PLUG's Upcoming Events

Topics for the August 9th meeting

We'll be having 2 presentations this month from Ed Nicholson and der.hans.

Ed Nicholson - Technical Debts and Digital Assets

Description
Exploring the analogy of debt and real world financial obligations, as
a context for a software's or system's life cycle.
Debt and Software are both fundamentally types of Intangible Assets.
This talk is an exploration of how the much older asset class, Debt,
may be usefully applied in understanding the relative newcomers,
Software and Systems.

About Ed:
I support Free Software and how people, organizations and populations use, create and experience information. I enjoy The Prescott National Forest as my "office" and The Valley of The Sun as a home away from home. Personal systems run either Fedora, Project Atomic, Android or OpenBSD.



der.hans - Introduction to /etc/alterntives

Description:
/etc/alternatives allows choosing among many programs to provide a certain functionality.
For instance, editor can point the locally preferred text editor. alternatives will also make sure man-pages also match.
Attendees will learn:

• What is /etc/alternatives
• Why is /etc/alternatives
• How to configure /etc/alternatives
• How to use helper scripts

About der.hans:
der.hans is a Free Software community veteran, presenter and author. He is the founder of the Free Software Stammtisch, BoF organizer for the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) and chairman of the Phoenix Linux User Group (PLUG).

As a technology and entrepreneurial veteran, roles have included director of engineering, engineering manager, IS manager, system administrator, community college instructor, developer and DBA.

He presents regularly at large community-led conferences (SCaLE, SeaGL, LibrePlanet, LFNW, Tübix) and many local groups.

Secuity Meeting - Introduction To Shodan

For this month's Security Meeting, Aaron Jones will be giving us an "Introduction to Shodan"

Introduction To Shodan is a two-hour course designed to provide an overview of the search engine for finding devices connected to the internet. Shodan is a security researcher tool that works by scanning the entire internet, locating and parsing banners, and then returning this information to the user. Shodan is an excellent tool to familiarize yourself with if you do not have the infrastructure or tools necessary to run masscan yourself. Shodan is useful in the target selection phase of an operation.

Topics for the July 12th PLUG meeting

We'll have 2 presentations at this month's meeting, both from der.hans. Federated Microblogging with Mastodon & uMatrix for webbrowser protection 

der.hans: uMatrix for webbrowser protection

Description:
uMatrix is a webextension security and privacy add on for Firefox.
Via a simple interface uMatrix allows personal rules for website cookies, JavaScript, CSS, pictures and video.
uMatrix uses and maintains per site allowlists and blocklists. For example, you can allow cookies, JavaScript, CSS and images for www.example.com and only CSS and images from cdb.example.com while blocking everything from spies.exampleduplicate.com.
Attendees will know what the web components are that uMatrix controls, how to use the uMatrix GUI interface and save rules.

der.hans: Federated Microblogging with Mastodon

Description:
Mastodon is a decentralized, open source social network. It implements ActivityPub for compatibility with other federated services such as Plume blog engine, PixelFed picture sharing service and PeerTube video sharing service.
Mastodon has per message privacy controls. Each message can be fully public, unlisted, private of direct.
Mastodon also gives you multiple options to block content, accounts or even complete domains.
Since Mastodon is federated there are many servers. Choose the independently-operated service that meets your needs. Like email, you aren't limited to just members of that particular service. You can even install your own instance.
Mastodon posts are limited to 500 characters and intentionally do not have rich text. It's for microblogging :).

Biography:
der.hans is a Free Software community veteran, presenter and author. He is the founder of the Free Software Stammtisch, BoF organizer for the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) and chairman of the Phoenix Linux User Group (PLUG).
As a technology and entrepreneurial veteran, roles have included director of engineering, engineering manager, IS manager, system administrator, community college instructor, developer and DBA.
He presents regularly at large community-led conferences (SCaLE, SeaGL, LibrePlanet, LFNW) and many local groups.

Security Topic for Thursday 6/21

For this month's security meeting we will have a presentation by Todd Stewart from SRP's Cyber Security department on "5 Habits of Highly Secure People"


Todd Stewart: 5 Habits of Highly Secure People

The presentation will cover the challenges of defending critical infrastructure in today’s Cyber World. It will also cover how to develop healthy cyber security habits at home. You have more control than you think when it comes to protecting your digital life. The goal of this presentation is to change your perception of cyber security and empower you to be accountable for cyber security at your job and at home.

About Todd:
Todd has been with SRP for 16 years. He was a system administrator for 10 years and has spent the last 6 years in Cyber Security. In his current role he is a Senior Cyber Security Analyst and is part of a team tasked with reducing Cyber risk to SRP. He holds Security Professional certifications as a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), a GIAC Critical Control Certification (GCCC), a Foundational Certificate for the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and a Prosci Organizational Change Management (OCM) certification. Todd's favorite part of his job is meeting with people and helping empower them with the knowledge that they can use tools and techniques to try to protect themselves and their loved ones when using today's interconnected technology.

Here's a list of links that Todd passed along after his presentation:

Read more: Security Topic for Thursday 6/21