Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) May 09, 2014
Spencer L. SooHoo, PhD, Chief Security Officer and Director of Scientific Computing at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, will be a featured speaker at the Los Angeles Chapter of the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA-LA) Sixth Annual Information Security Summit on Friday, May 16, 2014, at the Hilton Universal City Hotel in Los Angeles. The theme of the one-day summit, The Growing Cyber Threat: Protect Your Business, highlights the financial impact cybercrime has on all organizations: business, nonprofits, government agencies, schools, healthcare and others. The summit advances ISSA-LA’s core belief that ‘It takes the village to secure the village’ SM.
"We are very fortunate to have Spencer speak about the importance of healthcare privacy and security, since he oversees information security for one of the largest medical centers in the country," said Richard Greenberg, ISSA Fellow, Los Angeles Board Member, and Summit Co-Chair. "Because Cedars-Sinai was named one of the top 100 'most wired' hospitals in 2013, Spencer's contribution to the Summit is invaluable in finding solutions to protecting patient information privacy and security."
Dr. SooHoo will speak on the “"Information Security Challenges in a Large Academic Medical Center." His topic is timely and critical in light of recent reports that the FBI sent a private notice to healthcare companies stating the industry "is not as resilient to cyber intrusions compared to the financial and retail sectors, therefore the possibility of increased cyber intrusions is likely."
There will be a special Healthcare Privacy and Security Summit as a part of the Security Summit that will bring together leaders in Privacy and Security within government and private industry for a day of collaboration, networking and presentations by accomplished privacy and security professionals. There will be a world class speaker lineup: Eddie Reeves, Reeves Strategy Group; Terry Gold, founder of iDanalyst LLC; Cynthia Stamer, Managing Shareholder of Cynthia Marcotte Stamer, PC; Brenda Rose, EIS IT Security Manager at Cedars-Sinai Health System; Eric Read, Associate Director of Audit, Risk Management and Compliance at Cedars-Sinai Health System; and James Brady, Area CIO at Kaiser Permanente Orange County.
Dr. SooHoo has been with Cedars-Sinai for over 36 years, starting first as a biomedical engineer, then a research scientist in pulmonary medicine before moving into IT to manage a research computing facility at Cedars-Sinai before it was merged with the enterprise IT organization. His various roles include managing data networking, security, servers, e-mail, storage, and a data center. A heavy research background and years of practical experience managing various facets of IT give him a unique perspective on security, when he interacts with the physicians and research scientists at Cedars-Sinai. He strikes a reasonable balance between the natural tendency of scientists and clinical researchers to openly share information and the need to consider regulatory and information security risks.
Dr. SooHoo earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester, a MS in Electrical Engineering from George Washington University, and MS and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California.
The ISSA-LA Summit is the only educational forum in Los Angeles specifically designed to encourage participation and interaction among all four vital information security constituencies: (1) business and nonprofit executives, their boards and their trusted advisors; (2) technical IT personnel with responsibility for information systems and the data they contain; (3) law enforcement; and (4) information security practitioners with responsibility for ensuring the security of sensitive information.
Registration is open to anyone interested in learning more about information security but is particularly recommended for business and nonprofit executives and senior managers; business professionals in law, accounting, insurance and banking; technical IT personnel; law enforcement professionals fighting cybercrime; faculty and students in college and university cybersecurity programs; and information security practitioners.
The Information Security Summit is part of ISSA-LA’s important community outreach program. The goal of the program is to help the community stay safe from cybercrime by enabling the necessary collaboration between business, nonprofit and community leaders, technical IT professionals, law enforcement and the information security community.
ISSA-LA is the premier catalyst and information source in Los Angeles for improving the practice of information security. The Chapter provides educational programs for information security and IT professionals. The Chapter also conducts outreach programs to businesses, financial institutions, nonprofits, governmental agencies, and consumers. ISSA-LA is the founding Chapter of the Information Systems Security Association, an international not-for-profit organization of information security professionals and practitioners. For more information on the Sixth Annual Information Security Summit, please visit http://www.issala.org/summit and follow them on Twitter at @ISSALA.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is one of the largest nonprofit academic medical centers in the Western United States. For the fifth straight two-year period, Cedars-Sinai has been named Southern California's gold standard in healthcare in an independent survey. Cedars-Sinai is internationally renowned for its diagnostic and treatment capabilities and its broad spectrum of programs and services, as well as breakthrough in biomedical research and superlative medical education. It ranks among the top 10 non-university hospitals in the nation for its research activities.