Will We See You at WEST 2022?

Now in its 32nd year, the WEST Conference and Exposition is the premier naval event to be held on the North American West Coast. WEST’s mission is to bring the military and industry together to explore current and future platforms and technologies. As part of this, WEST connects the industry professionals who design and build platforms, equipment, and weapons with the designers of communications and technical systems. More than 150,000 professionals in the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard depend on the conversations and networking at WEST to successfully complete their missions.

We will have several people attending the event, so if you want to meet up, let us know.

WEST 2022 takes place from Wednesday, February 16 to Friday February 18 in the San Diego Convention Center. The theme of this year’s conference is “Are We Committing to New Capabilities Rapidly Enough to Meet Future Challenges?” During the conference, attendees will hear about challenges facing the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, and be part of the dialog.

Protect Your Data—Be a Hard Target

Data security is a major issue for all aspects of the U.S. government and military, and we at DIGISTOR have the best solid-state-drive (SSD) lineup for securing Data at Rest (DAR)—offering military-class self-encrypting drives (SEDs) at COTS pricing. So, my eye was caught by the “Prepare to be Aware” warning on the WEST 2022 website. This caution reads as follows:

Conferences present opportunities for America’s adversaries to target U.S. government employees, academia, defense industry and other personnel to collect our critical information. Be a hard target! Use good OPSEC practices to protect yourself and your organization’s mission.

The initial warning is followed by a set of recommendations, including being aware of your surroundings when discussing sensitive information and being cautious when using WLAN, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi connections. One point I fear they’ve missed—and one I intend to talk to them about—is that the SSDs in notebook and laptop computers should be self-encrypting and require pre-boot authorization (PBA) before even allowing the operating system (OS) to boot up. This will give you a high confidence that any data on your drive cannot be compromised should your computer be mislaid or stolen—a circumstance that is more common than you might think at conferences of this nature.

Contact Us!

If you have any questions as to how securing DAR might apply to your own data security requirements, DIGISTOR experts will be attending WEST 2022 and would love to chat with you, so please feel free to contact us so we can set up a meeting.