Please join us for our October InfraGard meeting for two presentations from Robert Meilish, Department of Homeland Security and William “Bo” Vastine, Trust Farm, LLC.Robert Mielish biography –

Robert Mielish is a Protective Security Advisor with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and is assigned to Raleigh, North Carolina. Mr. Mielish works with public and private owners and operators of critical infrastructure to understand and improve the security and resilience of their critical infrastructure and to further understand the cascading consequences of infrastructure failure.
Previously, Mr. Mielish served as the Strategic Planner for North Carolina Emergency Management, where he managed Emergency and Homeland Security Grant Programs and developed the Division’s Strategic Plan. Mr. Mielish also served as the Energy Assurance Program Manager for North Carolina’s State Energy Office where he developed processes to assist the state prepare for, respond to and recover from energy disruptions.
Mr. Mielish received a Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Leadership from Chapman University and a Master of Public Administration from East Carolina University.

Bo Vastine biography-

Bo Vastine received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Speech Communication from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. During his career, he has worked for small start-up/early-stage technology firms as well as large multi-national technology/trade analytics firms. His background includes deep services industry experience managing teams and successful business development with innovative services, software and disruptive technology which redefined each respective industry landscape. In addition, he has led internal review processes for re-design/re-development and re-deployment of institutional technologies with C-Level management.
Bo works with current and potential clients to develop threat issue awareness and the overall understanding of design, development, implementation, and management of Innovation Trade Secret Protection Programs. Trust Farm designs programs that focus on reinforcing trust relationships between the trade secret information owner and those who are entrusted with the information.
Bo also speaks at security- and risk management-related engagements on the issue of insider threats, Nation State-sponsored threats and best practices for mitigating these threats.

Briefing Abstract

Title: Insider Threat Intelligence: Overview of Nation State-Sponsored Talent Recruitment Platforms

Intellectual Property, Trade Secrets, Proprietary Information, and Restricted Information such as PII, PHI and PCI have become valuable information assets managed by organizations across government and industry sectors. Information is the driving force of innovation and invention in the United States and is critical to an organization’s successful execution of its strategic plans and product development efforts. The value of information assets and its internal know-how is estimated to represent over 80% of an organization’s value proposition. As a result, information has become a prime target for loss, theft and misappropriation.

The biggest threat to information assets is the Nation-State threat — which is the foreign government intelligence, security and research institutions focused on the collection of know-how from victim organizations for the benefit of the sponsoring Nation. The emergence of the Nation State-sponsored Talent Recruitment Platform has prompted an increase in the threat profile for organizations across all industry sectors.

This briefing will discuss the emergence of the Nation State-Sponsored Talent Recruitment Platform and the threat that such information collection efforts represent to the public and private organizations in the United States.