit them up on twitter and and just for example me if i don't know i will find somebody who can help you because that's what we do because somebody helped me not so long ago and that that seems to be the way that we do things here and it works really well but yeah that's what i would say map out your idea uh what is the benefit what is the takeaway what what is the difference what sets you apart

what do you think this is going to cost what do you need to be able to make this happen if you've got like the equivalent of it as a business plan it enables you to be taken seriously people can answer those kinds of questions and say oh okay yeah i know somebody or okay yeah that's we could do that we can make this happen so that's how you start does that help yeah i think i think i'd add two things to that first um harvest just you gotta own it and start uh i'm not i'm not in sales but it's really similar i know i looked pretty far from my military days but our board chair is

is uh tom morrison absolute go-getter in this regard he just started emailing uh i made i i hope i'm into trouble in terms of like mixing up sponsor versus supporter versus et cetera let's say interesting companies definitely not a cause and be a caller if i screw up there but we just emailed you know places like offset uh hack the box uh i think crowdstrike sponsored our conference last year you should email them saying you know this is who we are uh this is our mission would like to support us and like you just got to do the hard ask sort of and i think if you have a population that you know company programs care about

it's not just about companies but if you have the right population the right mission um you will get response and if you don't you know that's one of those things where as the leader of the organization you gotta cycle back and say like hey is my messaging off um i have this vision of what that sec is but when i speak at a conference you know am i how are people responding to it you really do have to do that self-reflection then the other thing which i guess i should have mentioned earlier when i was introducing is the another great way to get interest and support for your organization is having an offer having a offering for senior people

um people like you for instance dave senior careers but you know young and everything else right but but on a serious note though because those are those are really important advocates for for your organizations it's it's why that's like the b-sides right now for instance um we have like a lot of them don't necessarily participate in terms in terms of the daily chapter but they they are in there and if you if you know that they're like the reasons why they're in their organization uh usually for us it's mentorship and caring about the mission and their veterans themselves they are very good stakeholders for advancing organization they may not want to do a board membership role but they will uh you

know if you just keep asking and they'll keep supporting it and you know it's you gotta be a little selfish in that regard because you're there to steer the mission in the organization but it's they're they're really important based on the membership and uh figuring out how important is that i mean even myself listening to this conversation right now i could also say stephanie i mean we're in the same area regionally uh within my workplace is a very well established uh women insider as well as a very well established waxing tech organization the question is what could we reach out between you and the leaders of those groups since they're community-based as well and so we're going to get some of those

discussions moving it works yeah yeah and same with same with where i'm working yep those those are two big hallmarks and they're getting even bigger and that that's something that you could definitely approach because they want to fund community initiatives like what you were talking about don't don't be afraid to make mistakes boy oh boy do we all make mistakes we i can still trip over my own two feet really well thank you so it's it's it's an important learning process it's kind of like the ooda loop right you just keep going around and you learn from each iteration just do it we had a question that was just uh brought up to me earlier by one of the

uh founding individuals here at uh b-sides uh nova um and it was more a specific question and you all may not be able to jump in or answer it but it's just one that i thought it would be curious for those who have industry experience what are the primary difference in how a non-profit operates versus how in industry or a private company operates is there any major differences there no a non-profit is a business it's the only difference is that the money you raise doesn't go to stakeholders it goes back into the to the organization yeah so you this is you have to think of a non-profit as a legit business legit like capital one

or uh whatever organization palo alto same structures they all need money they all sell a product for nonprofit the product is usually a service um but it's distracting too yeah you know the only difference is besides the money part is how you're funding your staff whether they're volunteer or not and so there may be some financial you know reporting differences but for the most part it's the same it's just a business

i was just going to say mary raised a really good point about the importance of having um a core body of people or or several people to help you consistently run the organization because it takes a lot of time and commitment and this is being run by volunteers and your staff are crucial so always treat them with respect and show them your appreciation i can't stress that enough but it takes a lot for everybody and and we have day jobs we have families we have other commitments so it is a worthwhile consideration to invest in a full-time employee who will be your executive manager of the daily operations over the year because there'll be ebbs and flows of when you

ramp up in terms of your staff and volunteers but it's good to have that one person who can just keep an eye over everything and is a constant point of contact yeah yeah i think um is maria or married mary okay i think i think mary's hit on something that uh you definitely identify what's your relationship with nonprofit is that like you do have this advantage of a pure you know like non-profit motive we're all there just like you good you know just using albus right but on the actual where the actual rubber meets the road yeah it is very operational i think you have to prepare to have your your act together and like it can get

very business-like in terms of actually you know driving things forward and i think for for leaders of these groups it's that's sort of like the the transition point where you're really in the mix when once you start realizing how this actually gets done and uh yeah it's an essential observation i got a quick question for um the three of you guys you guys are a little bit further down the road and i haven't experienced this yet but what do you guys do when it kind of wanes or when you're the low points maybe not pulling in as much money or maybe just the participation's lower um this quarter or you know because things ebbs and

flows i know that for running a group up in you know detroit there's more like getting people interested i knew that that was the product but now that there's kind of more ecosystem techniques down here in dc or in the dmv let's just say that how do you guys deal with the ebbs and flows good question we look we try to develop more programming we start to look at okay what was what worked what's not working all right do we really need to keep what's not working or do we need to revamp what's not working to make it work um and it comes back to literally having some kind of powerpoint of okay for 2021

i want to do these things and i haven't done you know i've done these three things already but i haven't done these things so let's try to pull these things up to the forefront and start doing them um we have stuff that goes on all year so we it i haven't really seen the highs and lows yet because right now blacks women um lgbtqia all of those that that's like the forefront so it's it's constantly vets like all of that is the forefront at this point and so you're not really going to see that kind of like super highs or super lows you may see like super highs and medium lows but you're still going to get that

you'll still have that traction you'll still have that participation you'll still have that interest and then i'm a big proponent of social media so it you got to put it out there you got to constantly put your message out there you got to constantly put your organization out there so people know what people see and you talk to you know you've met the three of us so you've got connections there talk to other organizations and other people so that they can put your message out out there true to their networks yeah two things two things with us um and for contracts i used to run when i was in boston i ran a group very similar

to yours so i actually i very much understand that it's like five people in the room it's like sick i'm so glad on wednesday night the two things uh that i think about with this is uh consistency is super important um really at any level um i think you can't squat a squat is sort of a weird word but you can't squat on a on a organizational footprint and not be doing something with it well actually besides uh or groups not not besides nova but i know besides has issues with this as well and someone owns a website uh someone knows all the stuff but they're not actually organizing it it's really important that if you have the

you know intellectual properties out there at work but if you have the ip you're actually doing something with it and even if it's just five people uh once a week it's consistency is how people start to track your legit and then the other side which is why being a non-profit tech is very cool is i think we think about what can you do next with all these resources because i think you can get you know i think it's like ten thousand dollars from google ads if you're not prompted uh you'll get oh yeah it's a bunch of ad funding uh azure will give you a lot of credits so tying this into security a bit it's

like all right well you know we sort of exist you know you can build you can build resumes through projects pretty easily if you want to actually set the infrastructure so you know consistency and think about like what can you do with this stuff like sky's the limit um for instance like you can set the ctf on azure and then like get live and then suddenly you know you're hosting ctfs and it's it's really to get this going uh it's just you know it takes time but that's the

do you want to say post pandemic like are you guys going to be back in um like for our group we're trying to be back in libraries or somewhere in a community center uh in the fall like that september october-ish time frame what are you guys doing to i guess get back in person and what is your timeline for that so sure [Laughter] i'm gonna jump in briefly there that is an important question because i i run a meet up in my area not not saying who my employer is the title of the meetup is the mclean cyber meetup as hosted by capital one but um there's the open question there of at what point do we

take the role of stepping back into a group environment there's a legal question there that's going on in the background right now etc and how do you take the steps to come out of pandemic and back into a community accepting a community open environment well we're lucky with the diane initiative that is an annual event so this year we made that we made the decision we had a make or break date we watched what the other big decisions were being in terms of the the other events that happened jointly with us in vegas to to make that call and so we're virtual this year next year we expect to be back in our you know back in live and so

we're we're going to prepare for that and be optimistic i just as a side note i live in toronto canada where we we've been walking nobody gets past the border oh my gosh so i can't you know it's going to be really interesting when they start allowing us to move more freely and and gradually work our way into um live meetups like we have security meetups now everything's gone online up here as far as those kinds of events i i was hosting another event for students a cyber simulation an annual one we had to run the entire thing online this year it was quite a challenge but again for precisely that reason uh we're looking forward to being able

to do things in person again but it's remarkable how we can learn to adapt you definitely need to have good

insurance um we'll probably start going back so we let the chapters decide what they what's safest and best for them so vegas is 100 open um but california not so much right so we let them make the decision um but our conference is coming up in two weeks that's going to be virtual because there was no way we were going to have people fly or come to a specific location next year it'll probably be in person um our awards event in october is going to be virtual because we just want to keep it safe we want to make sure and like cheryl said we kind of follow what some of the other bigger events are doing um and

that's kind of how we decide whether or not we're going to be in person or not but 2022 i do foresee us being back in person as long as covet stays away and doesn't interfere with anything yeah because i went from like being concerned about okay do i have enough extension cords plug it you know what are people gonna you know gloves whatever now so um and then also like i said before the venue space i would like to be true to you know the organization be in southeast anacostia but it's it's that dc is kind of like behind northern virginia sometimes and merely sometimes they're like yes that's my kind of uh dilemma like when

you talk about growth it's also keeping that you know integrity like you know what i'm trying to say like we're focused on kind of like this area but for i guess for right now and maybe the year span you know to next summer we may have to be in alexandria for a moment or bethesda or you know what i mean just it does open the secondary though in that we have here a the past year and a half or so has been a largely technical largely remote virtual experience that technology has been i'll be honest i work with my singing quartet via jamulus in order to do low latency quartet work and then you know we haven't danced in the past

year that we can see and so but when this is over do you see a possibility of continuing the role in both in live and hybrid mode yes yeah i mean i think i think hybrid but um for somebody that's still like small like how we are we're still growing kind of i would like to say in person would be easier because i think he's just all kind of me being at that test but he brings up a good point insurance illegal you know heavy so now i have to think about that so we'll we'll see we'll see but right now we're on twitch discord like i said into the fall that gives enough runway to figure it out

anything with regard to uh oh so i mean we're fortunate to be a slack committee so you gotta pull us out of our homes

um so i mean serious no we we are digital natively and i think that actually saved us a lot this last year although i think as an online community we you know we're an online community during 2020 and definitely takes leadership steering through that as well but i i think you can work through this by having a really clear sense of what your mission is and if that's well defined and you understand and you understand like how that could be met you get creative about it like maybe you don't necessarily need to be in person or get back up i think if you understand the purpose of your organization you have a really tight mission

then if you need to be in person or not certain answer itself right from there at least you get out of that decision purgatory where you're like all right i am i am do you like do high school like what's your age range that you care about so we're like 30s 20s and yeah coming into college that yeah yeah so it's like let's say like uh you need to really work with high scores i i know this isn't exactly your situation but it's like all right well i know that my missions weren't high schoolers and um they they're not necessarily or they're doing other stuff online and i'd like to work with them so that means

they're probably gonna be in school so that means all right well let's decide for me my mission to kids i need to be in person so i'm gonna figure that out that's part of like owning owning a leadership role like you you just it's that's your stuff to solve the uh the gray area that a lot of other people can work with does not exist in these sorts of worlds and

[Laughter] uh we're running down on our time i do want to briefly jump in and see if there's any questions from anyone in the chat that they might have for an individual or for the panel as a whole quickly type of why if you're about to type a question otherwise okay while we're waiting on that i'm going to ask just one more question um we have individuals who are sitting in chat uh someone they know about your some of your organizations some of them don't um for someone in this chat area who wants to know more about your organization from the services it supplies or even to volunteer for your organization or to get more

information where can they go to learn more about your organization and what is the best method by which you communicate out to the population um start with cheryl maybe sure you can check out our website diana initiative.org and we've also got diana initiative on twitter start there and you'll find all you need and be happy to help okay uh so you'll find essential two on twitter uh we also have a website but twitter is like the best way to reach out and talk to us we also have a discord um like i said before fragments come in and to learn in a you know safe environment cyber security and and all that pertains to that certs

et cetera so um twitter is the best way um like i said and we also have our website yes too got it i'm going to quickly jump over to a chat question here right now that tracy did have in this uh uh garpet i saw yours as well this is the wonderful aspect of the technology of this platform it's a learning experience for us all um tracy was just curious what challenges do you have with engaging members outside of north america well for uh for us um it's sort of solved for us although we're still working through it is uh a lot of the organizations that we work with uh they're american companies they want to

support american veterans and that's a bit of a split because we do have a pretty international not pretty international base but i think uh without getting too much of the military jargon we you know that the countries are sort of allied with the us in some loose sense though we also have this membership inside our group and i think we try and we try and support them all understanding that i'm actually probably doing our membership here here back out the uh we understand that some of our avenues of support are limited because of the people who want to support us and the kind of things what we do is um we do the areas where

we're weak at we're aware of the you know uk for instance there's a group called techniques in the uk very similar to us so you know in the end that our services stop you know we know they exist so building those links for the groups uh quick question uh mary do you want to briefly uh say where individuals can go to find out more information and um how to uh uh how to volunteer if they should desire yes um our website is women's cyber jitsu that's c-y-b-e-r-j-u-t-s-u not to be confused with the book that just came out um dot org you can also see us on twitter on linkedin on facebook instagram um and all the information is

there to volunteer i'm on linkedin and twitter if you want to reach out mary m-a-r-i reach out i'll accept we can talk if you want to talk non-profits let me know um i just want to call it uh the reason why we're rushing a little bit on this is the way this platform works is right at the hour we will be cut off whether we want to or not uh we cannot move this for the next one uh greater pete i see the questions that you have come into chat i will make an effort to uh go to each of the uh individual members of the panel see if i can get those answered uh one-on-one and come back to

you as well uh one question he did have from a non-profit perspective can nonprofits utilize platforms like a gofundme or sophie community to get sponsorship to help the community yes just know the regulations and the laws yeah [Laughter] crowdfunding is hard though just fyi you have to start months before you actually launch your crowdfunding campaign just fyi you can't just launch and say fund me you gotta you gotta start putting the bug in people's ears ahead of time got it um on the wrap-up with regards to the organizations i missed one person was it jack veteran sec dot com or if you google that sec uh we're not the security agency out of arizona we are the non-profit but yeah

that's uh insect.com we might part of that tech infrastructure i was talking about earlier so jack at veteranstack.com is a good way to reach aj and a nuanced question can individuals who are still an active military via the mil domain somewhere gain access to that slack oh great point yes uh we we take uh after duty mail that's actually a huge reason why we exist is to reach into that upstream source and help them get through that process because we do that pretty well and the dod is learning how to do that well as well so in the meantime that's that's what we said i think wonderful uh we're down to our last 60 seconds i do want to thank

cheryl i do want to thank mary i do want to thank stephanie i do want to thank jack and of course as well thank you for the service to the country and uh i want to thank everyone for listening in for uh my first time trying to do one of these things uh we will hopefully be live with uh besides nova next year or live hybrid uh so some of our technical issues thank you for dealing with them and uh i just want to say thank you again everyone and you all have a good rest of your conference thank you thank you everyone