Presented by Mike Dusche, DR & Cyber Resilience Specialist • HPE

Discover how to achieve an always-on 24/7 business, ensuring that customers and stakeholders can expect uninterrupted access to their data and applications. Learn how to solve for Ransomware Resilience, Disaster Recovery, and Multi-Cloud mobility for virtualized environments, with continuous data protection (CDP) for any app, any cloud, and any threat. With the right solutions in place, your organization can seamlessly protect critical data and applications, mitigate the risk of ransomware attacks, and maintain business continuity.

Explore strategies for achieving ransomware resilience, automated disaster recovery planning and testing, and flexible hybrid-cloud capabilities that allow you to move applications and scale capacity on demand. By integrating comprehensive data protection measures, you can ensure compliance with regulatory mandates and provide robust resilience against evolving cyber threats. This approach empowers your IT team to focus on strategic initiatives by reducing the burden of manual recovery processes and ensuring rapid restoration of operations.

  Presented by Marni Carmichael, Vice President, Marketing • ImageSource

AI adoption is accelerating, yet many organizations struggle to transition AI projects from proof-of-concept to production. The AI Empowerment Blueprint is a structured framework that helps businesses overcome common AI adoption barriers, align AI initiatives with business goals, and implement a governance strategy that ensures ethical and effective AI deployment.

This session will guide attendees through a six-step methodology for AI success, covering key phases such as AI exploration, business value alignment, governance frameworks, and implementation best practices. Learn how to identify AI opportunities, mitigate risks, and build a scalable AI strategy that delivers real business value.

Whether you're an executive, technologist, or entrepreneur, this presentation will equip you with actionable insights and a proven roadmap to maximize AI's impact within your organization.

  Presented by Fortinet

This will be a panel discussion on how organizations can effectively bridge Zero Trust and SASE to create a unified, adaptive cybersecurity architecture that meets the demands of today’s hybrid workforce and threat landscape.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand the core principles of Zero Trust and SASE, and how they complement each other.
• Learn practical strategies for implementing a unified approach without adding complexity or disrupting operations.
• Gain insights into real-world use cases and lessons learned from organizations successfully integrating these frameworks.

Speakers:

• Joel Robnett, Director of Sales, Tech Heads, Inc.
• Steve Sims, Owner, Cruxial Technology Group
• Michael Lippman, Regional Channel SE US, Fortinet
• Eric Foster, Systems Engineer, Fortinet

  Presented by INTERFACE Advisory Council

Your budget has shrunk, and vendor costs have risen. Sound familiar?

So many IT leaders in Spokane are dealing with the challenges of vendor acquisitions that produce huge cost increases. At times it can seem there is no way to achieve everything expected with the budget allotted. How does anyone succeed in this environment?

Spokane isn’t home to the largest corporations in the country, and your IT budget reflects that. In this panel discussion, the Spoane Advisory Council will share their tricks to maximizing the impact of the money you have to spend. Please join us for an open discussion that will include your questions. We will share experiences in working with vendors, stretching a dollar, and finding alternatives to huge price increases from the vendor community.

Moderator: Adam Pyle, Information Systems Security Manager, Pyrotek, Inc.

Panelists:

• Laurel Caldwell, Director, IT Services, Latah County, ID
• Ben Calvert, Chief Information Officer, Vista Title & Escrow
• Kai Dailey, Executive Director, Ragland Institute
• Naci Seyhanli, IT Security Analyst, Spokane Regional Health District

  Presented by David Pier, Sr Sales Engineer • Zscaler

In 2024, Red Canary detected nearly 93,000 threats—an increase of more than a third from the previous year—driven by expanded visibility into cloud and identity infrastructure. For the seventh year, our Threat Detection Report analyzes the most prevalent cyber threats, evolving attack techniques, and the incidents we help customers resolve.

This session will highlight key trends, including email threats, infostealers, and LLM hijacking in the cloud, while breaking down the top 10 MITRE ATT&CK® techniques and most prevalent threats in customer environments. Attendees will gain actionable insights into detection, testing, and prevention strategies to enhance their security posture against today’s evolving threats.