West 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: Rob Strickland, Former CIO, T-Mobile, CEO & President, M37

The overall business transition to the Cloud is happening far faster than many experts predicted. That speed has left most companies reliant on security platforms built for a bygone world dominated by on-premises data centers. The covid pandemic further accelerated and complicated the situation, stressing CISOs and CIOs who are responsible for protecting a work-from-home staff that may not ever fully return to the office. Organizations are rapidly adopting SASE to safeguard data wherever it moves, support digital transformation efforts, and realize better efficiency and ROI from their technology. Come hear how Netskope’s converged SASE platform provides AI-driven zero trust security and simplified, optimized connectivity to any network location or device, including IoT.

Presented by: Netskope

This session will dive into effective strategies for securing sensitive data within SaaS environments, addressing concerns such as data leakage, access control, and compliance. Attendees will gain insights into the latest tools and best practices for maintaining a robust security posture in an increasingly complex SaaS landscape.

Check back for updates on this session.

Speaker: Patrick Ramseier, Global Security Specialist Engineering, Tenable

Presented by: Tenable

Join us as we explore cutting-edge strategies for modernizing infrastructure and applications. In this discussion, we delve into the intersection of AI-powered observability security, emphasizing how organizations can enhance their operations, ensure data protection, and comply with regulations. We will discuss the transformative potential of AI, including Generative AI, in boosting overall productivity.

Presented by: Dynatrace

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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.

Speaker: Hamlet Khodaverian, VP, Americas, LMNTRIX

Presented by: LMNTRIX

As most recent studies have confirmed, adversaries are using AI to improve their tactics to launch targeted cyberattacks on organizations. This talk will analyze how Adversaries are using AI in their attack methods and what has changed from before, in their operations. The second part of the session will delve into how security teams can leverage AI to counterattack threat actors and use AI to build and improve their defenses.

Speaker: Mani Keerthi Nagothu, Americas Field CISO Associate Director, SentinelOne

Presented by: SentinelOne

Check back for updates on this session. 

Submitted by: Vulcan

This session will explore key strategies for bolstering data protection in hybrid and multi-cloud settings. Topics will include advanced backup and recovery solutions, effective disaster recovery planning, data encryption, and modern ransomware protection techniques such as immutable backups to ensure data security and resilience across diverse environments.

As organizations adapt to technological advancements, remote collaboration tools, and changing workforce dynamics, the CIO emerges as a key strategist, orchestrating digital transformation initiatives and ensuring seamless integration of technology into the fabric of the modern workplace. This Panel will discuss how CIOs can drive innovation, enhance cybersecurity measures, and foster a flexible and inclusive work environment to meet the challenges and opportunities presented by the future of work.

Panelists:

John Jiang, CTO, VESS

Jason Frame, CIO, Southern Nevada Health District

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

In this presentation we will provide insights around the inherent risks related to using Generative AI, self-trained LLMs and AI workloads. With data at the heart of any AI usage, we will cover efficient methodologies for identifying and mitigating your own risk to safely enable AI, making your workforce more productive and driving toward the innovation AI promises. Specifically the topic will engage the audience to consider how understanding the data set, its sensitivity, the access to it from internal employees to third parties, and how data will be used and created. Protecting data wherever it goes and ensuring compliance through the AI journey.

Learning Objectives: In this presentation the audience will learn about the inherent risks surrounding AI and therefore data within the enterprise. Marrying key objectives around cloud security, governance risk and compliance, risk management and threat detection/prevention through the AI lifecycle.

Presented by: Varonis

In the ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity, staying ahead of threats is imperative. As we reflect on the past, embrace the present, and prepare for the future, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into security infrastructure has emerged as a disruptive technology in safeguarding digital assets. Join us at this exclusive event led by Trend Micro as we delve into the dynamic journey of AI’s impact on cybersecurity. From historical insights to current advancements and future projections, discover how AI is reshaping the defense mechanisms against cyber threats, fortifying your infrastructure, and empowering organizations to navigate the digital frontier with confidence.

Speaker: Jason Dablow, Principal Engineer, Trend Micro

Presented by: Trend Micro

With the growing reliance on SaaS applications, misconfigurations and emerging threats pose significant risks to your cloud environment. This session will dive into how SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) can provide advanced detection and response strategies to identify vulnerabilities, secure configurations, and respond to threats in real-time. Join us to gain actionable insights into strengthening your SaaS security posture and protecting your organization’s critical data.

As cyber threats continue to evolve in complexity and scale, the importance of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) has never been more critical. In this session we’ll delve into the current state of the MDR market, examining key trends, emerging technologies, and the competitive landscape that shapes this dynamic field. Join us to gain insights that will help your organization navigate the complexities of modern cybersecurity challenges.

In the age of AI, cybersecurity must balance the strengths of AI with the irreplaceable human element. While AI excels at rapidly analyzing data and detecting threats, it lacks the intuition, adaptability, and ethical judgment of human experts. Effective risk mitigation requires blending AI’s speed and precision with human oversight, ensuring cybersecurity remains agile, ethical, and resilient in the face of evolving threats. Join this session to explore how to strike the right balance and build a future-proof cybersecurity strategy.

Speaker: Tina Lampe, Director – IT Software Engineering, DirecTV

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From vendor selection and due diligence to ongoing monitoring and compliance, this session equips business leaders with practical insights and tools to proactively address and mitigate risks associated with external partnerships, ensuring a secure and resilient operational ecosystem

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

Panelists:

Ray Lipps, CISO, Broadcom

Deborah Enright, CISO, West Coast University

Gary Eckman, VP of Cyber Security & Governance, Dyno Nobel

Chris Stoneley, CISO, Cathay Bank

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.