Blacks in Technology Inaugural Conference

Organizations continue to contend with an emerging and dynamic cybersecurity threat landscape. The current state of cybersecurity is perplexing and requires organizational leaders to invest significantly in cybersecurity initiatives to protect sensitive and critical systems, informational assets, and intellectual property. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight the dynamics of managing and leading information security practices in organizations during challenging times. Businesses are continuously implementing technologies, enforcing security and technical controls, and restricting access to information as countermeasures to mitigate cybersecurity threats, which impede production and organizational efficiency. The security versus production dichotomy requires counterbalancing on a daily basis; consequently, provoking many executives to develop disparaging support towards information security requirements. Cybersecurity threats are testing organizations’ resiliency as evident by the constant barrage of malicious activities in the form of social engineering, malware, physical theft, ransom, and spear phishing. Developing a culture that supports cybersecurity while minimizing the impact of production is exemplary; however, most organizations do not have a culture that embraces information security. During times of economic growth organizations are increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats as businesses leverage new capabilities resulting in technologically-induced errors and exploitation by cybercriminals. Regardless of the turbulent environment, companies can execute proven information security practices by (a) training employees regularly, (b) enforcing industry best practices, (c) implementing security controls, (d) placing humans as the foundation of cybersecurity, (e) making information security a top priority, and (f) restricting access. The key takeaways from this presentation are (a) the imperativeness to counterbalance production and information security, (b) information security must be a top priority, (c) security requires effective leadership, and (d) astute management of finite resources.

This discussion focuses on how businesses can effectively build a cyber security strategy for their business. Topics of discussion include:

• Identifying the fundamental concepts of Cybersecurity.
• Gaining a better understanding of the bases of Analysis and Management of Cyber-risks.
• Identifying threats, vulnerabilities, and impacts.
• Understanding of detection and mitigation strategies regarding the cyber-risks that affect a business.
• Understand what a generalized Cyber-risks Management Plan should look like for a business

Tired of “whack-a-mole”, “hope-and-pray” and playing the “is it a risk really?” game with your organization’s Application Security function? Come find out how an npm module called _spartan takes the guess-work out of app-sec through tailored policy generation that evolves at the pace of development.

Getting application security right often requires that developers have a deeper than average understanding of the security domain. In what other industry is this the case? We don’t have to be M.D.s to get a medical diagnosis; we don’t have to be auto mechanics to get our cars fixed, yet we in security wag our fingers at “iD10t errors” and build grand mousetraps to catch “so obvious”developer missteps, when they may not know what they need to add, change or remove from their applications to make it “secure” in the first place. Furthermore, patterns to address these issues don’t always fit the requirements of the application short or long term, resulting in solutions that only address part of the problem, or worse, are omitted altogether because they are too cumbersome to implement. My answer to this is _spartan–a public npm module created for developers of node.js applications, not security people. _spartan allows developers to create security policies which address their node app’s (whether it be Desktop, Web, Mobile, IoT or API) specific requirements; it installs & configures the modules to match the policy and; it generates the boilerplate middleware that developers can wire into their applications.

Technical Requirements

• Part of this talk will include a live demonstration in which I build a security policy and do a brief code walkthrough. Attendees that wish to follow along may want to bring a laptop with the latest version of node and npm installed.
  • If internet will not be provided by the conference organizers, attendees may wish to bring a source of Internet access, such as a hotspot so they can install _spartan.
• Working knowledge of git && github is helpful, but not necessary to follow along during this talk.

 An inside look at how the Department of Homeland Security is creating safeguards for communities across America

Staying ahead of the frontend development curve is difficult, and it's easy to quickly feel out-of-date or left behind. We'll help you make the leap into Preprocessors of all kinds, plumb the depths of your favorite text editors, get up and running with source control (tldr; use it!), discover browser development tools, and explore the best ways to test your code across a range of browsers and devices. To top it all off, we’ll mix in all the other tasty essentials you’ll want to know about: the dreaded terminal, performance tuning, automated deployment, and much more!

Are you Doing Agile? Folks throw around buzzwords like Scrum and Sprints, but what do they really mean to developers day to day? If you’re new to the technology life, or if you’re just tired of smiling and nodding when the topic of Agile comes up, this is the session for you.
So what the heck is Agile anyway? And why is it relevant to Blacks in Technology? What do you do if you get asked about it in an interview? Should you panic if your company announces they’re doing an Agile Transition?
In this session, we’ll briefly talk about the essentials of Agile with a capital A, and cover some of the basic terminology. We’ll look at the more common flavors of Agile - Scrum and Kanban - and the difference between their idealized states and how how they’re often practiced in the real world, day to day. What are daily standups, grooming, backlogs, retrospectives, boards and story points ?
Finally, we’ll discuss whether these methods present challenges or opportunities specifically for folks of color.
This session is appropriate for folks of any experience level who have been curious about Agile. You won’t be a certified anything, but you’ll learn enough to be able to ask smart questions in an interview, and to know what’s likely expected of you in a company that’s using these techniques.

Humans are prone to error and mistakes in a production environment can cause costly and unnecessary downtime. Empowering other members of the business to make a change by giving them a button to click instead of a series of scripts to run or steps to take, can save your business time, money and resources.

Automation helps to alleviate human error. But what is automation and why is it necessary in today's web scale world. This talk will touch on various aspects of automation including infrastructure creation , self service portals and the tooling to make it all happen. 

This workshop will introduce attendees to the fundamentals of creating a serverless application utilizing the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.  Attendees will gain an appreciation of the benefits of embracing a serverless architecture as well as gain hands-on experience by creating and deploying an AWS Lambda function.

Blockchain technology will enable the evolution of all industries. After the mark that Bitcoin has made on the finance world, more and more people are beginning to explore the implications of this technologies development. Our imaginations have gone wild with the possibility of ways that blockchain technology will impact us. Theoretically, this technology is putting the power of records, trust, and transparency into the public’s hands. We are returning to an era of peer-to-peer trading that our ancestors started with, a transaction between two entities. This workshop will not only look at the high level applications and uses of blockchain technology but we will dive into how to test whether blockchain technology is appropriate and lucrative for your venture.

Semirah Dolan is a Blockchain Developer and educator in the Blockchain space. She uses her social media platforms to connect to international platforms and to spread the knowledge of blockchain. Semirah believes that the key to blockchain mass adoption is a general understanding of the technology.

Containers are the new buzz word but what exactly are they? In this talk you'll learn all about the exciting world of container technology and why it has taken the IT industry by storm. We'll explore how you can use it to help your IT and business operations become more flexibile and agile through automation, security and governance.

Whether it’s a website or web app, building with today’s JavaScript ecosystem can appear daunting. Customers, users, and Google demand great performance over finicky mobile networks and smooth experiences across a broadening array of devices, all while the underlying language—JavaScript—continuously evolves. In this workshop, you’ll receive hands-on experience architecting modern JavaScript systems alongside insight into JavaScript’s evolving role on the web.

Our business and personal lives are riddled with decisions, and good decisions are the difference between success and failure. Predictions from Artificial Intelligence boosts productivity by helping us to make good decisions faster, from which customers to focus on, which products to build/sell, to which route to take to get to grandma’s house and what music to play during the ride over. 

As machine learning technology advances, building our own predictions have become easier and cheaper, but how do we decide what is beneficial to predict and what is too risky?

This talk uses the Prediction Model Canvas as a tool to level the playing field of identifying what to predict for a diverse set of stakeholders in organizations large and small. For individuals, Prediction Model Canvas opens a window to be on the deciding end of creating a more predictive society for work and life.
 

Technology has issued a new era of sound since the early 20th century. Take a look at how composers, audio and sound engineers, DJs, and producers use tech tools to develop their unique sound.