Archives: Seminar

[1 CPE] Cybersecurity and AI: The Knowledge of Good and Evil

  Presented by Jim Bates, Certified Leadership Coach • Session Sponsored by Alaska Communications

What’s all the hype about AI? Heard of OpenAI and ChatGPT? What does this mean for cybersecurity? How is, and will, AI be used to help us manage the enormous threat landscape? How will threat agents use AI to thwart our defenses? Join this dynamic session to learn more about AI, what it is, how it’s being used, and why the current conversation is so divided regarding this emerging technology – both good and bad.

[1 CPE] Law Enforcement and Cyber Incident Response: How We Can Be Allies

  Presented by Kevin Hinrichs • FBI Special Agent, Cyber Squad

To successfully build a plan for addressing cyber threats, organizations need to know when and how to engage law enforcement. Oftentimes addressing law enforcement is seen as a barrier or a complication for incident handling. Law enforcement should be viewed as an asset and ally in the fight against cyber threats. For companies looking for insight into exactly what they are facing, this cooperation can fill a crucial need. The presentation aims to shed light on what it really means to work with law enforcement, and how that work can be mutually beneficial to both parties.

Special Agent Kevin Hinrichs is a 12-year Alaska resident who spent 13 years in the control system industry as a software developer before joining the FBI. He previously worked as lead developer for a software suite focused on critical condition management across a vast array of ICS/SCADA platforms. Since pivoting to work for the FBI, Special Agent Hinrichs has been assigned to the Cyber Squad in Anchorage where he works on a range of cyber issues including BEC, insider threat, hacktivism, nation-state threats, and has extensively focused on the ransomware threat, specifically enterprise ransomware. Special Agent Hinrichs has a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Houston in Computer Science and Mathematics. Among the roles Special Agent Hinrichs fulfills for the FBI Anchorage office are the InfraGard Coordinator position for the Alaska InfraGard Chapter, the primary point of contact for ICS/SCADA issues, and the subject matter expert for cryptocurrency.

[1 CPE] Panel Discussion: Retaining Your IT Staff in Alaska, Can it be Done?

  Presented by INTERFACE Advisory Council

“The other company is offering higher wages. I get to work remotely as much as I want, and I am getting a four-day workweek. Sorry but I must take it.” Have you heard this just a few times? So many IT hiring managers are having to find creative ways to keep staff members in-house. While budgets and major company overhauls can’t always be achieved, there are methods that can help.

Alaska has some of the most unique challenges in the country for retaining staff. Join the INTERFACE Advisory Council for an open conversation on how to keep your Alaska IT staff intact. This panel features local area IT hiring managers and leaders that deal with these challenges in their own shops. Bring your questions as there will be an opportunity to get advice on the needs you have.

Panelists:

  • Ulf Asplund, Technical Services Manager, Alaska Court System
  • Jeremy Bloomstrom, Senior Programmer Analyst, Matanuska-Susitna Borough
  • Justin Michaud, Senior Program Manager, Mat-Su Borough School District
  • Janelle Mullen, Chief of Operations for IT Customer Services, AK Dept of Health & Social Services

[1 CPE] How Alaska’s New Broadband Reach Can Deliver Benefits to All Communities

  Presented by Mark Carlson, Director of Network Planning • Alaska Communications

Broadband is so influential in society that we would now call it essential infrastructure. Alaska has new broadband projects that are reaching places never touched before. In this session, you will learn about current and future broadband projects taking place around the state of Alaska, upcoming fiber optic projects in rural Alaska, LEO/GEO Satellite technology, and how broadband can influence and improve, life as we know it, to both individuals and communities.

[1 CPE] Cybersecurity Trends for 2023

  Presented by Jeff Simpson, Sr Sales Executive, Cybersecurity Solutions • AT&T Alaska

With Cybersecurity compliance mandates increasing, and attacks on vulnerable supply chains and endpoints on the rise, it has never been more important to assess and take proactive measures to secure your network. This presentation pulls together information from many different analysts and digests their views on which Cybersecurity priorities your organization may face this year, along with the top eight cybersecurity trends for 2023, such as Supply Chain Resilience, Security Architecture Modernization and Data-Centric Transformation.

[1 CPE] 40 Years in 40 Minutes – A Journey Through Cyber

  Presented by Grant Asplund, Growth Technologies Evangelist • Check Point Software

A journey through cyber – from stand-alone Apple II computers using PFS or Ashton-Tate software to today’s ubiquitous, always-on, hyper-connected, cloud-first computing. This session is a fun compilation of short stories and excerpts spanning four decades in the cyber industry. Grant will discuss the transition from single systems to networking to the internet… and how cyber security has evolved from securing virtually nothing to virtually everything. Grant will also share his thoughts on the constantly evolving threat landscape including IoT, Cloud, and the still-reigning champion, Email. Finally, Grant will offer considerations for improving your overall security posture today as well as future trends… you’ll even have a chance to win some cash.

[1 CPE] Seeing Your Attack Surface Through the Eyes of an Adversary

  Presented by Terry Hillis, Systems Engineering, Cortex • Palo Alto Networks

The best way to manage exposure, reduce risk, and improve your security posture is to understand your attack surface through the eyes of an attacker. We’ll demonstrate how to reduce the frequency and severity of your security incidents without additional analysts or efforts and help your organization actively discover, learn about, and respond to unknown risks in all connected systems and exposed services. Learn how you can boost your Attack Surface Management (ASM) with visibility into your on-prem and cloud-based internet-connected assets and recommendations on prioritized actions so you can better defend your organization.

In this session, you will learn about:

  • Trends influencing the modern attack surface
  • How you can build an up-to-date version of your attack surface to include both known and unknown assets
  • Streamline your Attack Surface Management (ASM) program with Unit 42 security expertise and threat intelligence
  • Reduce risk with actionable recommendations from Unit 42 Incident Response (IR) experts
  • Discover shadow IT infrastructure, identify assets vulnerable to CVEs, and gain prioritized recommendations to remediate potential threats before they are exploited

[1 CPE] ChatGPT Did NOT Write This Topic (or did it?)

  Presented by Brian Knopp, Principal Security Engineer • Arctic Wolf

Are “AI” and Machine Learning tools like ChatGPT having an impact on cybersecurity? This session will examine the top attacks looking back on 2022. We’ll define them by quantifiable impacts, like affected individuals, cost, and data breaches. We’ll also discuss key sociological and economic factors that increased vulnerabilities in 2022, identify industries that saw significant attacks, and summarize the top 5-6 data breaches and evaluate the impact of these threats on personnel retention and insurability, 2023 predictions, and the most common recommendations to improve your security posture.

[1 CPE] Zero-Trust Architectures

  Presented by Rubrik

Organizations have invested heavily in IT security, attempting to fortify their perimeter, network, endpoint, and application protections. Despite these investments, hackers are successfully penetrating these defenses and targeting enterprise data, including backup data. Ransomware is starting to specifically target online backups by encrypting or deleting them. If your organization was the target of an attack today, how do you know what data was impacted and where? Manually sifting through millions of files and comparing each snapshot consumes FTE time and prolongs recovery exponentially. Mass restores of the entire environment could mean high data loss and weeks’ worth of work down the drain. In this session, we will discuss how to protect your last line of defense, the backups. We will walk through the anatomy of a recovery, the best practices, and advanced tools to ensure you will not have to pay a ransom, and how to quickly recover your data to continue business operations.