Tech Tuesday! - April 12, 6pm-8pm
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Click here to Attend Tech Tuesday via Zoom
For this month’s Tech Tuesday, our director of education, Charles Blas, will be hosting a working session on cryptography aimed at people just starting off in the cybersecurity field. We will start at the beginning by explaining the basic terms, e.g. plaintext and ciphertext, and build from there.
See the slide deck here
We will translate theory to practice, showing how all the different types of encryption are already in use all around you to protect things like your confidential files, personal communications, and website interactions. Caveat: advanced students will be bored, but can still contribute to the conversation and help their fellow practitioners, and as a bonus, will walk away with a cyber challenge, to break an RSA-based key and message.
Since this is Tech Tuesday, you will have the opportunity to learn, hands-on, how to encrypt/decrypt/hash directly on your Mac or PC. We will talk you through the process of encrypting, decrypting, generating keys, etc… and then what to do with said files and keys. Have you ever wanted to send something securely to a friend? We’ll show you how.
We will talk about the relationship between an algorithm and a key, what is a good key size for each algorithm and which algorithms are no longer considered safe to use. We will theorize about the future of encryption in as much as you need to know as a cybersecurity practitioner.
We’ll talk about actual use cases and circumstances in which you would use encryption. For example, would you use RSA to encrypt a file? How do you protect or securely send keys? If a malicious person were listening to everything you sent/received to/from a friend on the Internet, could you still send something securely? Hint: the answer is yes and we’ll introduce you the genius algorithm that makes it possible.
This class will be 100% virtual over Zoom. Come as you are, there are no prerequisites and we will provide all the resources. Again, this class is geared for the beginner with no prior knowledge of encryption; barring any more java-based vulnerabilities, we will offer a more advanced class in May for those that enjoy a challenge.
Do you have colleagues or friends who are interested in cyber security? Feel free to share the meeting details with them. You don't have to be a member of the ISSA to attend our meetings. But if you want to join the ISSA (and we hope you do, to help us continue to offer these meetings), visit https://www.issa.org/membership/ and select "Sacramento Valley Chapter" when you join the ISSA.