Archives: Seminar

One Company’s Journey to a Modern Data Center Environment

  Presented by Structured

When the facilities team at a healthcare organization in the Pacific Northwest announced to the IT team that they were undertaking a campus remodel project and they needed the on-prem data center for office space, the IT team quickly sprang into action to find a new home for their DR environment. From learning of this management decision, to performing a due diligence assessment of their ability to use a DRaaS solution, into an RFI and RFP process, and coming to agreement on a contract, this was one of the most rigorous evaluation projects the company has undertaken. This presentation will describe that journey of evaluation and discovery, including the rest of the story which describes the onboarding process and challenges faced along the way. Craig Rhodes is an experienced professional actively engaged with various clients providing Data Center and Program Management consulting services.

Ransomware Protection Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank

  Presented by StorageCraft

Ransomware attacks have increased over 130% since the COVID crisis. Everyone is a target and even those with preventative measures in place are at risk. We will review some of the latest attacks and offer best practices in how to protect your organization without increasing budgets.

What is HCI and How Does it Enable a Public Cloud On-Prem?

  Presented by Nutanix

Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) has been taking the IT industry by storm the past 5 years. As businesses are exploring what this means to them, they need to ask themselves should we consider changing our infrastructure? During this session we will cover the following discussions:

  • What is HCI exactly and why consider it?
  • Why are companies moving to the cloud and why are they now moving back?
  • How do I create the Public Cloud experience in my own On-Prem solution?
  • What hypervisors work with HCI solutions?

Zero Trust and the Flaming Sword of Justice

  Presented by Cisco

Security breaches pervade the headlines. What was seen as a rare instance just 5 years ago now seems to occupy the daily news cycle. A lot of these data breaches are made possible due to missteps and misconfigurations. There are many security issues introduced into website authentication mechanisms that further compound the security issues in addition to enforcing bad behavior by the end users. Security debt is a real problem for the vast majority of organizations in the world today and the attackers will utilize this to their advantage. In addition to keeping system hygiene at the front of the mind, defenders need to focus on proper network zone segmentation or, as it is a more popular term these days, zero-trust networks. The old conceptual style of a castle wall and moat to defend a network was deprecated several years ago. As a result of the dissolution of the traditional perimeter, a stronger focus has to be placed on the strength of authentication, authorization, and trust models for the users.

The antiquated notion of an information security practitioner running through the office brandishing their flaming sword of justice above their heads screaming “thou shall not pass” has at long last reached the denouement. Whether you are responsible for the security in a financial organization or one that makes teddy bears it is necessary to adapt and learn to trust, but verify.”

Digital Transformation’s Focus in the Shadow of COVID-19 & Cybersecurity in the Equation

  Presented by ACTRA

Digital Transformation has been a major focus affecting every sector over sometime now and a major contributor to increased organizational productivity and workforce transformation. COVID-19 resulted in virtually all organizations going partially or entirely virtual in response to CDC recommendations.

Questions we will answer in this discussion:

  • What lasting impact does COVID-19 have on digital transformation strategies in optimizing process flow and efficiency?
  • What unique cybersecurity considerations might this impact result in for practitioners?
  • Given the potential impact and power of process integration, machine learning, and AI, how is this effecting or may it affect digital transformation in the foreseeable future?

Panelists:
Frank Grimmelmann • President & CEO, ACTRA

Anthony Dezilva • Security Architect, On Semiconductor//Chief Architect ACTRA Global Watch Center
Arthur Hansen • CEO, INCUS5
Mike Manrod • Chief Information Security Officer, Grand Canyon Education (GCE)
Pete Kim • Chief Information Security Officer, Raytheon Missile Systems

IoT: Additional Challenges It Poses in a Pandemic-Induced Work Environment

  Presented by Lester Godsey • CISO, Maricopa County

According to SecurityToday.com we will see an estimated 31 billion IoT devices added to the Internet in 2020 and a whopping 75 billion in 2025. While many of these devices are corporate/industrial (IIoT) in nature, there is a very large home/personal IoT market to contend with.

Now that a significant portion business is being done at home and other locations other than the office, what impact are these devices having from a cybersecurity perspective as it relates to:

  • Security vulnerabilities
  • Security controls and awareness, we typically have in corporate networks but lack in home offices
  • What data is leaving corporate systems – inadvertently and purposely
  • Ability to adhere to governmental and industry compliance standards

    • Join us for an in-depth conversation around the ‘normal’ challenges with IoT devices and solutions and how this new paradigm of working from home exacerbates them.

Office 365 Security Best Practices: At the Office, at Home, and on the Road

  Presented by Mimecast

Cyber-hygiene has become a source of great concern of late. And while the Office 365 suite has helped communication and collaboration from multiple location points (at the office, at home, and on the road) there are still security concerns that must be mitigated. In this presentation, we will hear best practice suggestions for remaining safe while using Office 365. First, we’ll talk about security attitudes, then review CISA concerns with Office 365, and finally offer best practice suggestions and thought leadership. This presentation will be driven by J. Peter Bruzzese… cyber-security advisor and 8x awarded Microsoft MVP (Exchange/Office 365).

Work from Home: Do You Have a Strategy?

  Presented by Nutanix

As we have seen in 2020, many companies are working to enable their employees to have a work from home capability. However, there are many factors that contribute to whether that will be possible or not. Are their apps supported? What devices are supported? How secure will they be? What latency issues will they incur and where is the data locality?

All of these topics and more will be addressed.

Unified Endpoint Management

  Presented by Quest Software

This presentation highlights the reasons and need for Unified Endpoint Management in your business strategy. This presentation’s sole purpose is to educate C-level and system administrators of the need for UEM as well as what aspects are important. One of the problems with endpoint management today is the proliferation of endpoints. During this global health crisis especially, we are seeing a large work-from-home movement in businesses all over the world. In order to combat this issue, you must have an endpoint management strategy that works not only on the network but off of it as well.

Digital Transformation: The ASU University Technology Office Story

  Presented by Chris Richardson • Deputy CIO of Development, Mobility, and Smart Cities • ASU

COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation to a point we thought we’d reach in 2025. But the groundwork for such a leap was laid some time before at the ASU University Technology Office. Deputy CIO IT Development, Mobility and Smart Cities, Chris Richardson, will share how the culture of innovation at UTO, and its agile mindset, represent an exciting new definition of digital transformation.

Chris Richardson is the Deputy Chief Information Officer Development, Mobility, and Smart Cities at Arizona State University, organized as part of ASU’s University Technology Office. Mr. Richardson and his team are responsible for aligning with key stakeholders to lead the strategy, upgrade cycle, new functionality enhancements, and maintenance of a number of Enterprise applications across the diverse landscape of ASU; key applications to note include myASU, eAdvisor, uAchieve, Salesforce, and Peoplesoft. In addition to development and business analysis with these and other applications, Mr. Richardson’s team is advancing the landscape and vision of mobile applications and standards, web standards, and a User Experience Center of Excellence.

Chris Richardson recently joined ASU from Honeywell where he held several positions over an 11- year career. His most recent role was Senior Director of IT Service Delivery for the Performance Materials and Technologies business group, global accountability of all application and infrastructure operations for a $12B organization. As Director Service Operations Support of the centralized infrastructure organization, his team supported more than 120,000 employees globally for their Service Desk and desktop support experiences, the identity and access management for their systems, the monitoring of critical infrastructure, and all ITIL process ownership for incident, problem, knowledge, access and event management. He has also held responsibility as Director for Desktop Services, Senior Program Manager, IT Audit Manager, European Manager Co-Sourcing, and Senior Business Analyst in the Transportation Systems business group.

Mr. Richardson has also been responsible for product and web development at his own companies, Tru Realty and ASPACT Schools (no longer in existence), as well as at Talisma Corporation and License Online.

Chris holds a double Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Fisheries from the University of Washington, a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of Puget Sound, and a Master of Business Administration (MIS, Finance, and Entrepreneurship emphases) from the University of Arizona. During Chris’ working career he has obtained PMP, CIPP, and ITIL Expert Lifecycle certifications; he was also a part of Honeywell’s Pathways, IT Leadership Development, and HITS Leadership IT Functional training programs.