ACT-1 Group Partners With Vanguard Integrity Professionals to Reduce Unemployment and National Security Vulnerabilities Through an Innovative Scholarship Program for Unemployed Cybersecurity Professionals

TORRANCE, Calif. and LAS VEGAS, March 23 /PRNewswire/ -- ACT-1 Group, the largest woman- and minority-owned employment service in North America, today announced that they have partnered with Vanguard Integrity Professionals in their innovative scholarship program designed to reduce unemployment and improve national security.

With this scholarship program, private companies ACT-1 Group and Vanguard are doing their part to help ease our country's unemployment crisis while focusing on the nation's critical computing infrastructure.

According to Gartner, Inc., a leading research authority on IT Security, the "mainframe continues to be an important platform for many enterprises, hosting about 90% of their mission critical applications. Enterprises may not take the same steps to address configuration errors… on the mainframe as they do on other OSs. Thus, the incidence of high-risk vulnerabilities is astonishingly high." [See Research Note G00172909, January 20, 2010 available on the Vanguard web site at www.go2vanguard.com].

"When Fortune 1000 organizations don't instill proper security processes and procedures along with the appropriately trained staff to monitor and enforce them, they truly put our national economy in jeopardy, " said Brett Howroyd, Executive Strategist to the President at ACT-1 Group. "This can be from something as simple as a careless, yet costly, administration error, or worse, malicious sabotage and theft from foreign entities or unscrupulous organizations."

Gartner also stated that, "The lack of skilled mainframe security professionals makes it difficult for enterprises to properly administer and audit the security of their mainframes."

There is a severe shortage of people with the technical skills to handle these issues, and employers should send their security professionals for cross-training to Vanguard Security 2010, the only mainframe exclusive training event in 2010.

Vanguard is providing 50 free conference scholarships to unemployed cybersecurity professionals, and training them on the most up-to-date procedures. ACT-1 Group's technology division, AT-TECH, will be offering career guidance and training on new tools and approaches for their job search. The company will also place scholarship graduates in job positions throughout the country. Companies who want to participate in this program should contact [email protected].

"ACT-1 Group really stepped up to the plate and showed they are committed to the same goals that inspired this program. We both want to protect the security of our country and help our citizens at the same time," said Ronn Bailey, Vanguard's CEO and CTO. "Our joint partnership proves what two private companies can do to address a big problem. I invite other members of the private and public sectors, and the national community at large to embrace this program and participate with us."

Janice Bryant Howroyd, Chairman and CEO of the ACT-1 Group, commented, "Empowering people to work is a blessing and a responsibility. As I spend more and more time in Washington, DC, I see first-hand the importance –the criticality–of understanding that infrastructure is not just roads and bridges, but also hardware, software, and the human capital trained to handle it. This partnership with Ronn's Vanguard organization is inspired and inspiring. It allows me to put my company's resources to work to help build our futures in a significant way."

Through the combination of Vanguard's security training and certification and ACT-1 Group's career guidance and placement, this partnership creates a winning formula to reduce unemployment while giving American businesses access to trained security professionals with the skills most in demand.

The Vanguard Security Conference and Scholarship Program

Industry-wide, the Vanguard Security Conference has been established as the premier IT security training event for over 2 decades. The conference serves IT security specialists with both basic and advanced security training from world-class educators drawn from the entire mainframe security community, and provides networking opportunities for all participants. Participants receive hands-on training that enables them to implement secure business processes and thwart malicious attacks and breaches.

Scholarship recipients will gain insights into the latest regulations and industry developments that impact their day-to-day business practices, receive certification, and earn CPE credits. The scholarships include the cost of the 3-day event, conference meals, airfare, and hotel accommodations.

To qualify as a candidate, the individual must have previously worked in the security field at a company that uses IBM mainframes; and provide the names and contact information of their past supervisor or manager. Candidates will be verified and qualified entrants will be chosen at the discretion of Vanguard Integrity Professionals and ACT-1 Group. Scholarship entrants must fill out an entry form on the conference web site. More details are provided on the web site at http://www.go2vanguard.com/vsec2010scholarship.php.

The conference will be held April 19-22, 2010, at the Flamingo in Las Vegas, Nevada.

About the ACT-1 Group

ACT-1 Group, through talent and technology, is earning a leadership role in partnering with the business community by providing forward thinking talent and resource management solutions. By leveraging the expertise of various ACT-1 Group offerings, ACT-1 clients can access the powerful potential of the today's diverse global workforce. http://www.act1group.com/

About Vanguard Integrity Professionals

Vanguard Integrity Professionals provides enterprise security software and services that solve complex security and regulatory compliance challenges for government agencies and corporations around the world. For more information, visit http://www.go2vanguard.com/.

Legal

Vanguard Security 2010 is a trademark of Vanguard Integrity Professionals, Inc. IBM is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Gartner is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. Any other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

SOURCE ACT-1 Group