Mr. Mark De Bels serves as the Chief Operating Systems and Embedded Technologies Division, located in the Information Assurance Directorate at NSA. The mission of his division is to identify, characterize, and put into operational context the vulnerability of the technology, information and operations of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the national security community. The division primarily focuses on the software threats. It produces actionable information about vulnerabilities and risks on behalf of key stakeholders from across the U.S. Government – in order to help customers and the community identify short-term actions and countermeasures, and start the evolutionary path towards long-term security solutions. Mr. De Bels has a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and a Master’s of Science in Computer Science and has worked in the network security field with the U.S. Government for fourteen years.

Mr. De Bels will discuss IT NETWORKS – RISK BASED COUNTERMEASURES. The risk of using commercial software and hardware increases on a daily basis. Hackers and sophisticated attackers attack and exfiltrate data from networks across the globe. The usually exploit unknown vulnerabilities or vulnerabilities where patches are not yet available. This talk will provide an overview of the risk, discuss where attackers seem to be focusing their resources, and provide generic and specific countermeasures that could help users protect their systems.