Hacker High School Asks for Help

I received an email recently from Pete Herzog, Managing Director of the Institute for Security and Open Methodologies (ISECOM). I wrote about this group on 25 Aug. Pete is looking for assistance with his Hacker High School project. Pete writes:

"HHS is a non-profit, grassroots program originally designed as an after school computer club however with its 10 lesson workbooks. It can easily stand on its own as a small course, integrated into a course, or as a college study program for interested students. HHS exists as a learning tool for Security Awareness Training and actually has as much in common with hacking as depicted in movies as a man does to a mouse."

Earlier Pete wrote me in response to my earlier story on ISECOM:

"I just wanted to say we are not competing with SANS on any level. Maybe you knew us as Ideahamster- a name we changed because the volunteers requested it. The name is different but the roots are the same. We are a small group proactively trying to better the security profession and security in general. Nobody on the team draws a salary through ISECOM as we are all volunteers. We operate as a non-profit out of Barcelona and provide a certification authority through a university, La Salle of Barcelona, on two 60-hour courses (OPST and OPSA) which are also taught at this and other universities. For these classes ISECOM does not charge for materials and trains the trainers for free. The little bit of money we make off certificates goes to support grassroots projects like Hacker Highschool where we teach Internet security, legalities, and ethics to teens from 13 to 18 in Highschools.

As time goes on, ISECOM will offer more projects, bring on more volunteers, translate our documents into more languages, and hopefully offer more classes at the university level."