Gareth Dance is the Manager EMEA for the SANS Institute. In this interview he discusses the SANS Secure Europe Amsterdam 2011 training event and offers insight into what exactly you can expect if you decide to expand your information security knowledge this May.

SANS Secure Europe Amsterdam 2011 is a huge security training event. What courses do you offer this year? How do you choose what courses to present?

Yes, SANS Secure Europe is the second biggest SANS event in the EMEA region, we are really pleased to be bringing it back to Amsterdam for what is sure to be another great year. This year we will be offering 8 classes over two consecutive weeks, in the first week we will be running:

SEC401: SANS Security Essentials Bootcamp Style
SEC540: VoIP Security
SEC560: Network Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking
FOR558: Advanced Computer Forensics Analysis and Incident Response


Followed by, in week 2:
AUD507: Auditing Networks, Perimeters and Systems
SEC617: Wireless Ethical Hacking, Penetration Testing and Defences
SEC660: Advanced Penetration Testing, Exploits and Ethical Hacking FOR558: Network Forensics

Picking the right courses for any event is always a challenge, we have such a wide array of great courses to select from, but we always try our absolute best to meet the needs of the students, this year for example, we are running the always popular and high demand classes such as SEC401 and SEC560, but we are also giving people the chance to attend classes that we might not run in the region very often, such as SEC540 or SEC617, and of course after great debuts in London last winter we had to bring back our new classes FOR558 and SEC660.

Another fantastic opportunity offered by Amsterdam running over 2 weeks is that we can include classes that logically follow on from one and other so students can register for the both of them at the same event and really maximize their learning experience, for example SEC560 can be followed up with SEC660 or FOR508 by FOR558.