Reminder. Voting Rights Awareness Workshop on Friday, October 9th at 11.00 am PT (12 Noon MT, 1 pm CT, 2 pm ET)

Reminder that The African Coalition will present the voting rights awareness workshop this  Friday, October 9th  at 11.00 am .  The workshop will focus on important information on voter registration, key dates, and more.

Please find the attached flyer along with the zoom link and join us. 

 

 

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/92571344502?pwd=eUNQamZkUjlWKzJ1c25IQmJBU2gyQT09

Meeting ID: 925 7134 4502
Passcode: 331328
One tap mobile
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Meeting ID: 925 7134 4502
Passcode: 331328
Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/ade3KPlexx

 

 

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Workshops, Upcoming: InfraGard. Cyber and Infrastructure. October 2020

other scheduled Workshop Wednesdays topics, dates, instructor, prices, and links to register for them are listed below; you can also view the full program at this website: https://nisru.org/workshop-wednesdays.

Workshop Title: NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) Technical Ransomware Attack Mitigations for Prevention and Response

• Date/Time: October 14, 2020, 10am - 12pm PT/1-3pm ET
• Instructor: Principal Cybersecurity Engineer, Mitre Corporation
• Price: InfraGard Member $49, Patriots Circle Member $44, Other Gov’t $49, All others $79
• Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1713206650980574732

Workshop Title: Implementing a Resilience Centric Approach to Business Continuity: Lessons from the COVID-19 Outbreak

• Date/Time: October 21 2020, 10am - 12pm PT/1-3pm ET
• Instructor: Dr. Steve Flynn, Founding Director, Global Resilience Institute (GRI)
• Price: InfraGard Member $49, Patriots Circle Member $44, Other Gov’t $49, All others $79
• Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5924764994897590284

Workshop Title: If You are Not Hacking your Physical Security, Someone Else Will.  Understand the Mindset of Hackers.

• Date/Time: October 28, 2020, 10am - 12pm PT/1-3pm ET
• Instructor: Jeff Jones, Threat Hunter and Security Officer, Large Financial Institution
• Price: InfraGard Member $49, Patriots Circle Member $44, Other Gov’t $49, All others $79
• Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2822280731383724044   

Workshop Title: Certified Cyber Security Architect (CCSA) Workshop

• Date/Time: November 4 and 11, 2020, 10am-12pm PT/1-3pm ET
• Instructor: Ali Pabrai, CEO, Ecfirst.org
• Price:     InfraGard Member $98, Patriots Circle Member $88, Other Gov’t $98, All others $158
• Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6550134223392590863  

Workshop Title: Employing the Mitre ATT&CK Knowledgebase for Critical Infrastructure Protection

• Date/Time: December 2, 2020, 10am - 12pm PT/1-3pm ET
• Instructor: Cyber Security Engineer, Mitre Corporation
• Price: InfraGard Member $49, Patriots Circle Member $44, Other Gov’t $49, All others $79
• Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4107817631952407056  

Workshop Title: Business Continuity Planning and Pandemics

• Date/Time: December 9, 2020, 10am - 12pm PT/1-3pm ET
• Instructor: Mary Lasky, Program Manager, Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory
• Price: InfraGard Member $49, Patriots Circle Member $44, Other Gov’t $49, All others $79
• Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2002495856831346700 

Workshop Title: Vulnerability and Remediation Tracking Management Program

• Date/Time: December 16, 2020, 10am - 12pm PT/1-3pm ET
• Instructor: Terri Reilly, Sr Cyber Security Analyst,  Dep. Program Manager, Dept of the Army
• Price: InfraGard Member $49, Patriots Circle Member $44, Other Gov’t $49, All others $79
• Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8092663275292012300 

You may share these courses with your friends and colleagues; they are not limited to InfraGard members.

Workshop: Cryptocurrencies, Financial Fraud and Tracking Bitcoin InfraGard members use discount code.

National Infrastructure Security and Resilience U (NISRU) Workshop Wednesday training event; here are the details:

Workshop Title: Cryptocurrencies, Financial Fraud and Tracking Bitcoin

Instructor: James McDowell, Senior Security Analyst, Alabama Securities Commission

INMA Board Facilitator: Dwight Koop, Treasurer

Date/Time: October 7, 2020, 10am - 12pm PDT/1pm - 3pm EDT

Description: What are cryptocurrencies? What is blockchain technology? What are the red flags of financial fraud? How can you better protect yourself from fraud? If you find yourself asking these questions, then this workshop is for you! We will spend the first part of the workshop covering the basics of cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, and financial fraud. The second half of this workshop will be spent walking through tabletop cryptocurrency fraud investigations with attendees.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the basics of cryptocurrencies.
• Understand the red flags of fraud.
• Understand financial fraud investigations and how to protect themselves.

Who Should Attend: Those interested in learning more about cryptocurrencies and financial fraud investigations; banking, finance, insurance, government, military, law enforcement staff

Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5282501770206364684  

Instructor Bio: James McDowell is a Senior Securities Analyst for the Alabama Securities Commission. In this role, he utilizes data analytics to coordinate multi-jurisdictional investigations; trains law enforcement officers, at various levels, on digital and financial investigations; and briefs stakeholders at all levels on issues related to cybersecurity and data analytics.

He holds a master’s degree in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance; bachelor’s degrees in Finance and Economics; and the designations of Certified Cyber Crimes Investigator, Certified Ethical Hacker, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator. He is currently pursuing the designations of Certified Data Scientist and Certified Big Data Architect.

He is a proud member of INMA’s Chief Information Security Officer Cross-Sector Council, the Multi-State Information Sharing & Analysis Center, and InfraGard. Additionally, he is elected to the Board of Directors for the Birmingham Chapter of InfraGard, appointed to Co-Chair of the “Investment Adviser Cybersecurity and Technology Project Group” of the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), and selected as Chair of the Financial Regulatory Compliance Section of the Government Blockchain Association (GBA).

James is also a Member of the NASAA Enforcement Technology Project Group; a Member of the GBA Cybersecurity Working Group, Economic Analysis Working Group, and Financial Crimes Working Group; a Member of the Military Operations and Research Society Data Science and Artificial Intelligence CoP; a Member of the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts; a Member of the Elder Justice Coalition; a Member of the American Legal and Financial Network; and a Member of the National White Collar Crime Center.

Patriots Circle members get an additional 10% discount; as a member, you will get a separate email with the Patriot Circle Discount code.

You, our relationship to the Government. September 2020

"Renegotiate our relationship to the Government" 
 

Our communities, the community imperative overrides the financial and corporate imperatives.

Our government policy makers are elected to the roles by the community.

Our focus within BEMA International is non-political with a focus on policy, and the community imperative when disasters\emergencies strike our communities, and the full impacts of climate change.

BEMA International

Water Security: Unorthodox desalination method could transform global water management

https://www.terradaily.com/reports/Unorthodox_desalination_method_could_transform_global_water_management_999.html

Unorthodox desalination method could transform  global water management by Staff Writers New York NY (SPX) Jun 26, 2020 Water security is becoming an urgent global challenge. Hundreds of millions of people already live in water-scarce regions, and the UN projects that by 2030 about half the world's population will be living in highly water-stressed areas. This will be a crisis even for developed countries like the U.S., where water managers in 40 states expect freshwater shortages within the next 10 years. As the global population and GDP grow, so will the demand for freshwater. And, with the continuing rise of global temperatures, water shortages will only get worse. Desalination processes are increasingly being relied upon to augment water supplies. In fact, global desalination capacity is projected to double between 2016 and 2030. But these processes are expensive and can be harmful to the environment. The ultrahigh salinity brines that are the   byproduct of desalination can be several times that of seawater salinity and its management options are especially challenging for inland desalination facilities such as those in Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas. Over the past year, Columbia Engineering researchers have been refining their unconventional desalination approach for hypersaline brines - temperature swing solvent extraction (TSSE) - that shows great promise for widespread use. TSSE is radically different from conventional methods because it is a solvent-extraction-based technique that does not use membranes and is not based on evaporative phase-change: it is effective, efficient, scalable, and sustainably powered. In a new paper, published online June 23 in Environmental Science and Technology, the team reports that their method has enabled them to attain energy-efficient zero-liquid discharge (ZLD) of ultrahigh salinity brines - the first demonstration of TSSE for ZLD desalination of hypersaline brines. "Zero-liquid discharge is the last frontier of desalination," says Ngai Yin Yip, an assistant professor of earth and environmental engineering who led the study. "Evaporating and condensing the water is the current practice for ZLD but it's very energy intensive and prohibitively costly. We were able to achieve ZLD without boiling the water off - this is a major advance for desalinating the ultrahigh salinity brines that demonstrates how our TSSE technique can be a transformative technology for the global water industry." Yip's TSSE process begins with mixing a low-polarity solvent with the high salinity brine. At low temperatures (the team used 5 C), the TSSE solvent extracts water from the brine but not salts (which are present in the brine as ions). By controlling the ratio of solvent to brine, the team can extract all the water from the brine into the solvent to induce the precipitation of salts - after all the water is "sucked" into the solvent, the salts form solid crystals and fall to the bottom, which can then be easily sieved out. After the researchers separate out the precipitated salts, they warm up the water-laden solvent to a moderate temperature of around 70 C. At this higher temperature, the solvent's solubility for water decreases and water is squeezed out from the solvent, like a sponge. The separated water forms a layer below the solvent and has much less salt than the initial brine. It can be readily siphoned off and the regenerated solvent can then be reused for the next TSSE cycle. "We were not expecting TSSE to work as well as it did," Yip says. "In fact, when we were discussing its potential for ZLD, we thought just the opposite, that the process would likely give out at some point when there is just too much salt for it to keep working. So it was a happy surprise when I convinced lead researcher Chanhee Boo to give it a try, for the heck of it, on a Friday afternoon and we got such great results." With a simulated (lab-prepared) brine feed of 292,500 part-per-million total dissolved solids, Yip's group was able to precipitate more than 90% of the salt in the original solution. In addition, the researchers estimated that the process used only about a quarter of the energy required for evaporation of water - a 75% energy savings compared to thermally evaporating the brine. They reused the solvent for several cycles with no noticeable loss in performance, demonstrating that the solvent was conserved and not expended during the process. Then, to demonstrate the practical applicability of the technology, the team took a field sample of high-salinity brine, the concentrate of irrigation drainage water in California's Central Valley, where irrigation drainage water is difficult and costly to treat, and achieved ZLD with TSSE. Conventional distillation methods require high-grade steam and are frequently supplemented with electricity to power vacuum pumps. Because TSSE requires only moderate temperature inputs, the low-grade thermal energy necessary can come from more sustainable sources, such as industrial waste heat, shallow-well geothermal, and low-concentration solar collectors. "With the right solvent and right temperature conditions, we can provide cost-effective and environmentally sustainable concentrate management options for inland desalination facilities, utilizing brackish groundwater to alleviate the current and pending water stresses," Yip notes. In addition to managing inland desalination concentrates, TSSE can also be used for other high salinity brines including flowback and produced water from oil and gas extraction, waste streams from steam-driven electric power stations, discharges from coal-to-chemical facilities, and landfill leachate. Yip's group is continuing to investigate the fundamental working mechanisms of TSSE, to engineer further improvements in its performance. This work includes further testing with real samples from the field, as well as optimization of the overall process. Research Report: "Zero Liquid Discharge of Ultrahigh Salinity Brines with Temperature Swing Solvent Extraction"