Archives: Seminar

Let’s Sharpen Your Soft Skills!

  Moderated by INTERFACE Advisory Council

You spend your days dealing with outages, attacks, requests and anything else that can keep you behind a monitor all day. However, there is so much needed to advance your IT career. When it comes to “soft skills” of networking and communication, it can be a challenge for an IT professional to find time. How can you improve your standing in your company? What about looking for your next position? There are so many skills needed to excel when it comes to your career. Join us for an interactive discussion that will address these challenges and more. Our local Birmingham IT professionals will share their experience on stepping out from behind the monitor and being noticed! Your questions are welcome in this panel discussion.

Panelists:

  • Jonathan Ingram • Information Systems Specialist, University of Alabama, Birmingham
  • Alexander Brewer • Sr Cyber Analyst & Incident Handler, BBVA Compass
  • Joanne Stephens • Director, Information Technology, Birmingham City Schools
  • Michael Dale • Board Member, PMI

The Current Malware Threat Landscape & Enterprise Grade Remediation

  Presented by Malwarebytes

Malware has become one of the biggest threat challenges faced by security and IT teams. Malwarebytes Labs conducts extensive proprietary research and analysis. The findings are periodically published to help security teams better understand the nature and evolution of these threats.

This presentation will cover key findings from our newly released annual report. It will highlight malware category trends and discuss new and emerging threats to be on the watch for. There will also be a discussion of industry best practices and technologies that can help your business to prevent, detect, and remediate these threats.

Attendees will leave with insight into the current malware threat landscape, as well as an understanding of steps they can take to mitigate breaches.

Turning Alerts Into Answers: Solving the Cloud Security Conundrum

  Presented by Expel

Our businesses are moving to the cloud with or without us. Perceived cost savings and convenience are key drivers for the business. While there are clearly opportunities for improvement in overall security when it comes to the cloud, we see CISOs being concerned about the lack of visibility into where our data resides and the controls that are said to be in place. And the concern isn’t just with cloud providers, it’s with all third parties with whom we share data, systems, and connections.

In this session, Justin Bajko of Expel will talk about what CISOs and security operations leads need to care about when it comes to cloud and security, and how to determine the different attack surfaces that exist in the cloud and with third parties. We’ll also talk about the processes and technologies that exist to help manage third party risk and the technical controls available to help secure the cloud.

Filling the Cybersecurity Talent Pipeline

  Presented by CyberUp

Join the Advisory Council for a discussion on the IT talent gap and career pathway opportunities you have.

Moderator:

  • Tony Bryan • Executive Director, CyberUp

Panelists:

  • Dave Reddick • Executive Director, Gateway Higher Education Cybersecurity Consortium
  • Kurt Aubuchon • Founder/Principal Consultant, Portunus Consulting
  • Mike Fuszner • Department Chair, St Charles Community College

Agility for People, Product, Process

  Presented by Suvandhya Rao • Agile Coach & Jolene Jangles • Transformation Coach; Balance Agility

In the recent years, Agility has increased in popularity. It is well known that it started in software development and has been adopted in other fields as well.

Join us to learn more about Agility and its effect on People Product and Process.
It will be an interactive session where we will share information, debunk myths and give you tools that will help bring three essential and indispensable areas of people, products and process together in a way that makes life better, faster, cheaper and happier!

Accessing Emerging Technology with St Louis’ Startup Ecosystem

  Presented by Advisory Council

There is the world of large enterprise companies and the world of startups. Often these groups orbit in different circles, but there is much to be gained by working together. Join the Advisory Council for a panel on the startup community in the Saint Louis area as they discuss what the ecosystem is like, how these seemingly disparate groups can connect and what can be gained from joining forces. Come hear stories from community leaders and corporate program managers and discover what hidden gems you can be a part of.

Moderator:

  • Mary Louise Helbig • Executive Director, ITEN STL

Panelists:

  • Tamas Javor • Assistant Director, UMSL Accelerate
  • Brian Handrigan • Co-Founder, Advocado
  • Ladan Kamfar • Business Relationship Management Dept. Lead, Enterprise Holdings

How Blockchain Can Boost Your Business Top-Line and Trim Your Bottomline

  Presented by Feng Hou • Chief Digital Transformation Evangelist; Maryville University

Blockchain technology is currently being adopted at all levels of the business environment including utilities, healthcare, payments, supply-chain, government, agriculture, and more. A recent survey conducted by PwC shows that a fully 84% of the responding companies have actively used blockchain. And according to Reuters, venture capital investment in blockchain startups will likely set a new all-time high in 2019. Blockchain is also gaining momentum this year due to the increasing interests of some of the largest technology companies such as Facebook, Apple, Twitter, and IBM, etc.

Drawn from his successful experience in implementing several blockchain solution, the keynote speaker will present how to use blockchain to boost your business top-line and cut your business bottomline. Specifically, he will show how record-keeping, smart contract and tokenization can help improve your business efficiency and add new sources of revenue.

Currently serving as the Chief Digital Transformation Evangelist at Maryville University in St. Louis, Feng Hou is a Harvard educated senior executive with more than 20 years leadership and digital transformation experience. Hou leads digital transformation with strategic development to improve customer digital experience, enhance operational efficiency and cut operational spending.

As an award winning CIO, Hou has led the blockchain initiative to successfully implement a student owned digital certificate and degree diploma solution at Central New Mexico Community College (CNM), which made CNM the first higher education institution in the nation to use blockchain technology to provide its students with digital credentials. Building upon the successful experience, Hou has been working on several blockchain use cases from creating a universal student ID, using smart contract to create a blockchain ERP solution, as well as building a stackable micro-credentialing solution to certify student soft skills.

Hou is a nationally sought-after keynote speaker. In the past 6 months, Hou has keynoted at Blockchain in Education Conference in Washington DC about how to use blockchain technology to reform higher education; he gave another keynote speech at INTERFACE-New Mexico 2018 in Albuquerque, NM to discuss about using blockchain technology to enhance cybersecurity. He also gave a speech to the Board and senior staff at New Mexico Mutual about how blockchain can transform insurance business. Recently, Hou has collaborated with IBM to build the global blockchain education platform.

As the leading blockchain expert in US, Hou frequently speaks about the major impact of blockchain technology on education reform, cybersecurity enhancement as well as industry transformation. He has recently been invited to the White House to attend the STEM Summit; he also hosted a roundtable discussion with the university and college presidents at the Higher Education Congress Annual Meeting in Washington DC. Hou has developed the widely adopted 7 criteria for selecting the right blockchain solutions that has recently been published in Business Officer Magazine; Hou also has 2 US Patents pending.

Hou is the Co-founder of Albuquerque Blockchain Alliance (ABA), he currently serves on the National Reviewing Board for the Blockchain Certificate Exam and was a member of the National Government Blockchain Chamber Albuquerque Chapter. Hou also served on the Board of Directors for The New Mexico Council for Higher Education Computing/Communication Services (CHECS) and Board of Directors for New Mexico Technology Council. He was twice elected as the President of Florida Association of Educational Data Systems (FAEDS).

Birds of a Feather

  Presented by Advisory Council

Want an opportunity to discuss in small groups and learn from other attendees? Join your fellow attendees in informal round table discussions on a variety of IT topics. Several lunch tables will have designated topics. Look for the “Birds of a Feather” topic signs to join the conversation. Tables will be located just outside of the theaters.

Table topics include:

  • Third Party Risk
  • Career Development
  • Diversity and Inclusion
  • BC/DR and Availability Planning
  • VoIP
  • And more…

Hold onto Your Butts! Build a Better BC/DR Plan Than Jurassic Park

  Presented by Jimmy Tassin • Member, InfraGard

Business continuity and disaster recovery should be a key priority in all levels of business. Where the largest of companies can stumble when something happens (InGen) because not all potential factors were considered, SMBs can be chaos! Between convincing management to get solutions in place, figuring out what to put in place, determining what makes up a good plan and testing it once it’s in place, can be a monumental task for a small team, or a team of one. With seven years experience in the banking industry and working extensively with regulations, Jimmy will pass along what he learned about building a proper BC/DR plan, testing it, and recording to prove it’s getting done. He’ll also share a few “disasters” where things didn’t go the way they should have, to help you avoid the same pitfalls.