Katherine Gagnon has been working in IT for over 22 years, with 19 focused directly in information security after she graduated Johns Hopkins University with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. She has worked as a consultant performing pen testing, architecture design and review, infrastructure deployment, and more. In addition to 3 years as the program manager for information security at Discovery Communications, Katherine spent substantial time in the public sector having worked for years between USAID and US Department of State before entering the realm of international organizations where she currently serves as an Information Security Officer with the World Bank Group though on assignment to the United Nations as the lead for Common Secure, a information sharing service for UN family organizations. Her expertise after 5.5 years at the World Bank running endpoint engineering followed by cyber threat intelligence teams made her uniquely qualified to build a program at the UN.
Historically the organizations of the United Nations Common System did not have a meaningful way to communicate cyber security information amongst themselves, nor has there been a presence in the greater infosec sharing communities. Starting in September 2015, there has been a concerted effort to address both problems.
The United Nations International Computing Centre, under directive of the UN Secretary General and mandate by a steering committee comprised of United Nations CISOs, has taken on the initiative to invest in and build a program dubbed "Common Secure" which all UN and UN "Family" organizations may subscribe to (similar to an ISAC.) However the difference between a traditional ISAC and Common Secure is that an ISAC is more focused on a vertical market, which typically means similar threat actors and some shared threat landscape. Contrary to that, within the UN the "market" is more horizontal in that the breadth of constitutents runs the gammut from world critical infrastructure concerns (IAEA, WHO, OPCW) to more humanitarian efforts (UNICEF, UNESCO.)
This presentation will discuss the genesis of Common Secure, including how we've socialized the solution, challenges faced, partnerships, and more.
