The number of students joining the class stopped mid-week last. We’re down to 33 students, along with myself and my teaching assistant, Roshani Ravi.

I seem destined to follow in my son’s footsteps. The first week was hard because I was trying to learn how to speak through a KN-95 mask for two hours at a time. Not until mid-week of Week #2 did UW Classroom Services help me find the cause of my laptop logging itself out about every 30 minute — for anyone else experiencing this issue, check your screensaver or battery power settings for when you are operating on battery only.

This week is off to an inauspicious start, too. Despite the fact that our first small group presented a risk review of 9/11 quite well, I found myself out of intellectual gas about a half hour early. I was quite tired from my daytime adventures with a dentist and an oral surgeon, and rushed through the presentation of the NIST information security framework rather than waiting for comments and further discussion. It’s a common enough mistake, just not one that I usually make.

I’m looking forward to class tomorrow evening. The university’s chief information security officer, Rebekah Skiver Thompson, is our guest speaker in the classroom. Last week’s speaker, Steve Charvat, took questions for a full hour, and I’ve no doubt that’s what will happen with Becky as well. She’s a great role model for women planning to specialize in Information Assurance and Cybersecurity for their Informatics degree.

We’ll have another small group report session after our guest speaker. Last week, groups looked at either Tik Tok or WeChat to understand what type of threat the government might consider each to pose, and what a possible risk mitigation strategy might look like.