ISSA Central Plains Chapter
March 6^th 2026

Central Plains Chapter Meeting:

"From ancient battlefields to modern infrastructure - a look at deception as a defensive discipline", Gene Abramov

Presentation: We'll explore the history of deception, from ancient military strategy to modern cybersecurity; why traditional cyber deception tools have struggled to gain adoption despite proven effectiveness; and introduce the concept of next-generation edge-native deception as an emerging defensive discipline.
The talk is structured in three acts: historical examples and the principles behind them, an honest assessment of the three generations of cyber deception (honeypots, canaries, and platform-based systems), including what worked and what didn't, and a look at how edge-native approaches are rethinking the model with DNS-layer deployment, automated blocking, and zero-false-positive detection. Presented by Gene Abramov, Co-Founder of Divert.

Speaker Bio: Gene Abramov has 25 years of experience in offensive security-penetration testing, application security, red teaming, and telling companies what they didn't want to hear. He started at FishNet Security, led security architecture at H&R Block, and in 2006 co-founded Depth Security, a penetration testing and application security consultancy serving startups through the Fortune 1000. Depth was acquired by All Covered (Konica Minolta) in 2020.
After two decades of breaking in, Gene co-founded Divert in 2025 - a cyber deception platform built from the attacker's perspective. Divert deploys deceptive infrastructure at the DNS layer to catch and block threats before they reach real assets. His philosophy is simple: if you want to build a defense that actually works, have it designed by someone who used to get paid to prove it doesn't.

The Information Systems Security Association (ISSA)® is a not-for-profit international organization of information security professionals and practitioners.  It provides education forums, publications and peer interaction opportunities that enhance the knowledge, skill and professional growth of its members. We hope the ISSA will provide a chance to interface with other IT professionals and further your awareness of security practices and technologies.

This meeting is open to the general public with no expectations of membership.

Date:
Time: Location:

Friday, March 6^th, 2026
1:00 pm until 3:00 pm
Online Event

Join us via Zoom! (Link on online events page)