Archives: Seminar

[1 CPE] Copilot: Free Ride or First Class?

  Presented by Chris Watson, Sr Systems Engineer • High Point Networks

Not all Copilot experiences are created equal—so are you getting a free ride, or flying first class?

In this session, Chris Watson cuts through the hype to show what Microsoft Copilot actually delivers at the basic level—and what changes when you move to premium. Through real-world scenarios and practical demonstrations, you’ll see where Copilot saves time, where it falls short, and where premium features unlock real business value across Teams, Outlook, Excel, and security workflows.

Whether you’re evaluating Copilot or already rolling it out, you’ll leave with a clear understanding of what you’re paying for—and how to make it worth it.

[1 CPE] Modern Breaches: Lessons for Security Leaders

  Presented by Tim Medin • Founder, CEO, Red Siege

Today’s breaches rarely happen because of a single missed patch or one overlooked alert. They happen when attackers combine phishing, social engineering, ransomware tactics, exposed systems, and misaligned priorities to turn small weaknesses into business-level incidents.

In this keynote, Tim Medin provides a focused look at how modern cyberattacks actually unfold and what security leaders need to take from them. The session examines the tactics used in real-world breaches, why teams often spend time on vulnerabilities that are easy to track instead of risks that are most likely to be exploited, and how leadership can better align security efforts with the threats that matter most.

Attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of today’s threat landscape, the common gaps attackers rely on, and practical ways to prioritize prevention, mitigation, and response across the organization.

Tim spent more than a dozen years teaching thousands of students as Senior Instructor and course author of SEC560: Enterprise Penetration Testing at The SANS Institute. Through the course of his career, Tim has performed penetration tests on a wide range of organizations and technologies. Tim has gained information security experience in a variety of industries including previous positions in control systems, higher education, financial services, and manufacturing.

Tim is an experienced international speaker, having presented to organizations around the world. Tim earned his MBA through the University of Texas and recently completed an eMBA equivalent through Harvard Business School.

[1 CPE] Hiring IT Talent in Montana: A Panel Discussion on What Works

  Presented by INTERFACE Advisory Council

Finding experienced IT professionals in Montana continues to be a significant challenge. How is your organization addressing this issue? Have you explored hiring remote workers? If so, with what results? Many IT professionals will bounce around from different positions for salary increases that may not be as beneficial as they seem. How can the IT staffer make the right decisions and not create unforeseen career challenges?

Join the INTERFACE Montana Advisory Council for an open discussion on IT staffing challenges for both the manager and employees. This discussion will be led by your peers that can share their experiences in filling IT roles. They can also provide advice to the younger IT worker who wants to advance up the ladder. Additionally, we’ll discuss strategies for identifying and cultivating local tech talent. Join us for an open and practical conversation about real solutions to Montana IT workforce challenges.

Panelists:

  • Jason Emery, Manager, IT Security, Consumer Direct Care Network
  • Peter Martinson, Managing Director, Strategic IT, Montana State University
  • Jessica Ritchie, Risk Management Bureau Chief, State of Montana
  • Michele Snowberger, IT Chief of Staff, State of Montana

[1 CPE] Driving Successful AI Adoption

  Presented by Hunter Helfgott, Data & AI Consultant, & Hayden Busic, Data & AI Product Manager • 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 mid-2026: key trends and challenges teams are facing
  • Lessons learned: what working, what doesn’t, and what to do differently going forward
  • A practical framework for successful AI adoption: from strategy to execution
  • Measuring success: KPIs, governance, and how to prove value over time

Advisory Council Roundtables

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:

  • Data Protection in the Age of AI
  • Ensuring Security and Compliance with 3rd Parties
  • IT Staffing: Onboarding for Success
  • Get More Out of Your IT Spending
  • Managing Infosec for the Small/Medium Business
  • Security Approach in Public Sector
  • Security Awareness: What Methods Work to “Secure the Human”
  • Zero Trust Strategy: Challenges & Lessons Learned

[1 CPE] Proving Cyber Resilience: Measuring Outcomes, Not Effort

  Presented by Tony Taylor, Sales Engineer • Horizon3.ai

Most security programs measure effort — not outcomes. Organizations patch thousands of vulnerabilities, deploy dozens of tools, and run annual tabletop exercises… but when an attacker shows up, none of that matters.

What matters is whether they can prove their defenses actually work.

In this talk, Horizon3.ai shares how leading organizations are using autonomous pentesting to see their environment through the attacker’s eyes — continuously, safely, and at scale. By shifting from assumptions to proof, they’ve learned to:

  • Prioritize what’s exploitable. Focus limited resources on the weaknesses that truly put the business at risk that are known to be abused by threat actors.
  • Quickly fix what matters. Close the loop from find → fix → verify and reduce your exploitable attack surface.
  • Reduce attacker dwell time. Use pentest results to precisely deploy honeyTokens to detect compromise early, and to continuously prove your EDR and SIEM are tuned and working as intended.

Cyber resilience isn’t about being perfect — it’s about getting better over time. And the only perspective that truly matters is the attacker’s.

[1 CPE] AI: Cybersecurity’s Double-Edged Sword

  Presented by Daniel Navarro, Sales Engineer • ESET

This session explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping the modern cyber threat landscape by empowering both attackers and defenders. It examines how adversaries use AI to scale attacks, evade detection, and increase their effectiveness. The presentation also highlights how organizations can leverage AI to build proactive, adaptive defenses that detect and respond to threats more efficiently. Finally, it showcases how ESET applies AI-driven technologies to protect against evolving cyber-attacks and strengthen overall security resilience.

[1 CPE] State of the Union: Annual Information Security Report

  Presented by Chad Spoden, Sr Information Security Consultant, Solution Architect Manager • FRSecure

The result of over 100 incident cases handled by the FRSecure response team in the last two years, Sr Information Security Consultant Chad Spoden will dive into the latest threats and response techniques you need to know—and what you can do to minimize the risk and impact of similar events. The breakdown will cover Business Email Compromise, Ransomware, and Internal Compromise. You can’t afford to miss it!

[1 CPE] The 2026 AI SOC Leadership Report: What Security Leaders Really Want

  Presented by Torq

Torq surveyed 450 SOC leaders globally to find out what AI is actually doing inside the SOC. The findings challenged some assumptions — and confirmed others.

We’ll dig into insights including:

  • Why 97% of security leaders are confident AI can handle triage, but only 35% are using it there
  • What’s behind the trust barrier that 92% of leaders say is holding AI back
  • What 85% of leaders mean when they say they want a “unified platform”
  • Where teams plan to expand AI over the next 12 months — and what’s standing in their way

[1 CPE] The Enterprise Buyer’s Guide to AI Security Platforms

  Presented by Steven Alexander, Sales Engineer • 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.