Arizona Technology Summit Agenda

Jason Bickford - As a Healthcare technology senior leader Jason helps deliver exceptional technology and innovations that benefit both clinical teams and the patients that they serve for a better care experience. He currently leads the Evernorth Health Services Technology Production Support Operations team where he is focused on developing strong trusting business partnerships, systems service uptime, and preventative services for optimal care delivery.

Joe Hennessy's Bio

Joe is an accomplished CIO with more than 20 years of versatile experience in leveraging strategic business planning, project management, and infrastructure architecture. He has a proven track record of success in utilizing strong analytical thinking as well as problem-solving skills to eliminate risk, maintain operations and systems, and create high-impact solutions for all critical issues. With an in-depth knowledge of analyzing business requirements to determine technology needs combined with a strong integrity and business acumen, he is eager to master new challenges and contribute to the exponential growth of the industry.

Sobhan Paul's Bio

Sobhan is a seasoned Technology Leader with 14+ years of Industry experience with a demonstrated history of Working in Driving Innovations in Data led Digital Transformations and Platform Solutions. He is Proficiency in Technology Leadership, advisory and Key Accounts management across different domains. As a Global Leader, he has worked with clients and teams across US, UK, and India.

Shannon Wilson's Bio

Shannon is an innovative technology professional with marked success aligning technology with key business objectives to achieve bottom-line results. His diverse background spans IT leadership/management, application/software development, business operations, marketing, project management, finance, financial analysis, budgeting and sales. He is a strong team builder and coach who is effective at building confident, loyal, high-performance teams committed to quality. His responsibilities include teams as large as 100 and budgets in excess of $65 million.

Sean Azhadi's Bio

Sean is veteran in the IT industry with alomost three decades of experience in the FinTech sector. As a former CIO, he is now leading Constellation Computing which is a collaboration of experts in Cloud Computing, Satellite Communications and JPL/NASA.

Synopsis

This panel will discuss the key trends that are currently shaping the workforce. Join our speakers to hear about strategies you can employ to navigate the current environment and make your team more successful. This session will include audience Q&A.

Steve joined Arcserve as a Solution Consultant in June of 2011. Prior to joining Arcserve, Steve spent five years working as an IT Manager for a Contract Manufacturer in the biotech industry (San Diego, CA) and before that spent seven years as a Sr. Systems Engineer between two local San Diego value-added resellers. His primary focus over the past decade has been educating and enabling customers and partners on the Arcserve portfolio of data protection solutions—including backup/disaster recovery, business continuity and high availability.

Synopsis

When it comes to cyberattacks, catastrophe is just around the corner, and even data security best practices may not be good enough for today’s onslaught of evolving threats. The only way to ensure IT systems and data are safe is to use a multi-layer solution that includes anti-ransomware and other threat prevention technologies and DR for protection against data loss.

Learn how you can prevent cyberattacks and immediately restore business-critical data – no ransom required.

Tommy Phan is a Senior Solutions Engineer at Unitrends; the leader of data centre backup and disaster recovery solutions. Unitrends provides enterprise-level data protection for businesses in a single solution, allowing IT professionals to protect and quickly restore data, applications, operating systems, and hypervisors. Tommy brings 10 years of experience managing, designing and delivering enterprise software products across all verticals and businesses.

Synopsis

Ransomware attacks saw a steep increase in 2022, setting records for both the volume of attacks and the cost of damages. The emergence of Ransomware-as-a-Service and open-source tools has proliferated attacks; IDC reports one in three organizations globally fell victim in 2022. From stretched resources and budgets, to BYOD cultures and large groups of unsophisticated users, today’s hybrid workforce is an ideal target for phishing, malware and ransomware attacks.

Combating the threat of ransomware requires a multifaceted approach, with backup and disaster recovery serving as the last line of defense. In response to these rampant threats, Unitrends is more focused on securing your backup infrastructure and helping organizations recover than ever before. In this session, we will explore:

• Unitrends 5 Pillars of Ransomware Defense

• How cyber liability insurance plays a role, tips to ensure your claim is successful

• Real-world experiences in overcoming attacks

Prior to joining Arctic Wolf, Adam was the Global Head of Information Security Operations and Physical Security at Qualtrics. With deep roots in the cybersecurity space, Adam spent almost 12 years with the FBI, holding positions like SWAT Senior Team Leader and Special Agent.

Synopsis

In this exciting presentation, Adam Marrè, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of Arctic Wolf, delves into the pivotal trends and shifts in the cybersecurity landscape of 2023. Drawing from Arctic Wolf threat intelligence and other data, Adam unpacks the latest threat vectors, illuminates the evolving tactics of cyber adversaries, and sheds light on the best practices and technologies that businesses are employing to stay one step ahead. Attendees will gain invaluable insights into current cyber trends, as well as actionable strategies for fortifying their digital infrastructures. Whether you're an IT professional, business leader, or just keen on understanding the cyber threat landscape, this presentation promises to be both enlightening and empowering.

John Capello plays an instrumental role directing Nasuni’s product strategy, and can often be found working with customers and technology partners to understand their requirements and identify new use cases for Nasuni’s global file system. Before joining Nasuni, John was Vice President of Product at fast growing startups Abuzz (acquired by The New York Times) and Tabblo (acquired by Hewlett-Packard). He also served as a general manager for The New York Times Digital and as a consultant for McKinsey and Company.

Synopsis

Ransomware continues to be an existential threat for many organizations. Bad actors employ increasingly innovative approaches to breach systems and wreak havoc. But a new class of tools for storing and protecting unstructured data can thwart attacks at any scale by focusing on one metric: mean time to recovery. Attend this session to learn how a combination of software-defined storage and object storage technologies can restore petabytes of data in minutes.

Steven brings over 13 years of industry experience, serving many roles across network, security and data center within support and architecture.

Synopsis

While data center networking has adapted over the past decade to address the volume and velocity of emerging application architectures, security and services architectures have not kept up with the explosion of East/West traffic. These services have all been different appliances or VMs bolted onto the fabric leading to complexity, different vendors to manage, and network chokepoints. With Aruba CX10000, an AMD Pensando powered Data Center Switch, we can run stateful services such as firewall, telemetry and encryption delivered at wire-rate on every port in the data center. In this session we will explore how we can use this new technology to solve some of the biggest challenges in East/West such a micro-segmentation, scale, performance, visibility, and automation.

Stuart has been with SentinelOne for almost 4 years. He has a background in sales and security engineer. Stuart is an engaging speaker addressing ever changing technologies to serve the network security market.

Synopsis

Introducing Singularity™ Cloud. AI-Powered Security to Prevent Threats, Reduce Risk and Protect Your Business

Mike Manrod, MSISE, CCSBA, CSSBB, CISSP, Chief Information Security Officer--Mike presently serves as the Chief Information Security Officer for Grand Canyon Education, responsible for leading the security team and formulating the vision and strategy for protecting students, staff and information assets across the enterprise. Previous experiences include serving as a threat prevention expert for Check Point and working as a consultant and analyst for other large enterprise customers. He is also a co-author/contributor for the joint book project, Understanding New Security Threats published by Routledge in 2019. When not exploring the implications of the rapidly evolving threat landscape or the convergence between cognitive psychology and machine learning, he spends time playing video games with his kids, practicing martial arts and cooking.

Speaker's Bio

Matt Clark is a seasoned IT professional with 20+ years of experience that's fueled by a passion for security. Currently, Matt is a Sr. Solutions Engineer with Netskope serving state, local government and higher education. As a trusted advisor Matt enjoys assisting organizations with adopting & integrating cloud based security strategies helping organizations transform their architectures. Matt has held consultative roles with Palo Alto Networks, Tenable and FishNet Security focused on helping fortune 300 companies increase their security posture, reduce risk and maintain compliance while securely enabling business. Prior to taking a consultative role Matt worked for county and judicial government managing and leading teams to successfully complete projects in various technologies such as security, networking, virtualization, identity, storage, databases, web and support/operations. Matt is the past President and a founding member of the Cloud Security Alliance Southwest Chapter and helped found the Las Vegas Chapter. Previously Matt served as interim President for Phoenix ISSA and on the Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA) member board. Additionally, Matt has presented at several industry events and conferences such as BlackHat USA, Identiverse, Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC2) and Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Summit.

Synopsis

Amidst the rapid rise of generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, we face one of the most precarious times in history for formulating business and technology strategies. While there are a broad range of security considerations and risks, it is also essential for organizations to continue the forward march of progress, if they want to avoid being left behind. This talk will examine the problems and opportunities, examining ways to maximize the benefits of AI, while maintaining a careful hedge against the most likely pitfalls.

With over 24 years of sales and account management experience in the hardware and software technology sector, Mark provides both leadership and channel sales expertise to StorageCraft. He was the first sales rep hired at StorageCraft over 10 years ago and continues to lead and drive its success. Prior to joining StorageCraft, Mark was involved in various leadership, account management, channel development and sales roles at companies such as Ingram Micro, 3Com Corporation, NextPage and Parvus Corporation. Specializing in company growth and profitability he is skilled in technology related hardware and software systems, solutions and applications and is known for excellent leadership, customer service, and training skills.

Synopsis

Managing storage continues to be complex, and often expensive. Something needs to change, and it certainly won't be a dramatic increase in staffing. Fortunately, object storage is the answer. By eliminating the use of legacy RAID, object storage, can be the foundation for a scale-out converged storage solution that solves both data protection and primary storage challenges. Want to recover a multi-TB VM in less than a second? No problem. Want to protect files from ransomware? No problem. Need an enterprise file serving, archiving, or virtual server storage solution? No Problem. Attend this session to learn how object storage is changing the landscape for IT admin and the technology of the future.

A 25-year veteran in Information Technology, Gabe currently serves as the Global Head of Information Technology for Nikola Motor Company. The mission of Nikola Motor Company: "It's not supposed to be easy to solve a global problem. You have to do whatever it takes." Nikola is pioneering solutions for a zero-emissions world. Prior to joining Nikola, Gabe spent ~18 years at a sourcing and procurement software company based in Phoenix and headquartered in the UK where is served as the Chief Technology Officer. Proactis developed tools that enable large organizations to optimize their procurement processes by saving time and money on goods and services. Prior to joining Proactis, Gabe was with the largest search engine provider of the 90’s, Northern Light Technology. He served in many technical roles including customer project branding, new product development, and Digital VMS administration. Gabe received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Wentworth Institute of Technology, a nationally-ranked engineering college located in downtown Boston. In his free time, Gabe loves spending time traveling with his amazing wife and 3 wonderful children.

Synopsis

*This roundtable is for attendees with VIP badges ONLY.* The Moderator will introduce and begin discussion on the topic. This session is intended for audience participation so be ready to discuss, receive valuable information, and connect with others for further discussion

Christi is Insight’s acclaimed Sr. Manager of Services who has been in the IT industry for over 20 years. She runs a team dedicated to supporting North American clients in the Lifecycle of their devices. From procurement to warehousing, integration, deployment, maintenance as well as disposition, her team supports client conversations, assists with scope and price as well as writing Statements of Work. Christi's goal is to help clients manage today as they transform the future.

Synopsis

Future-proofing device deployment and manageability is critical to business success. Organizations need enhanced device lifecycle solutions that support their business footprint, accommodate any device, provide next gen supply chain capabilities and improve asset management to assist hybrid work models. Join Joseph Flynn, Director of Services at Insight, to discuss the necessity of Device Lifecycle Services in the modern workplace. Insight's purpose is to build meaningful connections to help businesses run smarter.

Ron Davis is a 19 year veteran of the WiFi/Wireless industry, with a passion for WiFi and the customers and partners he works with. He has a background in channel sales, territory sales, major account management, and sales leadership.

Michael Rutigliano's Bio

Mike Rutigliano is a Systems Engineer for Cradlepoint covering the Commercial and SLED Western Territories (Arizona, and Nevada). Mike joined Cradlepoint in May of 2021. Mike started in the field in 1982, and is a veteran within the IT and Communications industry, leveraging his 40 years of experiences in Engineering, Technical Sales, and IT Management. He has held System Engineering positions with Extreme Networks, Cisco Systems, Shortel, Foundry Networks, and International Telecommunications Systems (subsidiary of SITA). As an end user, Mike has held Engineering positions with Goldman Sachs, and Chase Manhattan. Mike also has worked in IT Management as a Director of Telecommunications for PCS Health Systems (known now as a division of Aetna/CVS). I currently reside in Cave Creek Arizona, and in my spare time, I enjoy weightlifting, cooking and music (keyboard player for an amateur band called Wysdomb).

Synopsis

Today’s business environment is complex — hybrid workforces, disrupted supply chains, changing physical infrastructures. Dependable network connectivity that extends both within and outside the enterprise is essential to enable the new future of work.
Join our breakout session and be entered to win X and learn about the benefits of integrating 5G Wireless WAN (WWAN) into your existing critical network infrastructure that will enable you to:
• Leverage the latest technologies (Wi-Fi 6, SD-WAN, Artificial Intelligence, 5G).
• Provide diversification of connection provider, failover, and enhanced resiliency.
• Shorten time for connectivity delivery for pop up locations
• Extend from the LAN and the WAN to the WWAN (in development).

Mr. McClarty is an accomplished senior executive with extensive experience in information technology and computer networking. He has a proven track record in relationship building, vendor management, network operations, and colocation and data center administration, along with project methodology and processes, both on strategic and tactical levels. He has been instrumental in transforming startup organizations into highly successful and profitable corporations while maintaining high client satisfaction levels. His strong management and leadership skills are complemented by his ability to motivate and engage all levels of an organization to maximize productivity and drive positive results. He is an excellent communicator who puts a special emphasis on building solid vendor, client, and employee relationships. Mr. McClarty holds an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management, and an MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management. He also holds a BS in information technology and a BS in electronics engineering technology, both from DeVry Institute of Technology and Masters from ASU in MS-ISM with a focus on Big Data and Analytics.

Synopsis

In a rapidly evolving IT landscape, enterprises continually seek ways to harness the power and flexibility of the cloud while keeping performance, reliability, and cost efficiency in check. However, cloud sprawl, lack of compliance, suboptimal performance, security concerns, and lack of visibility keep fueling cloud repatriation. Modern organizations need hybrid cloud-ready alternatives that are simple to integrate and implement but offer advanced performance, security, and scalability at a lower, transparent price. During the presentation, Ian McClarty, the President of phoenixNAP will go through the strengths and weaknesses of the hyperscale public cloud landscape. He will present the revolutionary Cloud-Smart Infrastructure approach and present cutting-edge alternative cloud solutions built to help organizations get the most out of cloud computing.

For more than 20 years, Grant Asplund has been sharing his insights on how businesses can best protect themselves from sophisticated cyber-attacks in an increasingly complex world. As Check Point’s chief evangelist, he travels the world enthralling audiences with his passionate and relational storytelling at conferences like RSA and Next100 CIOs and numerous media interviews. Grant’s wide range of cyber security experience informs his talks, having served in diverse roles ranging from sales, marketing, business development, and senior management for Dome 9, Blue Coat Systems, Neustar, and Altor Networks. As CEO of MetaInfo, he led its acquisition by Neustar. Grant is the host of the CISO Secrets podcast (cp.buzzsprout.com) and the Talking Cloud Podcast (www.talkingcloudpodcast.com) on Cloud security.

Synopsis

Today, more than any other time in history, we are digitally connected. And, with a continuous rise in mobile related attacks, and an ever-increasing use of mobile devices to perform business tasks, protecting your organization from Mobile threats is more critical than ever. And, despite our best efforts, threats and breaches continue to increase. Join Grant Asplund for this insightful presentation to learn about the latest mobile and user protection including Check Point’s Harmony suite for securing users and access. Today’s mobile security needs to prevent the download of malicious files to mobile devices, not just from the web and email but also collaboration tools like Teams and Slack and others. Learn out how you can achieve 99.7% efficacy against zero-day threats across your entire enterprise leveraging ThreatCloud, an industry leading threat intelligence solution.

Tim is a CISSP Certified Security Expert with 25+ years of directing IT and Cybersecurity strategies, building system roadmaps, and leading support and implementation projects; helping to strengthen security for organizations of all sizes.

Synopsis

Join One Step Secure IT’s security expert to assess the security of your business during this interactive presentation designed for business professionals who are committed to safeguarding their company from cyber threats. Discover effective strategies to enhance your business security and fortify it against cyber attacks. Learn the significance of an Incident Response Plan and how it can save your business following a data breach. Don't miss this opportunity, register today to take One Step toward a more secure future for your company. Register Now!

Steve is the Cybersecurity Evangelist for Acronis and honed his skills for over 25 years as a cybersecurity expert at PatchLink, McAfee, BeyondTrust and other technology companies. Mr. Brining holds a Masters in Business Administration in E-Business and Masters in Science in Technology and Innovation Management with specialization in Cybersecurity and is a Commanding Officer in the Arizona Army National Guard.

Synopsis

A practical workshop on making your business or government organization more cyber resilient Do you have a documented, rehearsed response plan for a cyberattack like ransomware? You should: ransomware is still the malware tool of choice for cybercriminals to enrich themselves by threatening businesses and government institutions with data loss and downtime. The average cost of a data breach is $5 million per incident in 2023, and cybercriminals now generate 9 million new malware instances every month. Even worse, they are now using generative AI tools like ChatGPT to improve attack effectiveness. This presentation will guide you beyond just ransomware preparedness, encompassing a broader spectrum of potential threats.
Led by Acronis cybersecurity evangelist and Arizona Army National Guard Warrant Officer CW3 Steve Brining, this session will provide guidance on formulating an effective incident response strategy. Discover how to fortify your defense mechanisms, refine processes, and bolster your mitigation and recovery initiatives.
Attendees will leave the session with:
• An update on the 2023 cyberthreat environment
• A 12-step checklist for building a ransomware defense and recovery strategy
• The roadmap for building your own Incident Response Plan

Jason Anderson is based in the Denver area and supports HPE Aruba Networking’s channel team and channel partners regarding its SD-WAN and Cloud Security (SASE) portfolio. He has been with Silver Peak and now HPE Aruba Networking for seven years covering SD-WAN and now SASE.

Synopsis

Are you grappling with a network that’s difficult to manage and protect? Are you struggling with high operating costs, poor user experience, and too many management tools? Discover the advantages of SD-WAN and SSE combined into one easy-to-implement solution.

Alan Kerr has over 25 years of enterprise experience serving as lead visionary, advisor and designer of IT strategy for companies in the Forbes Global 2000 across continents. Mr. Kerr advises companies that are leaders in their industrial sectors such as Insurance, Finance, Defense, Manufacturing, Hospitality and Healthcare. Topics that he frequently assists organizations with are such things as data protection, data and system availability, fault tolerance, business continuity and extreme performance. Mr. Kerr speaks at conferences around the globe most recently for Microsoft in Asia.

Synopsis

In this session, Alan Kerr, senior solutions architect of Stable Path, discusses how public and private organizations are using software-defined storage (SDS) to integrate data protection strategies into their existing storage environments to protect against ransomware, cyber attacks, and other availability threats. Learn how you can leverage your heterogenous storage environment while unifying data protection through easy-to-use, single-pane-of-glass management that extends over dissimilar storage platforms across both production and disaster recovery systems.

Jim West possesses over 28 years’ experience in the Information Technology field with over 18 years focused within Cyber Security. He has worked in the IT and Security industry across many sectors of commercial, space, federal, and defense with expertise in Biometrics, Risk Management, Security Analysis, and Network and Systems Auditing. Jim holds multiple certifications which include; CISSP-ISSEP, ISSMP, CAP, GSLC, GCIH, GSNA, GCWN, G2700, PMP, CIPP, C-CISO, CEH, and many others.

Jim has been invited to speak at Cyber Security conferences and events worldwide to include the NSA IA Symposium, Texas Technology Summit, CSfC Tech Day, TechNet Korea, TechNet Pacific, Cyber Bowl, Best Cyber Ranger, and many others. He was shortlisted as a finalist for Personality of the Year for the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Cyber Security Awards. Jim is also an Award Winning author and writer. Recently Jim’s “Cyber Security and Test Tips” ebook placed in the 100 Best Cyber Security Books of All Time list by Bookauthority.org.

Jim specializes in Cybersecurity strategy and solutions that solve complex problems for National Security systems and networks to include systems and software integration, enterprise-wide and cloud security, network engineering, penetration testing, and more.

Synopsis

Quantum Computing is soon to become a major advancement for the world, but with this huge step forward in compute power comes a real and serious threat to security for everyone. Cyber Security Expert, Jim West, explains the threats that both commercial and government sectors face in our near future where Quantum Computing will be able to easily undermine the fundamental security safeguards we utilize to protect communications and data, as well as, the efforts and programs in place today to counter this threat."

Julian Quintana has over 20 years in information security, vulnerability management, architecture, risk assessments, and security operations with a focus on application security. He has a strong ability to communicate security and risk-related concepts to technical and nontechnical audiences. Proficient at driving customer security awareness programs.Before joining Fastly, Julian was Security Practice Director at EVOTEK where he was responsible for building comprehensive information security architecture solutions, to protect customer’s data and intellectual property.

Synopsis

The threat landscape is continuing to expand and diversify as organizations move to a multi-cloud environment. CISOs need to ensure that their DevSecOps capabilities are incorporated within their overall business strategy to guarantee that their cloud applications and code can remain secure.

Jeff brings more than 30 years of hands-on cybersecurity intelligence and cybersecurity operations experience including engagements with the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy (DOE), and NASA. More recently Jeff has served as CISO at Blue Team Alpha, where he educated customers on the current threat landscape and served as an advocate for the need of a strong cybersecurity practice. Jeff serves as Lumu’s CTO where he helps the company raise awareness about the Continuous Compromise Assessment concept and advises organizations of all sizes on how to optimize their cybersecurity operations in today’s challenging cyberthreat landscape.

Synopsis

Threat hunting is one of the most important pieces of an effective cybersecurity program. However, it can be challenging due to network complexity, limited visibility, an evolving threat landscape and limited resources. Join Lumu's Jeff Wheat to learn: The different types of threat hunting practices Requirements for an effective threat hunting effort Key steps to develop an effective, yet simple threat hunting practice.

Mark is an experienced software and SaaS product and marketing leader who has driven revenue growth at several technology companies, including Trinet, Liongard and ConnectWise. His focus is evangelizing, positioning and creating awareness for CyberFOX. He is known as a creative, pragmatic leader who can find great talent and then develop them into high-performing teams.

Synopsis

As the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve, protecting organizations from daily cyber threats is becoming increasingly difficult. According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report, over 90% of successful Windows breaches occur due to users having privileged access. To avoid being included in this year's report, it's important to take a major step in cybersecurity planning by removing local Admin rights from end-users. However, this can be challenging as it may result in end-users becoming frustrated when they need to request updates. CyberFOX Senior Sales Engineer, Bill Morgan, provides a solution called "The Best of Both Worlds", which aims to increase security while reducing end-user frustration. Learn more about this solution and how it can help you protect your organization from cyber threats.

John McGloughlin is the Founder of GuardSight, Inc., an Iron Bow Technologies company and specialized cybersecurity-as-a-service provider. GuardSight supplies managed threat detection and response and other tactical cybersecurity services. GuardSight helps businesses protect their critical assets, data, and reputation against sophisticated and dangerous cyber attacks. John (a.k.a. johnmac) is the Mission owner at GuardSight with thirty-plus years of experience in many areas of technology and information security, including network engineering, software development, systems administration, vulnerability management, intelligence management, cybersecurity operations, and incident response. Johnmac is a CISSP, co-author of a Cyber Security Analytics Architecture patent, Marine Corps Cyber Auxiliary (Cyber Aux) civilian volunteer, member of the Industry Advisory Board for Southern Utah University (SUU), Occupational Advisory Committee member of Southwest Technical College, Made In Southern Utah (MISU) member, National Child Protection Task Force (NCPTF) volunteer and Cybersecurity Advisor, Utah volunteer wildland firefighter, InfraGard member, Infrastructure Liaison Officer (ILO), certified Range Safety Officer (RSO), certified in Range Development and Operations (RDO) and starts his day with a 0600 roll at Patriot Jiu-Jitsu in beautiful Parowan, Utah.

Synopsis

Playbook Battle Cards (PBCs) provide free, open-source recipes for preparing and applying countermeasures against cyber threats and attacks. PBCs are a prescriptive approach to combat various Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP) deployed by cyber threat actors. They serve as a practical model for responding quickly and efficiently to a successful compromise, primarily when the fog of an attack is at its thickest. Learn how highly functional Cybersecurity Operations (SECOPS) and Incident Response (IR) teams use PBCs and adjacent standards to convert chaos into order during a cyber battle.

Franz Chavez serves as the Vice President of Solutions Engineering for Comcast Business | Masergy. A member of the Masergy Solutions Engineering Team since 2010, Franz brings more than four decades of technology experience, with the last 32 years focused on networking and systems infrastructure engineering. Prior to joining Masergy, Franz held Engineering and Leadership roles at companies small and large, within IT, Manufacturing and Service Provider organizations.

Chris Dunkeson's Bio

Chris serves as the Area Vice President for the Mountain West Region. He oversees all Comcast operations across Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico and Utah. Chris joined Comcast in 1993 as a service technician in Albuquerque. Since that time, he has held various positions including Online General Manager for the Southwest Area, Director of Operations for Northern New Mexico, Vice President and General Manager for Central and Northern New Mexico, and Southwest Area Director of Public Relations and Government Affairs. In addition to his enthusiasm for cable, Chris enjoys giving back by volunteering in the community. He serves on the board of directors for the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and University of New Mexico Anderson School of Business Deans Council. He is a past president of the Southwest Cable Communications Association. Chris is a member of the Leadership Albuquerque Alumni Association and has actively supported the United Way of Central New Mexico. Chris was recognized as a Top CEO by Albuquerque Business First in 2014. In 2017, he was inducted into the Cable TV Pioneers Class of 2017. He participated in the Honorary Base Commander program at Kirtland Air Force Base from 2008 to 2015. Chris received a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of New Mexico and a master’s degree from Jones International University in Business Administration.

Leigh Branston's Bio

Leigh serves as the Sr. Director of operations and the General Manger for Comcast in Arizona. Leigh has been with Comcast for 16 years and has held various leadership positions such as: engineering, finance, and network/field operations. Leigh also serves on the board of directors for the Marana Chamber of Commerce, Boys & Girls Clubs of Tucson, and the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers. Leigh lives in southern Arizona with his wife and their two daughters. Leigh enjoys being outside cycling, hiking and fishing.

Jason Tirell's Bio

Jason Tirrell is a tenure sales leader with more than a 25-year career. Jason serves as the Director of Enterprise Sales at Comcast Business leading the charge in Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, driving new business and revenue growth through solution-focused strategies. His journey has included diverse roles like Senior Sales Engineering Manager and Enterprise Sr. Sales Engineer, highlighting his ability to navigate complex technical solutions and deliver impactful results. Jason’s track record reflects a results-driven approach, coupled with creativity and self-motivation to achieve ambitious goals. Jason received a BS in Business Management from Utah Valley University.

Synopsis

Adaptive networking is a collection of tools and technologies—hybrid networking, SD-WAN, flexible bandwidth and network virtualization—that deliver heightened network performance, flexibility and security.

Michael Soule focuses on product development and innovation for public cloud technologies with Sentinel Technologies, a nationwide managed services provider. He has worked with millions of identities consulting with clients on identity governance and administration.

Synopsis

Identity is critical to modern cyber security practices. However, identity practices are far from modern and are arguably not secure. Brace yourself for eye-opening insights as we explore the challenges faced by many in adopting modern and secure identity practices. Get ready to improve your security practices with practical and actionable guidance.

Blair has 30+ years of IT cybersecurity sales, channel, marketing and business development experience starting as Symantec’s 1st Canadian employee. Blair continuously expanded his cybersecurity and cryptographic expertise with several start-ups including Chrysalis-ITS (Thales), InfoSec Global, Titus, Crypto4A and since September 2019, re-joined his data protection colleagues within Thales’ Global Technology Alliances team, including management of the Post-Quantum cryptography portfolio. He is an avid presenter, start-up consultant and IT industry contributor. Blair holds an Hons.BA from the University of Waterloo, and Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada.

Synopsis

Join Thales as we describe how the present and future state of the PQC market, and how the active collaboration between industry, customers and trusted SME’s are developing and providing PQC-readiness and solutions within the PKI, code-signing and browser markets in 2023.

Sean brings more than 18 years of information security and IT experience to his role at Netskope. Prior to Netskope, Cordero served as Senior Executive Director, oCISO, at Optiv, where he provided executive-level advisement to the company’s Fortune 100 clients. Cordero has been a key driver in the cloud adoption space; since 2011 he has led creation of the industry standard control framework for cloud security, the Cloud Security Alliance’s (CSA) Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM). For his contributions to cloud security and adoption, the CSA awarded him the 2013 Ron Knode Service Award for North America and he was inducted in 2016 by the CSA as an Inaugural Research Fellow.

Synopsis

The cloud has changed how we do business, making work more intuitive, connected, open, and collaborative. This change has presented new security risks, unlike what enterprises have seen before. As enterprises continue to adopt new clouds, with or without the involvement of IT and Security, new ways of defending, responding to, and technical control capabilities are required to succeed in this new reality. In this talk, practitioners will hear from Cloud industry leader, Sean Cordero, who will provide tips, lessons learned, and recommendations on how to defend from these new vectors of attack and share the lessons learned from defending some of the largest public and private organizations in the world. Attendees will learn: 1. Common challenges & cloud sourced risks facing organizations in a cloud-first world and how to address them. 2. Technological innovations which have enabled large enterprises to securely adopt cloud services while protecting their core data assets. 3. Real-world examples of modern attacks used to damage public and private organizations which leverage the cloud.

Mike serves as the Chief Information Security Officer for Grand Canyon Education, responsible for leading the security team and formulating the vision and strategy for protecting students, staff and information assets across the enterprise. Previous experiences include serving as a threat prevention engineer for Check Point and working as a consultant and analyst for other organizations.

He is also a co-author/contributor for the joint book project, Understanding New Security Threats published by Routledge in 2019, along with several articles. When not working, he spends time playing video games and doing random projects with his kids.

Synopsis

*This roundtable is for attendees with VIP badges ONLY.* While the hype-cycle for AI continues to spiral out of control, behind the pandemonium is a long list of important decisions that we all need to make. In this conversation, we will look beyond the hype to the practical and actionable topics we all need to consider, as security and technology leaders, during the rise of generative AI. The Moderator will introduce and begin discussion on the topic. This session is intended for audience participation so be ready to discuss, receive valuable information, and connect with others for further discussion.

Leveraging over a decade of experience in Information Technology, Wayne founded Stellar in 2014 with a clear mission: to enhance customer service in the IT sector while serving as a reliable partner to organizations of all sizes. Now in his role as CEO, and building on his prior experience as CTO, Wayne is focused on transforming Stellar into a leader in Cloud and Cybersecurity services.

Synopsis

In "Be the Hunter, Not the Hunted: Proactive Security Strategies," we delve into integrating vulnerability management and threat detection for enhanced cybersecurity. Learn to actively hunt threats across the ATT&CK Chain, prioritize exposed risks, and reduce your attack surface for effective defense against a wide range of attacks.

Shane Scholes is a Senior Public Sector Solutions Architect at Elastic. Currently, he supports the Government and Education Sector across the Western U.S. Shane joined Elastic with over 15 years working in the security space in both private and public sectors. Shane has a passion for technology and connecting with customers to solve unique business needs.

Synopsis

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) is a hot topic in government. But because publically available GAI applications have been trained on public information, their relevance to your specific goals is inherently limited. To drive truly relevant and meaningful outcomes for your citizens, you need to combine your own data with GAI. Elasticsearch serves as a bridge to your private data and large language models (LLMs) by adding mission-critical context. When you combine Elasticsearch, your proprietary data, and GAI, you can generate answers that are accurate, relevant, actionable, and secure. Those answers can shape better citizen experiences, increase employee productivity, and more.

A Solutions Architect and Systems Engineer with over 23 years of experience in the IT industry. The last 8 years have been focused around helping customers design data platform solutions that include primary workloads, secondary file, DR, and data security. Prior years were focused on datacenter and infrastructure operations.

Synopsis

Ransomware attacks are increasingly sophisticated and costly, while their velocity is increasing. The average cost of rectifying an attack is over $1.85 million (without paying the ransom). Can you risk not strengthening your organization’s cyber resiliency?
Join Cohesity's Mike Bottomley where he will share best practices to help empower your organization against ransomware attacks.

Donovan Brady is the Director of Solutions Architecture at Logicworks, A Cox Company. We are a Premier Cloud Services Provider specializing in designing, building, and operating mission-critical workloads within the AWS and Azure cloud platforms. Donovan has helped numerous customers achieve success in the cloud during his nine year tenure at Logicworks, and has designed architectures for some of the largest organizations in the world. As an avid advocate for cloud education and knowledge sharing, Donovan is also an accomplished public speaker and has presented at various tech conferences, including renowned cloud conventions. When not speaking at industry events, Donovan shares his insights and experiences through various publications and online forums including podcasts and webinars.

Synopsis

The Cloud is not another datacenter to host your IT estate - it’s a platform to transform and grow your business. However, if you aren’t utilizing its capabilities to the fullest, you may never realize your business’ true potential. Join us to learn how to do cloud the right way! During this presentation, you will learn the importance of a Well-Architected environment and where most organizations stumble in their cloud adoption journey, identify ways in which you can measure the success of your migration, and discover how to implement modern solutions to increase agility and decrease costs.

Connor Scheffler is a Cyber Security Specialist at Darktrace, a global leader in cyber security artificial intelligence that employs over 2,100 people around the world and protects over 7,700 organizations globally from advanced cyber threats using complete AI-powered solutions. Connor started with Darktrace in January 2022, winning Rookie of the Year within his first year. He studied at the University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire.

Synopsis

In the face of skyrocketing cyber risk, detecting and responding to attacks is no longer enough. Organizations must take proactive steps to prevent threats before they happen, and to recover if compromised. In this session, Darktrace unveil an ambitious new approach to security, with core engines powering AI technologies to prevent, detect, respond, and ultimately heal from attacks. Together, these engines combine to strengthen organizations’ security posture in a virtuous AI feedback ‘loop,’ which provides powerful end-to-end, bespoke, and self-learning solutions unique to each organization.

Sr. Account Executive for Extreme Networks. Jerry is a U.S Army Veteran. He has been with Extreme Networks for ten years. Before Extreme he was the Director of Technology in the Tennessee Education system for sixteen years. Jerry is best known for helping design secure networks across the United States and western Canada. He trains technology teams to use the network to its full potential while reducing down time and producing quicker response times.

Shawn Mall's Bio

Solutions Engineer at Extreme Networks with 23 years of experience helping network, security and cloud teams build unified solutions that also make their jobs easier. Shawn has an extensive background in on-prem and cloud networking, as well as network security. Shawn uses that experience to assist teams in adopting more efficient ways to meet their business goals.

Synopsis

Who is Extreme Networks and where we are along wth going through ZTNA and how to secure your environments.

Tim is an Enterprise Security Engineer with Tenable supporting North American Enterprise Accounts. He is a Certified Information System Security Professional and holds his MBA in Executive Leadership from the Ohio University. Tim has spent over 12 years in IT, focusing in data security and information risk management. Over the course of his tenure Tim has focused his efforts in, helping Fortune 100 companies build and mature their vulnerability management programs. Please help me welcome Tim Oroszi (or a zee)

Synopsis

Join us as we take a deeper dive into Active directory and walk through common attack paths and exploits that lie deep within your network! Uncover the skeletons in the closet and understand how attackers leverage AD as a means by which to elevate privileges, persist access and evade detection from even the most advanced AV/EDR and SIEM defenses.

Brian Johnson is an experienced Executive, Advisor Investor and Board Member with 30 yrs of leading successful change, profit producing business results, and thoroughly enjoying the journey of building teams and careers for others in Tech and Cyber Security industry. Demonstrated history working in the FinTech, Global Financial and Technology industries. Skilled in Executive Leadership, Emerging Technologies, M&A and Venture Advisory, Computer Security, Information Security Management, Strategic Planning. Business development and management education BS Business Management and MBA (Dec ‘23) University of Phoenix, studies at Arizona State University and Baylor University.

Synopsis

What's on the minds of Arizona's IT & Security leaders? Brian Johnson will moderate a discussion with our panel of executives from across multiple industry segments. Come and hear what their top priorities are heading into 2024. They will also share their insights on the latest industry trends. This session will include audiance Q&A so come ready to learn & engage with the speakers.

Jitesh is a Senior Solutions Architect with Palot Alto Networks. He graduated With MS in Computer Networks & Network Security from San Jose State University.

Madhuresh Anur's Bio

Madhuresh is a Senior Product Manager with Palo Alto Networks. He has been with Palo Alto for almost 8 years.

Synopsis

Your IT, DevOps and security teams are working as hard as possible, but attackers are watching and waiting for a single mistake to exploit. When teams are overextended and development cycles are rushed, cloud management procedures and crucial gaps get overlooked.
Cortex® Xpanse™ regularly fills in incomplete risk assessments to ensure security teams can accurately answer:
• How many cloud workloads are currently live?
• Are our cloud policies being followed across every workload and cloud subscription?

This presentation will showcase how Xpanse automatically identifies and associates unknown cloud assets and allows command through Prisma® Cloud for complete cloud security and manageable policy enforcement.

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Synopsis

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Synopsis

The roles and responsibilities of the IT team have historically been well understood. However, IT of tomorrow needs to be in the driving seat for marketing, intelligence, and insights surrounding the company’s customers and markets. The future IT moves at a fast pace and uses new technologies to respond to changing customers trends/needs quickly – while relying on solid, foundational IT. The evolution of digital technologies enables IT insights and new engagements models, new services, and new products.

Rob Allen, Chief Product Officer of ThreatLocker, is an IT Professional with almost two decades of experience assisting small and medium enterprises embrace and utilize technology. He has spent the majority of this time working for an Irish-based MSP, which has given him invaluable insights into the challenges faced by MSP’s and their customers today. Rob’s background is technical - first as a system administrator, then as a technician and an engineer. His broad technical knowledge, as well as an innate understanding of customers’ needs, made him a trusted advisor for hundreds of businesses across a wide variety of industries. Rob has been at the coalface, assisting clients in remediating the effects of, and helping them recover from cyber and ransomware attacks.

Synopsis

Risk of data loss and operational disruption can stem from more than the ransomware in news headlines. Join Director of ThreatLocker’s Chief Product Officer Rob Allen for a live hacking demonstration of a Rubber Ducky and exploration on methods of control to minimize data exfiltration.

Jason Graun is the Sales Engineering Director for the Fortinet EDR/XDR team. He brings over 20 years of experience in information security and has spent 7 years at Fortinet. He regularly speaks at industry events, CIO/CISO summits and works closely with IT executives to understand the business challenges they face in securing assets across an ever increasingly mobile workforce. Jason’s focus is to find ways technology can solve the biggest challenges in information security, he also holds a patent on cloud security malware inspection methods.

Synopsis

Organized threat actors continue to be the most dangerous risk in Cybersecurity. The tactics used to get into endpoints are constantly evolving in sophistication and scale. In this session we will discuss industry trends/challenges, as well as walk through the tactics, techniques, and procedures used by threat actor groups by using a known active group as an example. We will also discuss practical real-world situations and how to defend against them using a unique approach to stopping ransomware before it becomes an active breach.

With 12+ years of experience in IT and cloud solutions, Simon has held many roles from engineering and solutions architecture to sales and business development. Simon was with a financial technology firm focused on high-frequency trading systems and networks prior to joining NASA JPL to work on systems architecture and engineering. Previously, he was responsible for managing the Cloud Platform practice, and has led the company to win Google Cloud Sales Partner of the Year for 5 years running. As a Google Cloud Qualified Developer, today Simon helps guide SADA and their customers through the rapidly-expanding AI and ML space.

Synopsis

Google's generative AI tools can help organizations extract key metrics and insights from complex, unstructured data such as phone transcripts. This talk will discuss how these tools can be used to identify trends, patterns, and relationships in data that would be difficult or impossible to identify manually.

Philip Campeau is the Global Systems Engineering Manager at WireX Systems. He has been in the computer industry for over 25 years, specializing in computer security for the last 20. He has helped design and implement networks and security solutions for some of the largest computer networks in the world. For the 12 years, he has worked with emerging security technology companies such as Imperva and WireX Systems, to name a few, to introduce next-generation products and help companies recognize value and enable their security team to get the best return on their investment. .

Synopsis

Empowering Tomorrow's Cybersecurity Today:
Elevate Your Network's Defense with WireX Systems. Join Us to see the AI 'Morpheus' Framework for Advanced Detection, Unleash Automated Investigations and Transform Every Operator into a Valuable Analyst – Safeguarding the Educational Frontiers of Tomorrow!

Throughout his 29-year career in IT, Tom has served the state, local government, and education industry as a strategic advisor and enabler. He focuses on generating positive outcomes by aligning technology investments against key industry imperatives. Today, Tom serves as the Region Director for the SLED Markets at Nutanix. In this position, he leads and supports the dedicated teams serving the public sector and education institutions throughout the Southwest Central US region.

Synopsis

Today’s hybrid and multi cloud infrastructures heavily utilize virtualization, software-defined infrastructure and automation. This has provided IT teams with more efficiency and agility but has also compounded security risks. These security threats are more acute for State, local, and education agencies as they carry confidential citizen, student and state information. The agencies and institutions face the constant threat of ransomware and other destructive forms of cyberattacks. Do you have the right infrastructure and processes to improve your security posture across the kill-chain?