Difference between revisions of "WASPY Awards 2016"

Citation 2 I would like to Nominate Tony Clarke for this award. He has been on the OWASP board in Dublin since November 2015 and there have been massive changes within the chapter since then. Tony has transformed the Dublin Chapter and has been recently elected as Dublin Chapter Lead with a landslide victory.I have been attending OWASP events since 2012 and over the past 8 months it is visible of the impact Tony and OWASP are having within the local Dublin security security community.Previously, events were sporadic and occurred every few months. There was never an organised schedule of events. Communication of the events were also poor. With Tony on board, this has changed. Events are now at the end of each month and are organised on a scheduled basis. Communication has improved and with extra social media interaction, OWASP events are now more visible than before.At the end of May the Chapter hosted an event focusing on Women In Security. Keynote speakers such as Jane Frankland, Jacky Fox, local women involved in the security community presented at the event.Everyone left the event feeling motivated. My partner who is a science graduate attended the event with me. She left the event wanting to work in Security and has since begun the enrollment into a Security Conversion Masters in UCD. This is the sort of impact which Tony's work is having on the people of Dublin.The OWASP Dublin chapter previously had 40-50 people MAX at events. It was the same people always. There were 200+ people in attendance at the Women In Security event in May. This sort of attendee never been seen before at a local chapter meeting in Dublin.I believe that this attendance peaked because of Tony's drive to engage the security community in Dublin. Tony organised contacts in universities and large multinational organisations to send email communication to Dublin staff'students. His aim to get more women studying technology or working in technology companies engaging with the security community in Dublin. Tony is leaving no stone un-turned to make OWASP Dublin to success within the community.As a committee member of OWASP Dublin I know that Tony is now reaching out to work with local education bodies such as Smart futures (Science Foundation Ireland) Dublin Institute of Technology, ISACA and Science Gallery. He has brought a plan to our chapter and given us a goal this year to collaborate with education bodies to try sell our security industry to people in education. This is not limited to 3rd level, but also primary and secondary. Tony is leading this initiative and it would not happen without him.I found out about these awards as Tony is trying to improve the open-ness of the Dublin chapter. He is encouraging the community to post this sort of communications to the social media platforms such as facebook, twitter, linked-in.Based on above, Tony has demonstrated that he is not in this for the title or limelight but for the good of the community. He is a leader who is willing to listen and wants to delegate if any OWASP committee member are willing to take on a task. Like any good leader, if he does not have anyone available to do a task, he does it himself.OWASP Dublin Chapter has only been under the leadership of Tony Clarke for two months. We have been enjoying success since Tony first attended a board meeting in 2015. Tony is having major impact within Dublin. I encourage you to strongly consider Tony for this award as he has done great things for us here in Dublin and his leadership is going from strength to strength.

Kathy has somehow found time whenever she's been asked, and has done the lion's share of the work required to organize SnowFROC. For SnowFROC 2016 we had the usual chaotic first planning meeting where several of us gathered at a pub to see which of us would be able to commit time & to identify potential roles. Everybody left that meeting with action-items. Shortly thereafter, Kathy emailed the rest of us to inform us that she had: drafted a budget,drafted a planning schedule,identified primary & alternate venues,identified primary & competing caterers,reached out to some legendary speakers & gotten tentative commitments,reached out to several vendors & gotten tentative sponsorship commitments, and,identified a good source of volunteers for setup, event day, and tear-down. In other words, Kathy Thaxton had done most of the "heavy lifting" within days of the initial planning meeting! Like previous SnowFROC's, SnowFROC 2016 was attended by Coloradans for the most part, but as with most years we had attendees from Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and New York. SnowFROC had about 200 attendees, with a mix of ITSec operators, QA/testers, Developers, Auditors, & Managers for all of the above. None of this would have happened without Kathy Thaxton's involvement. Her tact, initiative, cheerfulness, and exceptional organizational skills allowed the rest of the planning committee to focus on things like establishing the curriculum, including a day-long hands-on workshop. Kathy's contribution was so profound and her reputation for organizing a FUN, well-planned, LEARNING event is so great that the local Cloud Security Alliance went out of their way to request her participation on their planning committee for a regional event they're hosting later this year. I attended yesterday's Cloud Security Alliance meeting, and whereas AppSec in the Cloud has been an afterthought at most CSA meetings, it was front-and-center yesterday as the Chapter Leaders asked their members what tracks/topics they'd be most interested in for their upcoming event. That is DEFINITELY reach OUTSIDE of the OWASP community, and again would not have happened without Kathy's stellar achievements at SnowFROCs.

• The Mumbai Student Chapter Leader making student endorse in Information Security and Spreading Idea and Awareness via Chapter Meets.
• Helping and Speaking Initiatives in OWASP Local Chapter Meet Mumbai with chapter leader Narenda Choyal.

• Lead of SQLi WAF Bypass a very helpful cheat sheet which consists of A successful SQL injection exploit can read sensitive data from the database, modify database data (Insert/Update/Delete),recommended by many Security Researcher's.
• Contributor in OWASP Benchmark,contributed SQLi/XSS fuzz vectors as initial contribution towards adding support for WAF/RASP scoring. Many Thanks to Dave Wichers

Kathy has somehow found time whenever she's been asked, and has done the lion's share of the work required to organize SnowFROC. For SnowFROC 2016 we had the usual chaotic first planning meeting where several of us gathered at a pub to see which of us would be able to commit time & to identify potential roles.Everybody left that meeting with action-items.Shortly thereafter, Kathy emailed the rest of us to inform us that she had: drafted a budget,drafted a planning schedule,identified primary & alternate venues,identified primary & competing caterers,reached out to some legendary speakers & gotten tentative commitments,reached out to several vendors & gotten tentative sponsorship commitments, and,identified a good source of volunteers for setup, event day, and tear-down.In other words, Kathy Thaxton had done most of the "heavy lifting" within days of the initial planning meeting!Like previous SnowFROC's, SnowFROC 2016 was attended by Coloradans for the most part, but as with most years we had attendees from Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and New York.SnowFROC had about 200 attendees, with a mix of ITSec operators, QA/testers, Developers, Auditors, & Managers for all of the above.None of this would have happened without Kathy Thaxton's involvement. Her tact, initiative, cheerfulness, and exceptional organizational skills allowed the rest of the planning committee to focus on things like establishing the curriculum, including a day-long hands-on workshop.Kathy's contribution was so profound and her reputation for organizing a FUN, well-planned, LEARNING event is so great that the local Cloud Security Alliance went out of their way to request her participation on their planning committee for a regional event they're hosting later this year.I attended yesterday's Cloud Security Alliance meeting, and whereas AppSec in the Cloud has been an afterthought at most CSA meetings, it was front-and-center yesterday as the Chapter Leaders asked their members what tracks/topics they'd be most interested in for their upcoming event.That is DEFINITELY reach OUTSIDE of the OWASP community, and again would not have happened without Kathy's stellar achievements at SnowFROCs.