Kevin Mitnick to Keynote Inaugural Transaction Security Summit

LAS VEGAS -- Kevin D. Mitnick, founder of Mitnick Security Consulting LLC and the world's most famous former hacker, will be the keynote speaker at the Transaction Security Summit, September 28 & 29 in Las Vegas, NV. This summit, which asks attendees Are Your S.A.F.E.? -- Secure Against Fraud Electronically, is sponsored by Shift4 Corporation and is designed to provide merchants and payment applications the information they need to obtain, maintain and certify the security of their payment process.

With more than fifteen years of experience in exploring computer security, Mr. Mitnick is a largely self-taught expert in exposing the vulnerabilities of complex operating systems and telecommunications devices. His hobby as an adolescent consisted of studying methods, tactics, and strategies used to circumvent computer security, and to learn more about how computer systems and telecommunication systems work.

In building this body of knowledge, Mr. Mitnick gained unauthorized access to computer systems at some of the largest corporations on the planet and penetrated some of the most resilient computer systems ever developed. He has used both technical and non-technical means to obtain the source code to various operating systems and telecommunications devices to study their vulnerabilities and their inner workings.

In Mr. Mitnick's keynote presentation -- The Art of Deception: Are YOU in Danger of Being 'Conned?' -- he will share his perspective on the threat of "social engineering", a highly effective type of attack that exploits the human element of corporate security.

While relatively unknown to the general public, the term "social engineering" is widely used within the computer security community to describe the techniques hackers use to deceive a trusted computer user within a company into revealing sensitive information, or trick an unsuspecting mark into performing actions that create a security hole.

Mitnick will illustrate why a misplaced reliance on security technologies alone, such as firewalls, authentication devices, encryption, and intrusion detection systems are virtually ineffective against a motivated attacker using these techniques. Although there are no reported statistics on the number of successful social engineering attacks, these ages-old techniques have been and continue to be extremely effective against unsuspecting targets, and pose the least risk and cost to your adversary.

In the corporate environment, a large number of unsuspecting victims never realize they have been manipulated. Through concrete examples, Mitnick shares what businesses can do to develop a creative and engaging security program that heightens awareness, motivates employees to change their attitudes, influences them to think defensively, and encourages the adoption of good security habits.

"The Transaction Security Summit delves into the latest security regulations from the card associations. These mostly deal with the security of a merchant's network and a payment application's software. But there is much more to building a secure payment process," stated J. David Oder, President & CEO of Shift4. "Having a dynamic speaker like Kevin Mitnick focus on such a key issue as social engineering really helps round out the summit and ensures that our attendees leave with a good understanding of what it takes to be secure, even beyond what the card associations require."

The Transaction Security Summit will be held at the beautiful JW Marriott Las Vegas, located on 50 acres of lushly landscaped grounds 15 minutes from the Las Vegas Strip. Sessions will run all day on September 28 & 29 and will be led by a variety of industry experts from some of the most recognized names in the credit card industry. More details about the event and online registration forms can be found at www.shift4.com or by calling (702) 597-2480, ext. 3439.