Special Ops Security provides Network Strike Team training for Pentagon Network Security Teams

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URL: http://SpecialOpsSecurity.com/news/2005/11/

PENTAGON, Washington, DC--August 29, 2005--Select members of the Pentagon Network Security Services team were chosen to attend a special fast paced hands-on training seminar called Network Strike Team this week, presented by Special Ops Security, an information security consulting firm from Orange County, California. Company founders Erik Pace Birkholz and Steven Andrés are no strangers to the military's headquarters, having been invited to speak at a monthly security forum in February 2005.

Rick Anderson, Director of Network Security Services-Pentagon, said he and his team were "...extremely fortunate to have Special Ops Security share their unique vision with our Pentagon community. We anticipated technical excellence from pen-testing subject matter experts, and our expectations were exceeded,"

Doug Steelman, Chief of the Network Assurance Division, was impressed with the Special Ops take on security and is the inspiration for the Network Strike Team custom-designed security course. Steelman wanted a fast-paced curriculum that wouldn't underwhelm his elite security engineers as so many other private-sector training courses have in the past. A hands-on lab environment was also a must, but for security reasons the classroom had to be kept physically separate from any Pentagon network resources. This provided a challenge for the Special Ops Team, which had to create and transport and entire working sample network for a dozen students, each with its own area for experimentation.

"You should have seen the looks we got when we arrived with our baggage at Dulles Airport," said Andres, Chief Technology Officer for Special Ops Security. "We had box after box of large rock-concert sized ruggedized cases with laptops, servers, and other portable networking gear stuffed inside. This was definitely the most technology- intensive course we've put on."

Students were provided with training manuals to coincide with instruction from four of the industry's greatest instructors, including one former Air Force Office of Special Investigations officer and the preeminent expert on Web Application assessments (who even coined the phrase "SQL injection" that the industry now takes for granted). At the completion of the week-long course, students were provided certificates of completion, an autographed copy of the best-selling book SPECIAL OPS: Host and Network Security, and a limited edition Network Strike Team "challenge coin" to indicate their status in an elite group of security engineers.