[OWASP-Chapters] Summary of the 1st Israeli OWASP chapter meeting

[Ofer Shezaf]

Regarding a web site - an idea that I brought up in the meeting in
Israel and received positive feedback was that the chapter would be
active in educating general public (well at least general IT public)
about application security, focusing on showing the risk. Such an effort
would include local PR activities, and also needs a local OWASP web
site, with more local content, and probably also in Hebrew.

One other idea for a chapter's activity brought up is to be active in
incorporating application security in Israeli infosec standard and
regulations. I think we are going to pursue it.

Lastly, quite many people wanted to be more active. In order to create
and formalize those commitments and "lock" people into them, and in
order to give back something to the activists, I am thinking about a
chapter's board where each one will have a designated role and title,
such as director of standards and regulations, director or media
relations and so on. This is common to ISSA chapters around the world.

~ Ofer

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Williams [mailto:jeff.williams at owasp.org]
> Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 4:55 PM
> To: Ofer Shezaf; owasp-chapters at lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: Re: [OWASP-Chapters] Summary of the 1st Israeli OWASP chapter
> meeting
> 
> Congratulations!  Great questions...
> 
> 1. Chapters can (and are) developing presentations, working on OWASP
> projects, and doing local training events.  I think it's fine to use
the
> mailing lists for local discussion "among friends" -- although I do
> encourage posting to webappsec.  What do you mean by web-site?
Something
> other than the portal page?
> 
> 2. Some of the chapters are running in a sort of dual mode.  On the
one
> hand, they have technical discussions for OWASP contributors and
webappsec
> experts.  On the other, they have public awareness and community kinds
of
> discussions for industry and the public.  Some are trying to combine
these
> into two 'tracks' within the meeting, and others are trying to
schedule
> separate meetings with the different purposes.
> 
> --Jeff
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Ofer Shezaf
> To: owasp-chapters at lists.sourceforge.net
> Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 8:30 AM
> Subject: [OWASP-Chapters] Summary of the 1st Israeli OWASP chapter
meeting
> 
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Yesterday we had the 1st meeting of the Israeli chapter. The meeting
was
> very successful with over 50 people attending, and the feedback was
that
> the
> meeting was great and people enjoyed the presentations (as well the
> pizzas).
> Since Israel seems to be packed with vendors developing application
> security
> solutions, we had in the audience top technology guys from companies
such
> as
> Checkpoint, BMC, RADware,F5, Imperva and of course Breach Security who
> hosted the event (this still left a lot of room for end user and
> consulting
> companies though.)
> 
> Some of the issues that came to my mind following the event are:
> 
> 1. Activities - apart from a periodical meeting, what else a chapter
> should
> do? At least here in Israel translating things to Hebrew does not seem
> very
> important (in our trade everybody speaks English). So what else?
> Mailing list - should the local mailing list be used for professional
> discussion or managing activities only, shouldn't professional
discussion
> be
> directed at the webasppsec mailing list?
> Web site - is there a room for a local OWASP chapter web site?
> Other?
> 
> 2. Level of presentations - we had in the room the people who wrote
some
> of
> the most technical white papers in our professional field, as well as
> people
> who do general info-sec at organizations. It is pretty difficult to
> address
> both audiences. Any ideas?
> 
> ~ Ofer
> 
> Ofer Shezaf
> OWASP Israel Chair
> http://www.owasp.org/local/israel.html
> 
> CTO, Breach Security
> Phone (US): +1 (760) 268.1924 ext. 702
> Phone (Israel): +972 (9) 956.0036 ext.212
> Cell: +972 (54) 443.1119
> ofers at breach.com
> http://www.breach.com
>