Archives: Seminar

Cybersecurity Is All About Protecting the “Seams”

  Presented by AT&T

The evolution of cybercrime coupled with digitalization has transformed our concepts of business assets and customer interaction. An organization’s data and online presence is more important than ever. In cybersecurity terms, this increases the attack surface and increases the impact of a breach, making it a business level problem.

Digitalization continues to drive rapid changes in business models and network architectures. On the other hand, it also drives change in how cybercriminals operate by harvesting data and launching automated attacks at scale. However, security approaches have largely stayed the same, relying on reactive policy management, disparate technologies, point solutions and complex workflows. This is apparent as organizations continue to suffer data breaches as they struggle to integrate data, point solutions, security operations teams and processes.

Dispersed networks, an explosion of data, disparate technologies and complex security operations present cybercriminals with gaps or “seams” in organizations’ security postures. Fighting this requires a coordinated and collaborative approach that seamlessly orchestrates best-of-breed people, process and technology. This must utilize industry standard best practices and be powered by visibility across the threat landscape as well as actionable threat intelligence across all threat vectors.

In this session, we will talk about some security best practices to address modern security challenges and provide an overview of some technology as well as process approaches.

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.

IT Strategy and Business Engagement

  Presented by R.C. Woodson • VP, Information Technology
Doyon Limited

This presentation will help leaders to deliver an IT strategy based on business needs, not just intuition. Furthermore, it is no longer enough to generate a text document and call it an IT strategy. Stakeholder attention spans are growing shorter; in this case it is imperative that IT leaders create a visual IT strategy to show where IT is going. The speed of business is faster than ever before. This means that IT has a limited amount of time to consider business plans, understand their implications, and adapt. Most IT departments lack the skill to develop an IT strategic plan, resulting in a staggering 92% of IT departments surveyed claiming their IT strategies were less than adequate. Organizations spend enormous amounts of money on IT but cannot see its ROI or the value that IT adds to the organization. So, there is a critical need to move away from a superfluous strategic plan to clearly visualize the target state. As IT leaders we must articulate in terms that the business uses to ensure comprehension and compliance.

R.C. has over 30 years of experience in the IT industry, with over 15 years of senior executive experience in providing technology solutions to organizations. He has experience derived from a wide range of industries, both public and private. These industries include logistics, financial services, and the Department of Defense. He has taught information technology and business management courses at local colleges. Currently, R.C. is responsible for establishing, planning, and administering the overall Information Technology strategy, policies, and goals for the Doyon Limited. Doyon is one of the top ten Alaska regional corporations with more than a dozen subsidiary companies across multiple lines of business. Engineering, drilling operations, remote camp services, and security—together, Doyon companies blend expertise and technological muscle in support of smooth, safe, and successful operations in the North Slope oil fields. R.C. is known for his expertise in Strategy & Governance, Security & Risk, Mergers & Acquisitions, Server & Network Architectures, Distributed Systems and Enterprise Resource Application implementations. R.C. has installed, maintained and managed large enterprise resource applications. He is talented in efficiently creating and deploying IT solutions across many business models. He drives results and provides innovative methods to improve both IT operations and clients’ bottom-lines. R.C. mentors and manages IT activities for subsidiary companies as well as the parent company. R.C. was the Spring 2018 Boardroom Events Midmarket CIO Award recipient for his work in solution selection and deployment. His company is currently engaged in transforming the business to adapt improving efficiency across the enterprise while continuing to streamline back-office IT operations. He serves a member of the AVTEC Technology Council and the Alaska InfraGard Board.

Disaster Preparedness: The Human Element

  Presented by Alaska Communications

Disaster preparedness is more than ensuring your data is backed up in a remote safe location. Preparing for a disaster also means designing and engineering a network to ensure it is up and running to provide support services to the people in a community, during their time of need. Hear from industry experts on network planning and technology.

Evolving Your BC/DR Strategy to Protect Today’s Multi-Cloud Environments

  Presented by Unitrends

We are living in a “Less is More” world. IT Professionals are facing more work, projects, and risks than ever before, while having less time and money, and a rapidly decreasing tolerance of downtime. While external threats such as malware and natural disasters are prevalent and may cause significant downtime and data loss without the proper BCDR strategies, organizations must also be prepared to safeguard from within. Data continues to grow at an exponential rate, and not only on-premises. As cloud-delivered solutions such as IaaS and SaaS are rapidly adopted by an increasing number of organizations, these organizations must also consider their data protection strategies to address native gaps within these platforms. Join Adam Marget, Technical Demand Generation Specialist, Unitrends, as we’ll explore the evolving landscape of data protection, cloud’s growing role, BC/DR strategies to safeguard local and cloud-based workloads, and best practices in planning your DR approach.

Earthquake: Manage the Panic

  Moderated by INTERFACE Advisory Council

The November 2018 Earthquake affected just about everyone in Alaska. In the immediate moments after, people were desperate to account for the safety of their loved ones. When it came to IT departments, a lot of work had to be done. Many lessons were learned from the earthquake. What do we need to do to adjust our backup plan regarding the items we didn’t consider? Join the INTERFACE Advisory Council for an interactive discussion. Your experiences from November are welcome to be shared as we look to learn from that day.

PCI and Your Organizational Liability

  Presented by Structured Communication Systems

Payment card processing is a critical service many companies and organizations offer. But with this service comes the added responsibility to comply with PCI requirements, and the technical, administrative, and physical controls applicable to card processing environments. Failure to comply can result in costly fines. Plus, a breach of card holder information could have disastrous financial and public relations consequences for compromised merchants. Want to know more? With compelling and engaging content delivered by Rob Wayt, a PCI Qualified Security Assessor (QSA), you will learn the intricacies of these requirements, proper scoping, and how to mitigate risks that merchants have while card processing.

Transforming IT Operations with DevOps and Infrastructure Automation

  Presented by World Wide Technology

As modern organizations become increasingly dependent on evolving technology, there is an ever-increasing need for IT organizations to do more with less, decrease lead times of services, and reduce operational risk introduced by change.
In this talk, we will explore how infrastructure teams are adopting DevOps principles and readily available tools such as Ansible, Git, and Jenkins to transform operational risk and catapult operational efficiency.

Join us while we examine the following topics:

  • Learn the motivations and paths organizations are taking in developing DevOps practices within their teams.
  • Hear and see practical examples of how organizations are reducing operational overhead through infrastructure automation.
  • Learn how you can get started applying similar practices within your own teams and organization.

IT Transformation: Building your Foundation for Innovation

  Presented by Dell EMC

In this session, we will share Dell Technologies’ point-of-view regarding the key elements involved with transforming IT from a traditional siloed infrastructure organization to a market-oriented broker of services to the business. More specifically, topics discussed will include…The modernization of the data center (with a focus on converged systems, as well as the ‘five core attributes of a modern architecture’). Automation of service delivery (with a focus on IaaS, Paas, Hybrid Cloud Platform and off premise offerings). Also, transformation of IT operations (with a focus on people, process and agility).

The Digital Divide Revisited

  Presented by Matt Behrens • Chief Technology Officer for the State of Iowa

In the years since the National Telecommunications and Information Administration released its report FALLING THROUGH THE NET: A Survey of the “Have Nots” in Rural and Urban America, unequal access to information and communications technologies has been recognized as an important problem in the United States. Broadband policies have been the centerpiece of such efforts at both the state and federal level, but more work remains. The Federal Communication Commission reported that broadband has not been deployed to all Americans in a timely fashion, noting in 2018 that “24 million Americans still lack fixed terrestrial broadband” access at speeds of 25 mbps up/3 mbps down. According to the Pew Research Center, one quarter of all rural residents believe that access to high speed internet is still a “major problem.”

What are the factors influencing access to information and communication technology adoption in the United States? What can we do to help ensure everyone is able to participate in our information society? In recent years, researchers have come to define the Digital Divide in broader terms, examining not only basic access to physical internet connections, but also how and why people make decisions to use them. By understanding these emerging perspectives, a new generation of strategies can be developed to prepare our nation for the digital future.

Matt Behrens has held many different technology and leadership positions in government and higher education for the past twenty years. He currently serves as Deputy Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer for the State of Iowa Office of the Chief Information Officer where he leads strategic technology initiatives including the implementation of Iowa’s broadband incentive programs. Matt has been a Council of State Governments Henry Toll Fellow, an adjunct instructor at Drake University, and is a frequent speaker and panelist on topics ranging from technology trends to information security. He also serves on a number of boards and advisory groups including the Grandview University Business Advisory Board, the NTIA State Broadband Leaders Network, and the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation. Matt currently studies state-level broadband policy as a doctoral student at Iowa State University. He also holds an MBA with Distinction from the University of Iowa and a master’s degree in Human Computer Interaction from Iowa State University.