When SANS was last in Sydney, we held a discussion session to ask how we could best serve the needs of IT and Information Security in Australia. One thing that kept coming up during our chat was to provide training resources for managers.

We have been hearing the same request for training designed for decision makers in the USA and Canada as well. So we began development of a special product, the National Information Assurance Leadership conference or NIAL. Though some NIAL briefings are technical, they are the topics managers needed to understand and have up to date information to help guide their decision process. NIAL has been a breakthrough success for SANS and we are preparing our 6th one, for Washington DC this coming December.

So it is with great pleasure that SANS announces the inaugural AIAL, November 2003 in Canberra. The primary focus will be on the tools to measure the overall security of a site ranging from the Center for Internet Security tools including the Australian led XP Gold Standard research project to how to actually implement 7799. We will also closely examine the hype and reality of the changing perimeter and help you understand what you can realistically expect from technologies such as Intrusion Prevention and Deep Packet Inspection. Every single talk at AIAL will be either brand new, or updated within the past 90 days, the latest information to equip you to best manage our rapidly changing field.

Just to make sure I am being perfectly clear, this is not the regular, 6 days long, very technical, hands on, drink from a firehose SANS training that we have become known for. If that is the conference experience you are looking for, we will be back to Darling Harbour in January 2004. This conference is designed for managers and decision makers. There is still a lot of content, including technical content, after all this is SANS, but everything is in a leadership context.