National Information Security Group - Houston Chapter

 
The Houston chapter (formerly the New England chapter) of NAISG is the original chapter of the organization. The chapter has more than 1,000 members.

Group Leadership:

Michael B. Farnum
Chair Person of the Houston chapter
Michael is a senior security solutions engineer with Accuvant, Inc. He has over 15 years experience, specializing in security infrastructure design and information security management. A skilled communicator, Michael is also a well-known security blogger and podcaster. His writing can be found at his personal blog (An Information Security Place) and Computerworld. His podcast can be found at his personal blog or at An Information Security Place Podcast.

Michael has spoken on various security topics at conferences and events across the United States. He holds several security and technology certifications. Prior to joining Accuvant, Michael was an information security manager at a world-renown psychiatric clinic in Houston, TX and also ran his own security and networking consulting firm..
 
E-Mail Michael at:

(Note: The email hyperlink has been intentionally disabled to discourage spambots.)

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Advisory Council:
Sam Van Ryder saw the real-time, rapid proliferation of the Code Red virus in 2001 at one of his customer’s sites during testing of some network probes and from that point on, he couldn’t shake the security bug.

Since then, he’s worked at a few security startups, helping them form and build out their sales and channel strategies while keeping a constant pulse on the infosec and compliance community. Those companies develop technologies such as IDS, IPS, vulnerability scanning, NAC, log management and managed security services.
 
 
 
Donald R French, Jr. (CISSP, ITIL) is currently vice president of Information Security & Enterprise Architecture at ANICO Family of Companies. His responsibilities span across ANICO Family of Companies and include Information Security, DR, IT compliance & Enterprise Architecture. Previously a Vice President & Chief Security Officer for OppenheimerFunds responsible for Information Protection, Operational Risk, BCP/DR, Physical Security & Privacy, Donald has over 20 years of international & domestic experience in information technology and management including over 15 years experience in information security. Donald has experience in both the commercial and classified government space and has consulted on a broad range of IT issues including forensic investigations, security and network architecture, Sales support, regulatory compliance security planning, threat and vulnerability management. Many of these projects have been global in scope. Additionally, he has held positions in project management and consulting with large financial institutions, healthcare and federal government, where his expertise was focused on security and network architecture, risk assessment, certification and accreditation, as well as threat management.

Donald’s past expertise has included consulting and service delivery with numerous Fortune 500 corporations to help identify gaps in their information security programs and architecture as well as networking, distributed systems and general it consulting. And in many cases, exposed security deficiencies that limited their ability to meet specific governmental and business partner requirements for information security (i.e. HIPAA, GLBA, SOX & SAS70).