WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- Wright-Patterson's Information Technology professionals met in what is called a Cyber Forum at the base theatre, February 11, to discuss IT issues that they and the base will have to face in the months and year to come.

The forum is a group of presentations from 88th Communications Group IT professionals that highlight new information to other IT professionals, called privileged users, across the installation to help them service their respective organizations.

A privileged user is an account which has more rights than a regular user's account. They can, among other things, make configuration changes and trouble shoot computer issues.

"As a total, we have roughly 700 privileged users on this base and not all of them are in the Comm. Group," said Mike Schneider, 88th Communications Squadron Network Enterprise Services manager and facilitator for the Cyber Forum. "When we have these IT forums, our goal is to present the latest and greatest information to others."

Cyber Forums, typically held once a quarter, are a highlight of current IT activities. Should the need arise, as during a large event like a compliance inspection, the group might meet more often. February's forum focused on a wide range of topics, as well as noteworthy events, coming down the pipe for Wright-Patt's IT world.

Lt. Col. Brian Snyder, 88th CS commander, kicked off the meeting by thanking the audience for their support of base's IT mission, which is to provide users with "an amazing cyber experience."

Snyder went on to outline the CG's strategic and near-term goals, which would further serve to carry out its mission and meet upcoming challenges.

Toby Barnhardt, System Center Configuration Manager Administrator and the standard desktop configuration point-of-contact for the Enterprise Security and Systems Management team discussed the "Year of the Upgrade" which, among other things, addressed upgrading base personal computer's operating systems.

Schneider provided some background on Barnhart's presentation.

"Right now, there has been a big push to look at upgrading all of the computers to the Windows 10," he said.

Upgrading to Windows 10 is an issue base IT users will face in the year ahead and Schneider said they want to be ready for it by letting users know the change is coming.

"The reason why we want to get that out there is because the age of a typical computer on base might not be able to support Windows 10," Schneider said. "Our goal is to let all of the privileged users on base know that this is coming and that you need to have the hardware to support it. When it gets pushed, it's going to come quick and we need to be in compliance."
Barnhart's presentation, which provided a January 2017 completion date for the Windows 10 upgrade, reinforced Schneider's assessment of the rapid deployment of Windows 10.

Another issue discussed was system vulnerability, and Schneider reminded users that they play a vital role in system protection by restarting their computers at least every three days.

"The reason that you want to restart it every few days is because there will be vulnerability updates, which will come down that might patch a vulnerability that the user is not aware of that exists," Schneider said. "That is significant in the fact that we need to safeguard all of our IT systems against any kind of intruder."

Other topics during the forum included software assurance, computer security, or COMPUSEC, assessments, knowledge management and network operations.

For Schneider, who is transferring to the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center to work as a Portfolio Manager/IT Specialist, the February Cyber Forum was the last he would facilitate.