Peter Guerra, a current student in the Master of Business Administration program at Loyola College in Maryland’s Sellinger School of Business and Management, will present at this year’s Black Hat USA, a national digital security conference. Microsoft, Cisco, Qualys and RSA are among the many companies sponsoring the annual conference, which takes place this year from Saturday, July 25 - Thursday, July 30, in Las Vegas, Nev. 

The conference will begin with a keynote address by Robert Lentz, chief security officer of the U.S. Department of Defense, and include a series of training sessions and briefings where experts present research on the latest topics in information technology and security.

During one of the briefings, Guerra will present a paper written for one of his graduate economics classes at Loyola. The paper explores the impact the current worldwide economic crisis has had on cybercrime and on security professionals, uses economic theory to link cybercrime activity to emerging markets countries, and explains how the CAN-SPAM act created economic incentives for an increase in botnets, spam, malware and phishing attacks.

Guerra, who is currently a security consultant to government and commercial organizations, enrolled in Loyola’s MBA program last year. His professional background is in information technology, focusing on cyber crime, malicious code analysis, incident response, Web application hacking and other security operations. He enrolled in Loyola’s MBA program to explore the relationship between economics and information security and how to frame security problems within a business context.