Data Connectors is proud to host the Kansas City & Omaha Virtual Cybersecurity Summit.

Reducing Friction and Managing Remote Work Environments

The business world has changed and many of those changes, like remote working, are here to stay. And keeping your teams safe during this period is a no-brainer—as is making sure their remote endpoints are managed and secure. But with these changes come a list of concerns and issues that many organizations just are not ready to address, sometimes highlighting legacy support policies and even out-of-standard technological needs. The friction of everyday management of the full enterprise has increased, putting a strain on the IT and support staff as well as the users.

During this presentation, I will address common areas of friction in endpoint management as well as ways to pinpoint friction in your environment, and finally ways to address the problems and setup your organization for scalability with endpoint management.

Speaker’s Bio:

Richard Melick has spent over a decade advancing through the security industry with his considerable experience and considerable focus on the stories surrounding ransomware, hacking, and cyber attacks. He has been a security speaker on five continents and has even advised royalty on how to make and distribute ransomware.

Threat Intelligence and Layered Security in the Modern Era

The term ‘Threat Intelligence’ has always attracted lots of hype and attention, but what does it actually mean? And, more importantly, how can it help you protect your network? In this presentation, we’ll discuss what Threat Intelligence really looks like in the context of a layered security approach and we’ll use real-world examples to show how it can even improve a network’s defenses at the perimeter while saving your analyst’s time.

Speaker’s Bio:

Ted has worked with web and network security technologies for more than 20 years. He began his career in technology as a full-stack engineer in web development and design. As Chief Operating Officer, Ted guides the overall operations of Sentinel IPS, the CINS Active Threat Intelligence System, and all other supporting technologies. You may also find him presenting at an information security conference or trade show, spreading the word about shared threat intelligence. 

One of Sentinel’s first employees, Ted is not afraid to get his hands dirty supporting Sentinel customers or lending a hand in Sentinel software development. Ted received his Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Iowa (Go Hawks!) and his Master of Education (Secondary Mathematics) from the University of North Texas. 

He resides in the DFW area with his wife and two sons, which keep him busy on seemingly every karate dojo and auditorium in the North Texas area. He can also be found swinging a hammer for Habitat for Humanity or riding his beloved bicycle for Team in Training.

Threat Hunting & Modern Security: 3 Fundamental Flaws 

Security Operations is a discipline continuously evolving – with the evolution of tools and processes , there are still 3 fundamental flaws that exist with Modern Security Operations.  We will examine 3 specific flaws of modern security operations:

1. Risk Acceptance
2. SOC Alert Overload
3. Inability to mitigate all Zero-Day Attacks.

We will start the discussion with a quick SOC capacity expertise, review in detail the 3 fundamental security flaws, revisit the math from the SOC capacity exercise to understand “what is being missed based upon my current capacity?”  We will also cover costs to the business for associated with these flaws and wrap up with some suggestions for mitigation.

Speaker’s Bio:

Jim Rohde, Director of Presales Engineering at CRITICALSTART is responsible for leading a team of security experts supporting technical conversations for CRITICALSTART’s products & services, including their flagship offering: Managed Detection & Response. Prior to CRITICALSTART, Jim held leadership roles at large Managed Security Service providers including Secureworks & Trustwave where he has received numerous awards for customer & company exceeding objectives. Jim’s expertise in a multitude of security domains over his career has made him a sought after Trusted advisor for organizations of all sizes.

TPRM 2.0: How to Reduce the Burden of Vendor Risk Assessments

You spend countless hours assessing your vendors, stuck in spreadsheets, trying to sift through last year’s emails to find the right vendor contact and the most up-to-date questionnaire. And when assessments are finally completed (which can take months), you still need to review and validate the answers, as well as mitigate any identified risks.

As your program evolves, the need to simplify the vendor risk assessment process becomes unavoidable. So, what can you do to streamline assessment completion and simplify vendor risk reviews? In this webinar, we’ll outline the latest vendor risk assessment tips and tactics that you can implement to build a more efficient third-party risk management practice.

Key points:

• How you can save hours on vendor risk assessments
• How you can leverage inherent risks and tiered assessments
• How Cyber Risk Exchanges are reinventing the assessment process

Speaker’s Bio:

Emily Couch serves as a Third-Party Risk Consultant for OneTrust Vendorpedia – a purpose-built software designed to operationalize third-party risk management. In her role, Couch advises companies throughout their third-party risk management implementations to help meet requirements relating to relevant standards, frameworks, and laws (e.g. ISO, NIST, SIG, GDPR and CCPA). Couch works with clients to centralize their third-party information across business units, assess risks and performance, and monitor threats throughout the entire third-party relationship, from onboarding to offboarding.

Risk comes from all angles in 2020 users, vendors, partners, systems.  In this panel, we will discuss some of the many facets encountered by security leaders in organizations of all sizes, with particular focus to the threat landscape seen across the Midwest. 

This session will feature subject matter experts, answering questions from the audience live via video, in a panel format. Each presenter will take questions that pertain to their topic, and if there is time, they will also respond to a few questions about larger trends and directions that face all members of the cybersecurity community.

A Modern Approach to Deception

Modern threat deception does not rely upon signatures nor behavioral patterns. It flips the paradigm on the attacker to be perfect or be detected. History and experience have shown us that human attackers can bypass next-gen perimeter and endpoint controls. Threat deception provides early detection of external, insider, and 3rd party attackers – protecting against new types of Active Directory attacks, delivering actionable alerts, strengthening overall defensive posture, while being simple to deploy and maintain with a small staff. Whether your organization is a Fortune 10 or one with less than 1000 employees, organizations across the globe are deploying modern Attivo Deception both on-prem and the cloud as a proactive measure to combat cyber criminals.

Speaker’s Bio:

Jonathan Randall, CISSP has been on the business side of Cyber Security for more than 20 years, working at large global technology vendors, and small US based startups. He is an advocate of clear communication, and unique approaches to security problem solving.

The Last Line of Defense:

The Importance of having a robust and comprehensive Data Protection strategy

Data protection is experiencing a resurgence.  Historically its been seen as an innovation backwater and as “insurance”, but with the growth of ransomware and cyber crime, and increasing risk, organisations are having to modernize their data protection architectures and strategies to ensure that data can be recovered quickly to ensure that an Organisation can survive an attack.  Join this session to learn about the latest innovations in the data protection space and how they can be deployed to provide a comprehensive last line of defence.

Speaker’s Bio:

Roger Boss is a solutions marketing manager focused on data protection for Pure Storage. Roger has more than 25 years of experience working for such companies as Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Veeam Software.  Based in Denver, he holds degrees in Journalism and Rhetorical Communication from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The 8 Biggest Cyber Threats of 2020

Over the past several months, the cyberthreat landscape has evolved at an alarming rate.  New threats, combined with thoughtful rehashing of some tried-and-true screams have sprung up anew, and increased in ernest.  Join Region VII Cybersecurity Advisor Geoffrey Jenista, from the Department of Homeland Security Cyber Infrastructure Security Agency (DHS-CISA), as he expands upon these trends with current case studies and the most recent updates from the ‘front lines’ of our nation’s cyber warfare.

Geoff will expand beyond the standard explanation of CISA’s mission and offerings to help KC & Omaha Virtual Cybersecurity Summit attendees understand the stories behind the headlines. He’ll share details on operations, trends and CISA’s thinking on what organizations need to to be best prepare their systems and staff for the 2020 cybersecurity landscape.

Speaker’s Bio:

Mr. Jenista serves as the Regional Cyber Security Advisor for Region VII (IA, KS, MO and NE) for the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Integrated Operations Division. Based in Kansas City, KS, he supports the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) mission of strengthening the security and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure.

His programs coordinate cyber preparedness, risk mitigation and incident response. He provides Cyber Security resource briefings, Cyber Security assessments, and Incident Response planning to the nation’s sixteen critical infrastructure sectors and state, local, tribal, and territorial government entities.

Prior to joining the Department of Homeland Security Mr. Jenista worked for 12 years with U.S. Army as an Army Enterprise Systems Branch Chief and Information Systems Security Manager with responsibility for all aspects of Technical support, Service Delivery, Risk Management, Project Management, Enterprise Architecture and Information Security. Prior to joining the U.S. Army, he served 22 years in the U.S. Navy as a Senior Chief Petty Officer, holding duties as an Executive Officer, Weapons Officer and AEGIS Maintenance Supervisor.

Mr. Jenista holds a MBA and an MA in Information Technology Management from Webster University. He has a BS in Computer Information Systems from Park University and he holds the Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP) certification.

Lunch / Solutions Showcase Open

Shifting PAM into High Gear with Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP)

Zero Standing Privilege (PAM) was a new term introduced in 2019 and might just be the best approach to shift your PAM strategy into high gear. In this short presentation, we’ll discuss how PAM projects were managed historically and highlight a new PAM approach to reduce the impact of compromised admin credentials.
Do you know what admin credentials exist today or even how they change over time in your organization? This is just one of several challenges we’ll discuss, offer a solution and discuss the need and value of frequent scanning of admin rights, reporting on current standing privileges and the adoption of a ZSP and Just-In-Time administration.
So, if you’re looking for quick wins in PAM, including removing local admin rights and support for DevOps+PAM use cases, join the discussion and learn how other organizations like yours have succeeded.

Speaker’s Bio:
Paul Lanzi is the co-founder and COO of Remediant. Paul and Tim Keeler worked together in the IT departments of several biotechs including Genentech, Roche and Gilead Sciences before starting Remediant. At each of those organizations, they saw first-hand the drawback of the legacy approaches to PAM and were inspired to create something new. Paul’s previous corporate IT experience includes project and program management, corporate mobile app development team management and recruiting and managing full-stack web development teams. Paul has a passion for excellent user experience (UX) and project management, having held a PMP certification from the Project Management Institute since 2005. Paul also holds a BS with Honors in Computer Science from UC Davis.

Cyber Resilience: Rethinking your data protection strategy in the age of ransomware.

Ransomware threats increased by 300% last year, and the industry is expecting it to get worse. Ransomware victims’ greatest pains are downtime and data loss. Current DR and Backup solutions aren’t equipped to help you manage it at the speed of business. Join us for this discussion on how to transform your data protection approach to ensure you can protect your data and resume operations almost instantly when facing a ransomware attack. See you there!

Speaker Bio:

Andy Fernandez is a Global Product Marketing Manager at Zerto. With a focus on product marketing and launches, he strives to translate technical innovation to business value. After spending years in various technology companies and entrepreneurship pursuits, Andy is focused on launching industry-leading products and accelerating their adoption.

We all went virtual this year… unexpectedly.  As COVID-19 instantiates itself as the biggest force for change in your IT infrastructure (more than your CISO, CIO, and CEO combined), what have we learned and what will we do differently going forward for the balance of 2020 and beyond? 

This session will feature subject matter experts, answering questions from the audience live via video, in a panel format. Each presenter will take questions that pertain to their topic, and if there is time, they will also respond to a few questions about larger trends and directions that face all members of the cyber-security community.

Learn about the Threat Landscape & Current Trends in 2020

The purpose of this brief is to provide a threat intelligence review of the most current threat actor trends across both eCrime and nation-state adversaries. This brief will cover changes in tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), how ransomware is continuing to evolve, as well as a review of how threat actors are exploiting current worlds events (such as COVID-19). Additionally, this presentation will include use cases around how organizations can operationalize threat intelligence in order to empower a more defensible environment within their organizations.

Speaker’s Bio:

Jason is an internationally experienced intelligence, cybersecurity, and national defense leader with 13+ years experience innovating at the intersection of security operations and technology. Over the course of his career, he has protected Fortune 500 companies and government agencies by conceiving of solutions to the problems presented by the world’s most dangerous adversaries.

Jason currently serve as a Director at CrowdStrike where he provide threat intelligence thought leadership to commercial and government organizations throughout the globe. Prior to CrowdStrike, Jason served as a Manager at Deloitte where he led the development of threat intelligence programs for Fortune 500 clients and large U.S. federal government agencies. Jason is also a veteran of the United States armed forces where he served for over six and a half years in the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer and attained the rank of Captain. While in the Army, Jason participated in a variety of intelligence roles, including assignments at the National Security Agency (NSA), United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), as well as served in combat tours overseas.

Three Things You Need to Know About New CCPA Regulations

This presentation describes the many cyber security requirements of the California Consumer Privacy Act and offers insights including an analysis of additional requirements recently published by the California Attorney General.

On March 11, 2020, the California Attorney General issued another set of revisions to the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 regulations.  Updates include guidance on IP addresses, privacy policy disclosures, and denying deletion requests.  While the regulations address many questions, they still leave much unanswered, and privacy/security professionals need clarity.  In this interactive presentation, a data protection industry veteran will offer perspective on the Regulations and three ways professionals can hedge their compliance bets ahead of the deadline.  Takeaways include:

• Understand the most pressing elements of the Regulations
• Learn how to prioritize and rationalize your compliance efforts
• How to leverage your efforts in advance of CCPA 2.0

Speaker Bio:

Scott M. Giordano is an attorney with more than 20 years of legal, technology, and risk management consulting experience. An IAPP Fellow of Information Privacy and a Certified Information Security Systems Professional (CISSP), Scott serves as Spirion’s subject matter expert on multinational data protection and its intersection with technology, export compliance, internal investigations, information governance, and risk management. Prior to joining Spirion, he served as Director, Data Protection for Robert Half Legal and established the global privacy program for Esterline Technologies Corporation in Bellevue, WA.

During his career, Scott has held senior positions at several legal technology firms and is listed as co-inventor on Intelligent Searching of Electronically Stored Information, patent application no. 13/842,910. In addition, he taught the first law school course anywhere on electronic evidence and e-discovery.

Scott is a member of the bar in Washington state, California, and the District of Columbia.

Taming the IAM Beast: 7 Steps to Embracing IAM Complexity that will Transform your Identity Program

Digital business demands seamless user experiences, interoperability among a diverse set of platforms, and near instant access to the right resources at the right time. To accomplish this, digital initiatives rely on a mature, scalable IAM organization for success.

The challenge? IAM is an incredibly complex space and every organization is as unique as a snowflake.

Join us on a journey to break down the 7 steps you can take to embrace the complexities of IAM and transform your identity practice into a modern program capable of delivering enterprise and consumer identity solutions that are agile and adaptable enough to support new business initiatives and safeguard against new threats as they arise.

Speaker Bio:

For over two decades, Gray Mitchell, has pioneered innovative security solutions to solve complex business challenges in his role as a CISO in heavily regulated industries including Fortune 100 Healthcare Companies, State Government Agencies, and Educational Organizations. Gray currently serves as IDMWORKS’ CISO and VP of Advisory services where he helps enterprise security teams affect identity transformation through the design and implementation of modern identity solutions. Gray’s deep skillset in the Identity and Access Management Domain spans every major vendor as well as program design and implementation of Identity Governance and Administration, Data Access Governance, Privileged Access Management, and Access Controls.

Layering Defense in Depth (DiD) with intentional redundancies increases the security of a system as a whole and addresses many different attack vectors. From individual laptops, to VPN to the WAN, the old paradigm of “castles and moats” is soooo 1999. How are organizations defending against inventive hackers penetrating their systems in 2020?

This session will feature subject matter experts, answering questions from the audience live via video, in a panel format. Each presenter will take questions that pertain to the topic, and if there is time, they will also respond to a few questions about larger trends and directions that face all members of the cyber-security community.

Security Scorecard – CyberSecurity Ratings: Market Forces and Future Considerations 

In this session, David will examine the most prevalent issues that attribute to third party breaches. He will review the challenges surfaced by the current work from home requirements, new COVID-19 risks, and additional concerns posed by the necessity for expanded collaboration.

He will explain what is a cybersecurity rating, and what are the major factors that comprise one. Comparing this with traditional Vendor Risk Management, he will revisit some of the challenges due to questionnaire exchange, manual processes, third-parties with access to sensitive data, and risk mitigation strategies.

David will explain the key elements included in a Cyber Risk Management solution, and contrast the drawbacks of point-in-time solutions that try to address these risks. Highlighting a recent case study, he discusses key requirements–such as automation, collaboration, centralized insights, prevention, and maximizing ROI–which led to multi-million dollar savings.

Looking to the future, David will share some cybersecurity rating predictions, discussing the major tailwinds in vendor risk management.  He will explain how these solutions enable organizations to make more informed, less risky, and decisions faster.

Speaker Bio: 

David Ortiz is the Senior Director of Systems Engineering, Western United States and Asia territories, at SecurityScorecard.

With over 20 years in Network and Security industries, David has worked closely with Fortune 500 and SMB companies and partners to architect security solutions, including SaaS, Cloud, Mobile, and Security technologies. He has previously held management positions at HPE, Symantec, and Novell in strategic roles within Engineering, Business Development, Sales, and Services. In addition, he holds certifications from Cisco, Oracle, VMware, Fortinet, to name a few. He has trained hundreds of professionals in networking and security technologies. David holds an MBA from Santa Clara University.

Building Your Identity Program from Start to Finish

Building out an identity and access management (IAM) program can be an overwhelming task. Where do you start? Who do you engage? How do you get from a vague, undefined idea to a practical, real-world solution? Fortunately, Jerod is here to help you answer that question. Drawing on his experience deploying an IAM program in an enterprise environment, combined with years of consulting experience, he put together this talk as a step-by-step instruction manual to help move your IAM program from where it is to where you want it to be.

Speaker’s Bio:

By day, Jerod Brennen (@slandail) is a storyteller, teacher, speaker, advisor, and security architect. 

By night, he’s a husband, father, writer, filmmaker, martial artist, musician, and gamer. It’s fair to say that he’s earned every gray hair in his beard, having spent his career fulfilling infosec roles in consulting, higher education, retail, and public utilities. 

Jerod loves to share what he’s learned over the years every chance he gets: at local and regional professional meetings, at larger conferences, and online via blogs and podcasts. He has published multiple online information security courses with Pluralsight and LinkedIn Learning, and he also teaches courses in person, both domestically and internationally. 

At the end of the day, Jerod just wants to help folks get one step closer to doing what they want to do securely.