Topic: Strategic Management

Seminar Topics

[1 CPE] Addressing Cybersecurity Concerns for Critical Infrastructure Organizations

  Presented by Leslie Ann Kainoa, Oregon Cybersecurity State Coordinator • CISA

In this session, we will address the current cybersecurity threats and critical infrastructure stakeholder concerns. We will focus on under-discussed topics, including how to address resource constraints and organizational dependencies. We will also review CISA’s recommended best practices and offer guidance for how all critical infrastructure organizations can effectively leverage CISA resources.

Leslie Ann Kainoa is the Oregon Cybersecurity State Coordinator for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Region 10. In her current role, Leslie provides cybersecurity assistance and support to public and private Critical Infrastructure sectors throughout the State. She is focused on working with these organizations to improve cybersecurity and critical infrastructure resilience.

[1 CPE] The Ukrainian Paradox

  Presented by Jerry Petru, President • InfraGard Washington

This session is designed for individuals interested in interrogating the far-reaching cybersecurity impact of the war in Ukraine. We will cover how to prepare your organization for a bad day; what combat electronic warfare is and whether it is different from cybercriminal activity; the tactics and techniques of a cyber guerrilla force; how drones are changing the attack vector of security; and why having a detailed action plan for incident response is critical and where to find reliable information. This presentation is based on facts and information gathered by a former US Army Special Force Operator (Green Beret) who has family and friends in Ukraine. This session will be an open and free-flowing discussion of real-world issues; attendees are encouraged to ask questions.

Bio: Jerry Petru is the President of the Washington State InfraGard Chapter and a Fellow of the British Computer Society, The Charted Institute for IT. He is an innovative and technically sophisticated professional, offering substantial years of broad-based experience in evaluating large corporate systems. Powered with a comprehensive background in development and implementation, he has authored more than forty-seven different courses based on AIX, Encryption, Linux, Networking, Security, and Virtualization technologies teaching to an audience of tens of thousands around the world for the past twenty-five years.

Mr. Petru is equipped with a proven track record of success in designing and implementing systems and policies based on Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability to meet business continuity and disaster recovery for long-range strategic plans of Fortune 100 Companies. He is also armed with stellar qualifications in all facets of project lifecycle development, from initial analysis and conceptual design to implementation, quality review, and enhancement to optimize operational efficiencies that improve business and IT operations.

[1 CPE] Learning from the IT Titans of Omaha & Lessons from the Recent Past

  Presented by Scott Davis, CDW Enterprise Architecture Team Field CTO & former Hitachi Field CTO  • Hitachi Vantara & CDW

You deserve a raise. Scratch that, you deserve a vacation and a raise. As an IT Titan, you were immeasurable in keeping your company afloat when the world halted in 2020 and threw all your initiatives into chaos. As an IT Titan, you persevered when all your priorities shifted to supporting every employee remotely and transforming your business into running 24/7 during the WFH mandate, while still caring for your loved ones. You achieved migrating your organization into the cloud, extending your security firewalls into the homes of your workforce, keeping stringent compliance requirements, and automating workflows to continue meeting stretch goals with limited staff. Whew!

As you reflect on your accomplishments, what did you learn? And what could you have done differently that will be top of mind to adapt to the woes of today, including perhaps mounting technical debt, a looming recession, an upcoming election year, ongoing supply chain issues, and urgent sustainability efforts?

  • In the year of efficiency, how can businesses leverage cloud repatriation efforts and containerization to cut ballooning cloud costs?
  • As you continue layering security tool after security tool, how can you implement cyber resiliency and drastically limit your risk from attackers?
  • With the looming recession and a hiring freeze, how can IT departments meet stretch goals by leveraging adaptive automation technologies, such as ChatGPT? And how can compliance teams regulate these new tools to ensure data privacy while maintaining brand equity?
  • How can you help accelerate your organization’s timeline for becoming carbon net-zero and ditch reusable straws and $0.10 plastic bags?

Join us as we review the top IT trends for 2023/2024 with CDW’s Scott Davis, Strategist and Former Hitachi Field CTO. As a former CTO and COO, Scott brings a unique perspective in guiding programs for organizational change. He brings his executive experience to help identify customer goals and challenges that disrupt the status quo to enable a better digital transformation roadmap leveraging the value of data, the IoT, and AI to achieve new business insights faster.

[1 CPE] Fireside Chat: Why the Village of Los Lunas Adopted a Continuous Threat Exposure Management Strategy

  Presented by Ken Ballard, Vice President of FortifyData and Luis Brown, IT Director for the Village of Los Lunas

Join Luis Brown, IT Director for the Village of Los Lunas and FortifyData’s Ken Ballard who will interview Luis on the challenges that led to the decision. This will cover what continuous threat exposure management is and explore the challenges and considerations that Luis was facing in how their IT team can effectively identify and manage cyber risks. Some of the issues include how to get the full picture of attack surface threats with accurate asset identification, integrating risk data from disparate sources, and efficiently managing all of this for the team to respond.

[1 CPE] Maelstrom of Security

  Presented by Jerry Petru, President • InfraGard Washington

This session is designed for individuals responsible for their organizations’ Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability from the front door firewall administrator with IDS/IPS, cloud, compliance, data governance, and networking all the way to the Chief Executives of an organization. In a world of ever-changing threat landscapes, this session will cover the overall magnitude of the challenge! We’ll discuss the evolution as it took place and what to do about fixing what is in our hands today.

We’ll cover how to speak to the C-Suite and get the business side of the conversation to move toward better security hygiene and answer the question of how much security is enough. This session is truly about information security risk. The risk is Very High for all organizations. The NIST 800-30 defines Very High Risk as that of a threat event that could be expected to have multiple severe or catastrophic adverse effects on organizational operations, organizational assets, individuals, other organizations, or the Nation. The discussion will be open and free-flowing, covering real-world business issues and providing a platform to ask your questions.

Bio: Jerry Petru is the President of the Washington State InfraGard Chapter and a Fellow of the British Computer Society, The Charted Institute for IT. He is an innovative and technically sophisticated professional, offering substantial years of broad-based experience in evaluating large corporate systems. Powered with a comprehensive background in development and implementation, he has authored more than forty-seven different courses based on AIX, Encryption, Linux, Networking, Security, and Virtualization technologies teaching to an audience of tens of thousands around the world for the past twenty-five years.

Mr. Petru is equipped with a proven track record of success in designing and implementing systems and policies based on Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability to meet business continuity and disaster recovery for long-range strategic plans of Fortune 100 Companies. He is also armed with stellar qualifications in all facets of project lifecycle development, from initial analysis and conceptual design to implementation, quality review, and enhancement to optimize operational efficiencies that improve business and IT operations.

[1 CPE] Saving Money in IT Project Management and Operations

  Presented by Michael J. Berry • Member and Presenter • PMI Northern Utah Chapter

In this session, you will learn how to save time, effort, and costs through Operational Excellence in IT Project Management. Also covered will be Operations that use patterns found in Agile, Lean, and Artificial Intelligence.

Michael J. Berry is the founder and chief consultant for Red Rock Research, a 17-year-old IT training and consulting company he founded in 2007. Michael’s professional consulting work has taken him all over the US, to Australia, to the Arctic Circle, and to Europe helping large companies optimize their project management and other production processes. Michael has worked in the software industry for over 35 years, specifically in Finance, Medical, and Manufacturing software. He is the creator of the Stable Framework™, an Operational Excellence performance management system for IT, and has a book blog you can read at https://blog.RedRockResearch.com.

[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] Dark Web Monitoring: It’s time for an Offensive Strategy!

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

Many organizations discover a cybersecurity breach many months later, too late for any substantial mitigation. With the average cost of breaches in the US at $9.4M, (without including ransom paid), it is advisable for organizations to take a more offensive stance. What if there was a way to detect compromised corporate credentials well before they were used to cause widespread fraud? Dark Web Monitoring goes where cybercriminals traffic stolen emails, usernames, and passwords, and can alert an organization if personal or corporate user information shows up in the Darknet layers. Learn how using a tool like this can help protect an organization’s employees, consumers, and vendors, as well as its reputation.

[1 CPE] Improved Security for SecOps & NetOps that’s Recession Friendly

  Presented by Ryan Parr, Sr Solutions Architect • Infoblox

While the future economic impact on IT budgets is unclear, one thing is clear –– attackers will not slow down and may even ramp up knowing organizations are considering lowering IT and cybersecurity spending. It is clear enterprise security is of extreme importance and making investments stretch is going to become essential. Core network services you already have in place, including DNS, DHCP, and IPAM (IP Address Management) are often overlooked in the cybersecurity world but can become the most powerful weapon against attackers. During this session, you will learn how to leverage existing services to:

  • Reduce the burden on existing security investments, extending their capacity and lifespan
  • Combat up to 92% of malware and ransomware without new security tools
  • Decrease SecOps investigation time by up to 60%
  • Improve your security posture, lowering cyber insurance costs

[1 CPE] Who’s Attacking You?

  Presented by Critical Insight

One of the most common questions from IT Leaders and Executives is: Who would attack our organization and why?

In this discussion, we’ll examine the most common cyberattack perpetrators and their methods. From hostile Nation-States to teenagers to some threat actors you might not expect. We will discuss the methods these attackers are using to gain access to your networks, be it unpatched systems, newly found zero days, as well as other avenues into your network. Also covered will be the intent of these attacks, whether it is to steal your intellectual property, extort your cryptocurrency, or to disrupt your operation to meet strategic goals. Most importantly, we will discuss how to tell the difference, and how to protect yourself.