Topic: Culture

Seminar Topics

Building a Secure and Sustainable Remote Work Environment

  Presented by Eric Finch • Chief Innovation and Technology Officer, City of Spokane

This presentation looks at how to build a more sustainable remote work environment, now that COVID-19 has made an enduring part of the technology support landscape. Using examples and lessons learned from Spokane and other organizations, we’ll give a quick look at the rapid expansion, evolving best practices for security and support, and what this means for technology and organizations going forward.

Eric Finch started as Chief Information & Technology Officer (CITO- a combined CIO/CTO position) for the City of Spokane, Washington in March 2015 and is chartered to bring a new level of integration and service partnership to the City with an increasing focus on citizen engagement and access to City services through Strategic Planning, Smart City, Open Data, Emergency Management, and other initiatives. In 2016 the department name “Information” was changed to “Innovation” to better represent the many varied service needs and strategic future focus of the department and role.

Mr. Finch transitioned from the U.S. Army in November 2014 as Chief Operating Officer responsible for planning and operations of a U.S. Army Division of over 12,000 personnel. This included a final tour to Afghanistan in 2013 where he was responsible for all operations for two provinces in southern Afghanistan. Mr. Finch is currently an active member of the California Army National Guard in State level Army Operations.

In his previous 25-year civilian technology career, Eric was an I.T. Director for a Fortune 500 financial company and principal for a small technology and management consulting firm for 12 years. His roles included providing strategic direction and tactical leadership for information technology and innovation in the public and private sectors. His private sector work included consulting on technology, economic development, and tax base development for hundreds of City and County government organizations.

Eric has a Master’s of Business from the University of Southern California (USC) and holds over a dozen technical, management, and FEMA emergency management certifications including Project Management Professional and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt.

Work from Home: Do You Have a Strategy?

  Presented by Nutanix

As we have seen in 2020, many companies are working to enable their employees to have a work from home capability. However, there are many factors that contribute to whether that will be possible or not. Are their apps supported? What devices are supported? How secure will they be? What latency issues will they incur and where is the data locality?

All of these topics and more will be addressed.

Digital Transformation’s Focus in the Shadow of COVID-19 & Cybersecurity in the Equation

  Presented by ACTRA

Digital Transformation has been a major focus affecting every sector over sometime now and a major contributor to increased organizational productivity and workforce transformation. COVID-19 resulted in virtually all organizations going partially or entirely virtual in response to CDC recommendations.

Questions we will answer in this discussion:

  • What lasting impact does COVID-19 have on digital transformation strategies in optimizing process flow and efficiency?
  • What unique cybersecurity considerations might this impact result in for practitioners?
  • Given the potential impact and power of process integration, machine learning, and AI, how is this effecting or may it affect digital transformation in the foreseeable future?

Panelists:
Frank Grimmelmann • President & CEO, ACTRA

Anthony Dezilva • Security Architect, On Semiconductor//Chief Architect ACTRA Global Watch Center
Arthur Hansen • CEO, INCUS5
Mike Manrod • Chief Information Security Officer, Grand Canyon Education (GCE)
Pete Kim • Chief Information Security Officer, Raytheon Missile Systems

Work from Home: Do You Have a Strategy?

  Presented by Nutanix

As we have seen in 2020, many companies are working to enable their employees to have a work from home capability. However, there are many factors that contribute to whether that will be possible or not. Are their apps supported? What devices are supported? How secure will they be? What latency issues will they incur and where is the data locality?

All of these topics and more will be addressed.

Shifting from ITSM to ESM as a Way to Enable and Transform the Enterprise

  Presented by ServiceNow

As a member of IT, have you found yourself doubting your relationship with the rest of the organization as you’re perceived as a cost center rather an equal part stakeholder with a common goal? Do you find yourself struggling to collaborate with the rest of the organization as the tech debt in your organization has created seemingly insurmountable silo’s? If you feel any of this describes your work environment and how IT may be perceived, please join the discussion in how the concepts of IT Service Management need to shift to a more inclusive Enterprise Service Management strategy. Ultimately, driving more effective technology purchasing, collaboration across the enterprise and re-branding of IT as an organizational enabler.

Talking to the Board About the New Realities of IT Security

  Presented by ExtraHop Networks

With the sudden shift of the global workforce from in-office to remote, IT teams quickly transformed their operations to accommodate the new realities of business — including large-scale adoption of work-from-home technologies, heightened activity on customer-facing networks, and greater use of online services.

While these examples of agility allowed business to continue, they also greatly increased the risk of misconfigurations and cyberthreats. Now, it’s looking like they could be here to say for a while. On top of that, bad actors have wasted no time trying to exploit new vulnerabilities. In the past several weeks, we’ve seen ransomware attacks affect several major organizations. These attacks come on the tail of a surge of attacks across the board brought on during the pandemic, as hackers scanned and took advantage of new workloads, and vulnerable VPN connections and misconfigurations left the gates to the network open.

When attacks like these make headlines, panicked board members have one question for CISOs: how can we be sure that won’t happen to us? We will share top strategies for CISOs to lead board-level conversations about risk management amidst the stark new realities of IT.

Plan, Mobilize and Act: How the IT Industry in Nevada Securely Responded to a Pandemic

  Presented by INTERFACE Advisory Council

In March, we were all forced to react quickly to a global pandemic. Companies had to mobilize to enable employees to work from home. This task was placed on the shoulders of IT departments all throughout Nevada. How does this remote working environment change workflow? What challenges remain for IT departments? Will we see permanent remote working in many industries? What security vulnerabilities did this expose and in what ways have we responded?

Join Barbara Guerin and Jeff Jorczak from Renown Health as they discuss these topics and more. They will share their experiences from leading the deployment of remote working and offer insight into what lies ahead. They will also touch on new security challenges that have arisen form a remote working environment.

Work from Home: Do You Have a Strategy?

  Presented by Nutanix

As we have seen in 2020, many companies are working to enable their employees to have a work from home capability. However, there are many factors that contribute to whether that will be possible or not. Are their apps supported? What devices are supported? How secure will they be? What latency issues will they incur and where is the data locality?

All of these topics and more will be addressed.

Motivating Employees in 2020

  Presented by INTERFACE Advisory Council

So many companies have been utilizing remote working for several months now. What are the tricks we have learned about motivating employees to stay productive? Is positive reinforcement a better approach than negative? How have IT departments been involved in this process? Join the INTERFACE-Reno Advisory Council for a discussion on getting the most out of employees. We will also look forward to what processes will continue to be like for all your employees and customers alike.

Shifting from ITSM to ESM as a Way to Enable and Transform the Enterprise

  Presented by ServiceNow

As a member of IT, have you found yourself doubting your relationship with the rest of the organization as you’re perceived as a cost center rather an equal part stakeholder with a common goal? Do you find yourself struggling to collaborate with the rest of the organization as the tech debt in your organization has created seemingly insurmountable silo’s? If you feel any of this describes your work environment and how IT may be perceived, please join the discussion in how the concepts of IT Service Management need to shift to a more inclusive Enterprise Service Management strategy. Ultimately, driving more effective technology purchasing, collaboration across the enterprise and re-branding of IT as an organizational enabler.