NOVI ? The Detroit IT Security Summit, which used to be hosted by Digital Detroit, this year was hosted by IT Harvest, an events company that had the blessing of Digital Detroit to host the one-day event Oct. 6 at the Sheraton Novi.

Richard Stiennon, who spoke at the previous two Digital Detroit Security Summits, produced the event along with his wife, Karen Ethier. Stiennon has been involved in Security events through IT think tank Gartner Group.

When Sloan Ventures sold its Indigo Securities start up a year ago, the Venture Capital group decided not to continue backing the Digital Detroit Security Summit. The tech networking group created by Sloan Ventures, Digital Detroit, has also been phased out with Rich and Jeff Sloan focused on developing their national Startup Nation syndicated radio show. It meant the Security Summit had no backing in 2005.

Enter IT Harvest. The name, Stiennon said, came from the concept harvesting the best from IT Security.

?Chris Cameron (from Sloan Ventures) and I talked about developing another security conference,?? Stiennon said. ?He was looking for someone to manage it. It gave Karen an opportunity to launch a security event.?

Cameron, who also was president of Digital Detroit, said Stiennon is highly regarded in the security community and presented him with a business plan to run the conference series.

?Subject to his commitment to continue to follow the production and content themes established by Digital Detroit for this series, I agreed to endorse the series in his press release and participate in the event to some degree,?? Cameron said. ?I feel it is the best possible partner we could find to continue this important conference series, and we wish Richard the best of success in continuing its legacy into the future.?

The biggest problem facing the event this year was its timing. On Thursday, when IT Harvest launches its first security conference, it will compete for an audience with the Compuware OJ.X applications development conference in downtown Detroit and the GLIMASoutheast State of Wireless event at the Tiger?s Den in Comerica Park.

The Detroit IT Security Summit panelists included:

Panel One: Financial Services Security – Avoiding the Bullseye

Panel Two: Latest Threats – What’s on the horizon?

Panel Three: Meet the Security Bloggers

Panel Four: Securing Our Infrastructure: Practical Means to Safe

Business Practices

Keynote Speakers include:

Ridgely Evers, Managing Partner, Tapit Partners

Barrett Lyon, CTO/Founder, Prolexic Technologies

Richard Stiennon, VP Threat Research, Webroot Software

For more on IT Harvest, click on IT-Harvest.Com