Early registration ends for DFRWS 2010 digital forensics conference. Register before this date to save $75.

The conference itself runs August 2-4.

About the Conference:

The annual DFRWS conference allows leading digital forensics researchers from government, industry, and academia to present their work and results to fellow researchers and practitioners. Many of the most cited digital forensics papers have been presented at DFRWS and the annual challenge has spawned research in important areas. Initial results and tool prototypes are also presented during the Works in Progress and demo sessions.

The conference typically has about 100 people and is therefore small enough so that attendees meet each other and can interact with the speakers. A tradition of DFRWS as been its casual and interactive atmosphere where break out sessions exist to discuss topics related to the presentations. There are also opportunities to interact during the welcome reception and banquet. After the banquet, attendees can put their forensics skills to the test when they form teams to participate in the annual Forensics Rodeo, which is a challenge that requires participants to analyze data and answer questions.

The annual DFRWS conference allows leading digital forensics researchers from government, industry, and academia to present their work and results to fellow researchers and practitioners. Many of the most cited digital forensics papers have been presented at DFRWS and the annual challenge has spawned research in important areas. Initial results and tool prototypes are also presented during the Works in Progress and demo sessions.

The conference typically has about 100 people and is therefore small enough so that attendees meet each other and can interact with the speakers. A tradition of DFRWS as been its casual and interactive atmosphere where break out sessions exist to discuss topics related to the presentations. There are also opportunities to interact during the welcome reception and banquet. After the banquet, attendees can put their forensics skills to the test when they form teams to participate in the annual Forensics Rodeo, which is a challenge that requires participants to analyze data and answer questions.

Update

Unfortunately, Chief Hanson was unable to make it up to Portland. We will still continue the meeting as planned.

The next meeting of pdxdevops will be focusing on incident response. We'll have a presentation from Chief Hanson (Marion County Fire #1) and we will then have a group discussion. What does incident response mean in a devops context? Do our tools and processes make event response easier or harder? The numbers say that organizations doing devops generally have both higher fail rate and lower mean time to recovery. Does this apply only to 'planned changes' such as deploys, or does it apply to 'page in the middle of the night' as well? As automation and devops reduce the number of humans involved in operations, how do we prevent pager-fatigue?

The format will be a brief presentation followed by a round table discussion. Please bring yourself, your stories, and your experiences. If you would like to more formally present on this topic, we could probably squeeze a couple of short 10-15 minute talks in. Overall the goal is to be very lassiez-faire.

Speaker Bio: Kevin Henson is currently the Fire Chief for Marion County Fire District #1 in Salem. He is a Paramedic and has served in emergency services for the past 27 years. Chief Henson serves on the Advisory Board of the Willamette Valley Communications 911 Center, and has worked with 911 center leadership for the past twenty years.

pdxdevops is a Portland, Oregon user group that explores the glorious intersection of software development and systems operations, and shares practical advice on working effectively in an era of agile infrastructure, server automation and cloud computing. The group welcomes participants interested in any related products, technologies and methodologies. The group has been meeting regularly since August 2010 for presentations, demos and discussions applicable to all skill levels, from newbies and experts. Every month 15-35 people come together to share their knowledge, projects and enthusiasm for devops – join us!

Join us for a 1-day Digital First Responder class! A great way to train your IT staff in fundamental incident response and digital forensic preservation, and ramp up new incident responders quickly and cost-effectively. Includes an Incident Response tabletop exercise plus three hands-on labs, in which you will create a forensic image, preserve volatile memory, and capture network traffic.

Tuition: $495 (Register by May 31 for the Early Bird $50 Discount!)

Instructor: Karen Sprenger, COO of LMG Security

NOVITAS DATA will be sponsor the venue at the MAC in Downtown Portland

FORTINET will sponsor the cocktail party afterward.

Join us for the Feb meeting of PdxDevOps.

Agenda:

Speakers:

Name: E. Dunham (https://twitter.com/QEDunham) Topic: Automating more of the things

One aspect of DevOps is that one person can accomplish multiple peoples' worth of work by delegating tasks to other people or systems. I'll introduce you to some of the systems that the Rust and Servo developers delegate community management tasks to, and show you how they can be useful in more conventional settings.

edunham is the "DevOps Engineer" for Mozilla Research.

Jesse Dearing (https://twitter.com/JesseDearing)

Topic: Failure and RCAs: A Love Story
I love failure! I don't love to bathe in the tears of engineers but I love understanding how the systems that run our world fail. Everything from a failed hardware component to a human mistake. I love reading RCAs like murder mysteries. I will cover failure, how to learn from it, and preventing it. I will cover tools, processes, and techniques for reviewing and learning from failure without making people cry.

Jesse Dearing is a Lead Site Reliability Engineer at InVisionApp where he wrangles databases and builds tools to manage them. Jesse likes to learn how languages connect to other systems. Jesse likes making everything a Bash one-liner and is his own chaos monkey as a result. When he's not picking apart systems and automating them, he enjoys riding bikes, reading, and spending time with family.

pdxdevops is a Portland, Oregon user group that explores the glorious intersection of software development and systems operations, and shares practical advice on working effectively in an era of agile infrastructure, server automation and cloud computing. The group welcomes participants interested in any related products, technologies and methodologies. The group has been meeting regularly since August 2010 for presentations, demos and discussions applicable to all skill levels, from newbies and experts. Every month 15-35 people come together to share their knowledge, projects and enthusiasm for devops – join us!