BETHESDA, Md., Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The SANS Institute (SANS), the global leader in cyber security training and certifications, today announced the winners of the SANS 2021 Difference Makers Awards. This prestigious annual awards program honors individuals, teams, and groups in the cybersecurity community who have made a measurable and significant difference in security. Through their implementation of security processes or technology, each person has raised the bar in enabling secure business operations and reducing risk.

"In another challenging year, the 2021 winners are a diverse group that have used their skills and hard work to overcome obstacles and collectively make the world a safer place," said John Pescatore, SANS Director of Emerging Security Trends. "The Difference Makers are individual contributors and teams of people, ranging from a security analyst who donated her own time to help cybersecurity job seekers improve their chances, to the Chief Security Officer at a large university, to a group of people who convinced security 'superstars' to turn their high-profile social media accounts over to lesser-known minority cybersecurity rising stars and gave them instant visibility and credibility."

"The common denominator was their willingness and ability to do what SANS calls 'Fight the Good Fight' in advancing the state of practice in cybersecurity," Mr. Pescatore said.

Winners will be honored during a virtual awards luncheon on Wednesday, December 15, during the SANS 2021 CyberDefense International training event. The webcast celebrating the award winners is open to the public – register here to learn about their accomplishments.

The SANS 2021 Difference Makers Awards winners include:

• SharetheMicinCyber: Camille Stewart, Lauren Zabierek, Katelyn Ringrose
  #ShareTheMicInCyber is a movement started by Camille Stewart and Lauren Zabierek to enable critical conversation on race in the cybersecurity industry, and to shine a light on Black practitioners' accomplishments by showcasing them as experts in their fields.
• Kerry Tomlinson: CyberNews Reporter
  Kerry has been an investigative reporter and journalist since 1993. In recent years, she has focused on cybersecurity and produced a series of free video resources that provide understandable explanations of cybersecurity incidents and risks to raise awareness and provide clear recommendations that lead to behavior changes.
• Randy Marchany: University Information Security Officer, Virginia Tech
  Randy Marchany has been making a difference in cybersecurity for a long time. He became an instructor at SANS in 1992 and was one of the original authors of several security benchmarks published by the Center for Internet Security. He was one of the founders of the US Cyber Challenge project. At Virginia Tech, he is both the CISO and the director of VT's Tech IT security lab.
• Micah Hoffman: Principal Investigator, Spotlight Infosec LLC
  Micah is Principal Investigator, Spotlight Infosec LLC, a SANS Senior Instructor, and the author of SEC487: Open-Source Intelligence Gathering and Analysis. In recent years he has served as the President of the nonprofit OSINT Curious Project, which curates quality, actionable, Open-Source Intelligence news, original blogs, instructional videos, and live streams. Micah also serves as the lead of the Geolocation team for the non-profit National Child Protection Task Force (NCPTF).
• Lesley Carhart: Incident Response Practice Lead, Dragos
  Lesley is an Incident Response Practice Lead at Dragos and a Cyber Transport Section Chief in the US Air Force Reserve. Lesley donates her own time to co-organize resumé and interview clinics at several cybersecurity conferences. She has also mentored colleagues, helped veterans to enter the cybersecurity field, and focused her social media time on fighting the good fight in cybersecurity.
• Eileen Manning: Minnesota Cybersecurity Summit
  Eileen Manning is the President and CEO of the Event Group and Executive Producer of the Minnesota Cybersecurity Summit. one of the top state-level cybersecurity events. Because of Eileen's energy and personal dedication, this is a year-round public-private sharing community through her extensive networking, a large and lively "Think Tank" Advisory council, and frequent webinars, blogs, podcasts, and newsletters.
• Britta Glade: RSA Conference
  Britta has worked in cybersecurity program management and marketing since 1999 and been the "Conscious of Cybersecurity Conference" for the RSA Security Conference since 2014. Over that period, the RSA Conference has grown exponentially, becoming the largest event in the world. Britta has served as a guiding light, making sure hands-on, practitioner-focused content was encouraged and highlighted, even as vendor and political content grew.

About SANS Institute
The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. Today, SANS is the most trusted and, by far, the largest provider of cybersecurity training and certification to professionals in government and commercial institutions world-wide. Renowned SANS instructors teach more than 60 courses at in-person and virtual cybersecurity events and on demand. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, validates practitioner skills through more than 35 hands-on, technical certifications in cybersecurity. The SANS Technology Institute, a regionally accredited independent subsidiary, offers master's and bachelor's degrees, graduate certificates, and an undergraduate certificate in cybersecurity. SANS Security Awareness, a division of SANS, provides organizations with a complete and comprehensive security awareness solution, enabling them to manage their "human" cybersecurity risk easily and effectively. SANS also delivers a wide variety of free resources to the InfoSec community including consensus projects, research reports, webcasts, podcasts, and newsletters; it also operates the Internet's early warning system–the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners, representing varied global organizations from corporations to universities, working together to support and educate the global information security community. www.sans.org

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SOURCE SANS Institute