Canada IT & Security Leaders Forum 2024

As the digital economy continues to expand, institutions must adapt to remain competitive and relevant. This session will explore the key trends shaping the future of the digital economy and how institutions can effectively enable their digital transformation. Topics will include advancements in digital infrastructure, the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the importance of data analytics, and the shift towards digital-first business models. Experts will discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by these trends, providing practical insights on how institutions can leverage technology to enhance efficiency, innovation, and customer engagement. Attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of the strategic steps necessary to thrive in the digital economy.

Moderator: Shweta Shah, Chief Data Architect, Sunlife

Discussing traditional approaches to Risk Management and why they are less and less effective as technology gets more complex and attacks get harder to detect. Including:

• Gaining comprehensive visibility across the modern attack surface
• Anticipating threats, identifying exposures and prioritizing efforts to prevent attacks
• Communicating cyber risk up and down the organization to help make better risk decisions

Speaker: Bob Huber, Chief Security Officer, Tenable

Presented by: Tenable

Learn how to harness decentralized technologies to tranform your business. Understand how IoT & Blockchain work together to ensure security, transactional integrity, while reducing total cost of operations to near zero. During this session, you’ll engage in the process of building a Decentralized Autonomous Organization- brining the pieces together to provide a foundation to understand opportunities & risks as your organization drives to Next-Gen business.

Delve into the flaws of the traditional cybersecurity landscape and how a modern SOC should focus on outcome-based services without relying on logs or the cost and complexity of a SIEM

Presented by: LMNTRIX

We’ve seen major changes in the way that cyber-attacks, including ransomware, unfold. While the concerns and challenges are real, there is a framework to assist in enhancing your cyber-resiliency.

Join Veeam in this session to learn about:

• Recent trends for protecting your organization from malicious attacks
• Best practices to put your data in a better position mitigate and remediate against ransomware
• Lessons learned from actual ransomware attacks
• And more!
  

Presented by: Veeam

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Managing endpoint risk and compliance is more challenging today than ever before. Today’s CISOs have to manage risk from many thousands of globally distributed, heterogeneous assets, while also responding to ever increasing audit scrutiny and regulatory compliance requirements.

Join this session, Achieving the Benefits of Converged Endpoint Management, to learn more about how to:

• Identify & remediate risks that create the greatest exposure.
• Assess & measure unknown vulnerabilities.
• Maximize IT budgets and staffing during economic uncertainty.
• Enhance existing investment in strategic technology vendors.

Presented by: Tanium

Today, the primary CEO priority is growth, with technology as a key enabler. However, vendor policies pose major roadblocks to innovation, growth and competitive advantage by forcing you to spend limited budget, resources and time on projects that may not drive your business. ​Learn how you can take control of your IT roadmap by choosing a Business-Driven Roadmap designed around your business objectives and not the vendor’s. Leverage vendor software, but do it on your terms, on your timetable and with the flexibility, funding and freedom to focus on initiatives that support growth and competitive advantage.

Check back for updates on this session.

Speaker: Simon Sulyma, AVP, Information Risk Management, Manulife

Enterprises have hordes of data and many opportunities to integrate other data sources. But readying data for AI experimentation is expensive and requires an iterative approach. This session will focus on finding the best opportunities to experiment with AI and on applying agile practices in machine learning initiatives.

It is no secret that technology is changing the fabric of business operations and outcomes, and collaboration between IT and the business is more important than ever before. The conversation is no longer about how to align IT with the business, however in many cases technology is still viewed as a commodity rather than an enabler. So what can we do to successfully change this mindset both within our own organizations and across the industry as a whole? During this session, we will discuss the various challenges IT and digital leaders face when undergoing this cultural shift.

Panelist: Dan Dickinson, CIO, BioScript

Open seating, Buffet-style lunch. Serving food for all tastes, pallets and preferences. Vegan, vegetarian, halal options available

It’s time to get serious about data protection. With breaches on the rise and sensitive data widely distributed across cloud and mobility, organizations need a solid data protection strategy more than ever. But how should you structure your data protection program to ensure you can deliver game-changing security?

Join this engaging session to learn the best strategy for building a five-star data protection program. You’ll get guidance from industry experts on cutting-edge approaches that not only provide airtight protection, but drastically reduce cost and complexity.

This session will cover:

1. What the best architecture for data protection is
2. How to gain complete visibility to all your sensitive data
3. Strategies to secure top uses cases around data in motion and at rest
4. Data protection best practices

Presented by: Zscaler

Weak identity and access management (IAM) practices result in considerable risk to the organization because IAM plays a role in most things in IT. Organizations typically do not have a high-level understanding of how identities and access are managed within the organization and no central ownership of IAM is a common reason why. Owners of IAM actions outside of IT may be resistant to adopting change but it’s our job to convey the importance and get the buy-in needed. This session will help identify the drivers behind improving your IAM practices and develop best practice processes for each section of the identity lifecycle

Speaker: Steve Magowan, Former VP, Cybersecurity, Cineplex

While the pool of talented cybersecurity professionals is increasing daily, there is still a shortage of cybersecurity professionals to go around. This sessions will dicuss how your organization can stand out from the crowd and attract the best. The session will cover the following topics: – How being an active CISO and Thought Leader is the best marketing for new talent – Creative ways to compete and assets that are important outside of salary – Increase training and access to non-cybersecurity experts that are already excelling at your company and how to determine that talent you already have in house

This session provides a comprehensive exploration of the challenges and opportunities that arise with the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in various industries. We’ll examine the intricacies of managing risks associated with AI technologies, highlighting the potential pitfalls and benefits they bring. By examining real-world examples and case studies, we’ll shed light on the complexities and ethical considerations involved in harnessing AI’s power while mitigating potential risks.

While the pool of talented cybersecurity professionals is increasing daily, there is still a shortage of cybersecurity professionals to go around. This sessions will dicuss how your organization can stand out from the crowd and attract the best. The session will cover the following topics: – How being an active CISO and Thought Leader is the best marketing for new talent – Creative ways to compete and assets that are important outside of salary – Increase training and access to non-cybersecurity experts that are already excelling at your company and how to determine that talent you already have in house

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The world now depends on the digital economy. IT is central to the organization’s successful response and there are four pillars of strength required: re-coding the institutional DNA, treating security as survival, responding to the new relationship with work, and reducing the bureaucratic burden.

To ensure relevance and competitiveness in today’s customer centric market, enterprises of all types are investing heavily in customer data capture and customer data analytics capabilities. With data being captured from so many new locations and at a deeper and more personal level than ever before privacy issues become more and more important. Enterprises need to constantly review their data capture and usage to determine value vs. risk and whether the incentive offered to the customer is sufficient to overcome any reticence on their part. This session will address privacy issues, how to balance opt in vs opt out requirements and that Data Privacy certainly isn’t a roadblock to data capture but the customer incentive needs to be sufficient to justify the sharing of personal details.

In most markets, there is an abundance of open IT jobs with fewer people able to fill them – and the positions are getting more expensive. Working remotely is the norm, but not optimal (usually). There is less off-shoring and more resources are focused locally or within the same hemisphere.

Additionally, we are still not recruiting enough woman and minorities in to the rank and file, especially senior IT roles, and we’re losing talent to major tech hubs.

Join us at the roundtable with your peers as we dive into solutions to tackle the following challenges:

• How do you scale staff / team without losing them to major tech hubs?
• How do you create more diversity – not only among race and gender – but diversity of thought – Old vs New Thinking?
• How do we mentor universities to implement actionable steps for supplying more IT talent?
  

Aggressive attacks on Enterprise computer networks are continuing with increased frequency and threatening economic and national security. Actions like vulnerability reduction and passive defenses on their own simply are not cutting it and there needs to be a functional shift in the way we mitigate this substantial threat. Companies can seek to protect their most sensitive data by implementing an environment of actionable intelligence and detection to bring the fight to the adversaries and ensure a proactive approach to securing data. This session will discuss best practices in managing the constant evolution in the security environment.

Moderated by: Cyera

Threat actors, Red-Teams, and Ransomware have been abusing Active Directory for years. In fact, attackers have compromised or leveraged AD in 100% of the successful ransomware attacks over the last 3 years. This discussion will discuss new technologies to help you visualize the risk in your AD and add a layer of security around this very important part of enterprise infrastructure.

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Everyone’s journey to being data-driven is unique. It’s like making an apple pie. It’s easy to get the ingredients, but you need to know how to put together the right recipe for a great apple pie. In this interactive discussion I will share insights and lessons learned in leading data modernization initiatives and in sharing the journey with customers. Data literacy, culture, governance, quality, technology stack modernization and architecture are all ingredients in driving towards the right data driven recipe. The discussion will include tips and tricks for reducing friction points and how to build the right recipe for your organization.

The result of digital transformation: It’s easier to do business with your customers and partners. But with new architectures, web apps and APIs now deployed from on-prem servers to the cloud, it is harder than ever to get a holistic view of all of these potentially vulnerable assets – never mind defend them.

What are your biggest challenges today in defending these diverse assets? What are the known gaps in your current defenses? What are you seeking in the future to defend your apps and APIs?

Topics covered will include:

• How are adversaries preying upon unprotected web apps and APIs?
• How are traditional web application firewalls deployed, and what are they missing?
• What does the future look like with unified web app and API security solutions?

To meet the speed and agility demands of digital business, CIOs are transforming their IT departments and shifting a growing share of IT work from projects to products. At the same time, growth in business-led IT has expanded the span of employees across the enterprise who are responsible for technology initiatives.
This session will explore a cost management model and discuss how evolving IT cost management efforts to focus on value over pure cost will reduce (and even eliminate) reactive calls to cut IT costs. This session will provide a model and tactics to elevate the maturity of IT to focus on value over costs, while still meeting the business directives.