I was invited by a friend to join a November 14th late afternoon/early evening virtual meetup that covered topics related to “Introduction to the NIST Risk Management Framework (RMF).” RMF is a subset of cybersecurity based on a structured process developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that follows a defined set of specific key steps to manage cybersecurity risks.
The virtual session via Google Meet involved about eight participants and was organized and led by an RMF expert currently working in the industry. He served as a mentor to the participants during the session, and we were encouraged to ask any questions we might have. The beginning of the session focused on job/career, and we reviewed a few job postings together on Indeed.com, highlighted relevant keywords, and discussed the requirements of different positions/roles in the industry. For example, I learned that Analyst positions are a bit more technical than Compliance roles.
During the later part of the session, we touched on some of the processes, documents, and resources that are specific to the RMF, many of which are accessible online for free.
I enjoyed the session and plan to pursue learning more about the NIST Risk Management Framework by attending more sessions.
I attended another unrelated meetup on the afternoon of November 27th that I found on Meetup.com called “Revolutionizing Cyber Risk Management in Healthcare with AI.” Although I noticed that it was applied to the healthcare setting, I decided to register and check it out anyway, since it focused on cyber risk management and AI, two areas of interest for me.
Unfortunately, this second meetup experience was not as positive for me as my previous session. It started several minutes later than what was published, and it was much shorter than what was scheduled. There were also audio issues within the first minute when the presenter finally started the session, and they continued throughout. The slides that were presented were visible, but with the audio issues, it wasn’t as easy to follow along. The session was meant to be accessed via YouTube Live, but it ended up seeming more like a pre-recorded session that the organizers just uploaded to get visibility. I did not enjoy it, and I made it a point to submit my observations to Meetup.com via their post-event feedback form.