Archives: Seminar

  Presented by Curtis Carver • CIO for University of Alabama at Birmingham

This presentation examines actual phishing, distributed denial of service, and ransomware attacks against a research university in the last 24 months. In the case of the DDOS and ransomware attacks, these were multi-month attacks that morphed over time. Come learn what worked and did not work against the three most common forms of attack today and then participate in a conversation on what will work at your organization in preparing for, detecting, and defeating these attacks.

Dr. Curtis Carver was named Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer in June 2015, following a national search. In this role as a servant leader and enabler of others, he leads a team of dedicated professionals who support UAB’s mission by providing world-class IT solutions with a focus on innovation, agility, and cost-efficiency. A senior leader in higher education information technology, Dr. Carver came to UAB from his position as Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer for the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, having previously held key leadership positions at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Carver earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and his master’s degree and doctorate in computer science from Texas A&M University. Throughout his career, he has received numerous national and international honors and awards for military, teaching, and research excellence. Dr. Carver is a frequent keynote speaker and has published extensively.

  Presented by ThinkGard

ThinkGard recently had the opportunity to assist an organization that found itself in a situation that nobody wants to. Their network had been infiltrated by bad actors who then exfiltrated over 400GB of sensitive client and employee data just before encrypting all the machines on their network with ransomware. The exfiltrated data was subsequently released to the dark web where it was located by a cyber security website that wrote an article about it. This situation is just about as bad as you can imagine. Our presentation is a deep-dive case study of what happened, how it happened, how it could have been prevented, and how they ultimately recovered, complete with timelines, screenshots from the hackers, info from the ISP, and more. The twists and turns in this story are incredible. You don’t want to miss it.

  Presented by Chris Roberts • Chief Security Strategist, Cynet

Most of the security industry is chasing “around” 31,000 larger enterprise sized companies for their business. The list is well known, circulated and targets are on the backs of ALL the C-Suite, most of the technical folks and the MSP/VARS that support them. The Security industry circles them like packs of hyena or vultures waiting for one of them to fall, get breached, or for a vendor to be thrown out… pouncing on the fresh kill with glee…

Meanwhile, you’re sitting there getting slaughtered by every adversary known to mankind because you ARE the forgotten, you’re too small for the multi-billion $$ cyber companies whom IF they decide to deal with you will flood you with MSA’s, SOW’s and NDA’s that would take a week’s worth of lawyer time JUST to understand, let alone realize that they’re not accountable for anything, unlikely to want to support you and in all honestly you’ll get a 1-800-YOU-AREN’T-SPECIAL number as your sole source of support.

We’re going to address the current situation, the state of play, and give you some thoughts, suggestions, ideas AND plans. We’ll provide resources on HOW to evaluate, where to look, what to do AND importantly we’ll do it because it’s what we’re doing. We live, breath and deal with this daily. We’ve sat in the meetings when the large cybersecurity companies state, “we’re done dealing with the SMB market” and we’ve got the battle scars from dealing with those subsequent consequences.

  Presented by Darktrace

In the immediate aftermath of a ransomware attack, executives too often face a difficult dilemma: either pay a ransom or shut down critical systems and services. In today’s increasingly complex digital ecosystems, the collateral damage that ensues from ransomware attacks can be broad-ranging and destructive, with organizations taking days, weeks, or even months to recover.

But what if there was another way out – a way to surgically contain ransomware in its earliest stages, without disrupting normal business operations? Join this presentation to learn how Cyber AI is helping thousands of organizations fight back against ransomware. We’ll discuss:

• The impact of ‘double-extortion’ ransomware and ‘ransomware-as-a-service’
• Real-world examples of ransomware detected by Cyber AI
• How self-learning AI responds proportionately to ransomware, thanks to its deep understanding of an organization’s pattern of life