Presented by Hunter Helfgott, Data & AI Consultant & Abram Erickson, Data & AI Solutions Architect • Cerium Networks

In this session, we’ll cover the critical steps organizations can take to adopt AI successfully this year, including proven strategies, common pitfalls, and practical frameworks to move from experimentation to enterprise-wide implementation. You’ll leave with actionable guidance to align AI initiatives with business goals, build organizational buy-in, and measure ROI in a way that lasts.

AI adoption is about making AI deliver real business outcomes without creating unnecessary risk, rework, or frustration.

What We’ll Cover

• The state of AI adoption in 2026: key trends and challenges teams are facing
• Lessons learned in 2025: what worked, what did not, and what to do differently this year
• A practical framework for successful AI adoption: from strategy to execution
• Measuring success: KPIs, governance, and how to prove value over time

  Presented by Landra Pierce, Product Strategy Technologist • Veeam

Cyberattacks are no longer a distant threat; they are a reality every IT team must be prepared for. When an attack occurs, your data becomes both the primary target and the key to recovery. Many organizations still rely on backup strategies that are designed for hardware failures or accidental deletions, rather than today’s threats, like ransomware, insider risk, and automated attacks. This disconnect creates vulnerabilities, especially when backups become an overlooked entry point in your security strategy. In this session, we will address these challenges to help you better protect your organization.

This session is ideal for IT professionals who want greater confidence in safeguarding their data and peace of mind. We will examine the most common oversights that leave organizations, including those in government, education, healthcare, and other sectors, exposed to cyberthreats. You’ll discover how teams are advancing beyond basic backup to adopt a cyber-ready approach, including topics like immutability, threat awareness, rapid recovery, and intelligent automation.

Our focus will be practical and grounded in real-world scenarios, and what truly works when pressure is high and time is limited. Because when every minute counts and trust is at stake, data resilience means more than surviving an attack. It’s about protecting what matters most and emerging even stronger.

  Presented by Nutanix

Join us for a live, end-to-end demonstration of migrating virtual machines from VMware to Nutanix AHV—no fluff, just real results. We’ll showcase the power of Nutanix Move to seamlessly convert and migrate VMs from Microsoft Hyper-V, ESXi, and even cloud environments to AHV with minimal disruption. If you're evaluating modernization strategies or planning a hypervisor transition, this session delivers practical insights you can apply immediately.

  Presented by Seth Eliot, Principal Resilience Architect • Arpio

You've backed up your data. You've secured your application code and infrastructure as code. You've documented runbooks. But when Google accidentally deleted a customer's entire cloud environment for a week, or when Change Healthcare's partners refused connectivity for 90 days after a breach, backups alone weren't enough. The real objective is to recover quickly and completely—data, infrastructure, networking, configuration, and security principles—all together.

In this talk, you'll learn the requirements for fast, reliable recovery, including cross-region and cross-account isolation, complete workload recovery, and testability. We'll walk through the design decisions you need to make and how you can implement them using cloud native tools. All while applying best practices to reduce toil and test your DR strategy safely and frequently.

  Presented by Red Canary

Join us for a deep dive into our 2026 Threat Detection Report. We’ll reveal how identity threats have skyrocketed to account for more than half of all detected threats. We will discuss how adversaries are weaponizing the "human element" through "paste-and-run" tactics and discover why the browser has become the ultimate frontline for both defenders and attackers alike. You’ll leave with better knowledge of the top threats and techniques, along with our recommendations on how to handle them.

  Presented by John Spiegel, Security CTO and HPE Distinguished Technologist • HPE Networking

In today’s cloud-first, hybrid work environment, traditional WAN architectures often struggle with performance bottlenecks, rising costs, security gaps, and operational complexity. This session examines how modern SD-WAN solutions can provide a secure, business-driven foundation for enterprise connectivity while enabling a strategic transition to a unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture. Attendees will gain insight into architectural considerations, security integration, performance optimization, and practical steps for evolving the WAN to support distributed users, applications, and cloud environments.

  Presented by Structured

This session examines how organizations can align cybersecurity, privacy, and compliance programs with the realities of 2026. The presentation reviews current threat trends, executive accountability requirements, and the expanding impact of artificial intelligence on risk management. It then connects federal, state, and industry obligations, including NIST CSF 2.0, HIPAA, CJIS, PCI DSS 4.0, CMMC, and emerging privacy laws to practical security program design. Attendees will leave with a clear framework for building a complete security program that integrates governance, segmentation, risk management, Zero Trust principles, and penetration testing to reduce risk and support regulatory readiness.

  Presented by Chris Staley, SASE Specialist • Palo Alto Networks

In the race for AI dominance, many businesses are hitting the brakes because their security can't keep up. They’re stuck in the "Fragmentation Tax"—managing 60+ tools that don't talk to each other while trying to govern a world of prompt injections and "Shadow AI." Chris Staley, SASE Specialist at Palo Alto, will present on how organizations need to think about these challenges. Many organizations are caught between the need to reduce tool sprawl and contending with the hidden costs of adopting incomplete platforms.

  Presented by Rubrik

Unstructured data is the lifeblood of the modern organization, yet its sheer volume often outpaces the strategies meant to protect it. As this data becomes the fuel for future AI initiatives and business intelligence, the "old way" of managing NAS has become a primary point of failure.

In this session, we’ll dive into how Rubrik NAS Cloud Direct (NCD) redefines the protection of PB-scale file systems. We will explore a modern architectural approach that provides the speed, visibility, and cloud-native flexibility required to turn massive data sets into resilient assets. Whether you are preparing for an AI-driven future or simply struggling with the growth of your current footprint, this session will provide a blueprint for total unstructured data control.

  Presented by Cato Networks

AI adoption is accelerating faster than security and governance, exposing organizations as sensitive data flows through copilots, LLM-powered apps, and agentic systems that legacy tools can’t properly protect. With a surge of AI security vendors entering the market, buying the right platform can be confusing. This presentation helps security leaders evaluate AI security solutions by clarifying the new risks AI creates, explaining the core pillars of AI security, and outlining how to compare platforms, ask the right questions, and avoid common buying mistakes.

  Presented by George Tang, Solution Engineer • Zafran Security

First introduced by Gartner in 2022, Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) has quickly moved beyond buzzword status to become a cornerstone of modern cybersecurity programs. Beyond traditional vulnerability management programs, CTEM focuses on continuously identifying, validating, and prioritizing exposures so security teams can act with precision.

But the stakes are rising. Adversaries are weaponizing AI to discover and exploit vulnerabilities faster than ever, leaving organizations little margin for error. For CISOs, the challenge isn’t just finding exposures—it’s keeping pace with an accelerating threat landscape while making smarter use of existing resources.

  Presented by Greg Hatch, Sr Vice President, Strategic Growth • Gage Technologies

Despite widespread AI adoption in 2025–2026, only a small percentage of organizations are realizing significant business impact. This session cuts through the hype to clarify what AI truly is, explore the rise of generative and agentic AI, and highlight where real value is emerging—particularly in customer experience (CX) and security. Drawing on recent industry research and practical experience, we examine why many initiatives stall and what differentiates successful ones.

Participants will leave with a practical roadmap for AI success: aligning initiatives to clear business outcomes, assessing readiness, managing risks, and embedding security and governance from the start. The message is simple—AI transformation is less about the technology itself and more about strategy, data, leadership, and disciplined execution.

  Presented by Fernando Barcelo, Sr Sales Engineer • Ping Identity

Organized attacker groups aren’t just hammering your perimeter anymore—they’re impersonating your employees, contractors, and partners across hiring, access, and the helpdesk. AI-powered deepfakes, credential-stuffing, MFA fatigue, and social engineering are turning the extended workforce into the easiest path into critical systems. In this session, we will show how to move from implicit trust to Verified Trust: a continuous, identity-centric security model that binds every digital interaction back to a real, verified human—without slowing them down. You’ll see practical patterns for adding high-assurance verification and adaptive controls on top of your existing IdPs and infrastructure to stop organized attackers before they can establish a foothold.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand how AI-driven impersonation and organized attacker groups exploit gaps across hiring, workforce access, and helpdesk workflows.
• Learn how Continuous Verification, Verified Onboarding, Verified Access, and Verified Helpdesk reduce risk across your extended workforce without adding friction.
• See how to layer verification, credentials, and orchestration capabilities on top of your existing identity and security stack to strengthen Zero Trust initiatives.

  Presented by Peter Ingebrigtsen, Sr Technical Marketing Manager • Arctic Wolf

Cybersecurity threats don’t emerge in isolation—they are observed, analyzed, and stopped by real people working on the front lines every day. This session pulls back the curtain on modern security operations, focusing on the human-driven research that powers effective threat detection, incident response, and adaptive security strategies.

Drawing on Arctic Wolf Labs research, SOC analyst expertise, and real-world incident data, this talk examines how today’s attacks are identified, contextualized, and disrupted in live environments. Attendees will gain insight into the patterns behind the most persistent threats, how adversaries continually adapt, and why defenders must evolve just as quickly. Rather than focusing solely on tools or alerts, this session highlights the people, processes, and intelligence that transform raw telemetry into actionable defense - illustrating how to turn frontline observations into scalable protection for organizations of all sizes.

  Presented by Keystrike

The details of this presentation will be available soon. Please check back for updates!

Keystrike turns identity from a login event into continuous proof of who is actually behind every action. We close the gap MFA, EDR, and PAM can’t—stopping attackers who hijack sessions or operate through compromised workstations. By verifying that each command comes from a real user at a trusted device, Keystrike ensures that the person who logged in is the one acting throughout the session, restoring trust in every authenticated interaction.

Join us during the lunch hour for Advisory Council Roundtables, an interactive opportunity to connect with council members and peers on a variety of timely industry topics. Move freely between tables, share your perspective, and gather practical insights you can take back to your organization. These conversations are informal, high-value, and designed to spark ideas and connection.

Topics & Discussion Leaders:

• Security Awareness: What Methods Work to “Secure the Human” Frank Taylor, Systems Security Engineer, Corpay
• Cybersecurity Approach for Non-Profits Rick Hamell, IT Director, Rose Villa Senior Living
• AI Usage in Your Office, What You Need to do First Nathan Struk, IT Manager, Business Valuation Resources
• Get More Out of Your IT Spending Bill Hopkins, IT Manager, City of Keizer
• IT Staffing: Onboarding for Success Dan Kutch, IT Manager, Gunderson Marine & Iron