I nominate Patricia Black, Department of Treasury for FISSEA's Educator of the Year for 2002.

Background: In the Summer, 2001, Patricia "Patty" Black, Department of Treasury formed a Federal working group to focus on promoting computer security awareness training federal-wide. By using the basis of a training CD currently being utilized by the Department of Treasury and Defense Information Systems Agency, the groups focus was to produce a "generic" training tool to focus on basic information security key issues "at the user level" such as risk management, contingency planning, perimeter security and policy and planning. The training tool is graphical, web-based and is in compliance with accessibility and Section 508 requirements.

Sponsors: Committee on National Security Systems (CNSS), Education Training and Awareness (ETA) and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). As a caveat, FISSEA has reviewed the product to ensure that it complies with computer security training requirements mandated by Federal law.

The Point of Contact Links portion of the product will provide links to the FISSEA and NIST Forum URLs on the NIST site.

How it will benefit the Federal Government?
The tool will allow Federal agencies to train employees and contractors at the awareness level on the basics of information security. Since it can be utilized as a graphical web-based tool, once deployed by the agency it can be utilized not only on-site, but remotely as well. In addition, it has a built-in tracking capability that will allow agencies to "track" that employees have satisfied training requirements outlined in the Computer Security Act, 1987, A-130 and GISRA.

When will it be available?
The tool was "unveiled" at the FISSEA conference in March 2002 and is "free" of charge for any Federal government agency to utilize to its full capacity.

Congratulations Patricia Black!