SECURING CTRL

Ronan is an accomplished executive with over 20 years experience in the tech industry. Ronan is currently the CEO of Smarttech247, a multi award-winning managed cyber security company that specializes in the delivery and management of complex cybersecurity solutions worldwide. Ronan is also the CEO & founder of Getvisibility, a leading AI data governance & security software company.

Hank Thomas is the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Cyber Ventures (SCV). Hank leverages 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, military intelligence, management consulting, and business to identify, assess, invest in, and mature differentiated business and technology teams positioned to revolutionize the cybersecurity landscape. Hank serves as a member of the SCV board of directors and on the boards of cybersecurity product companies TrapX Security, ID DataWeb, E8 Security, and Polarity. All are a part of the SCV portfolio of companies.

Rick is the Chief Security Officer (CSO) for Palo Alto Networks where he oversees the company’s internal security program, leads the Palo Alto Networks Threat Intelligence Team (Unit 42), directs the company’s efforts on the Cyber Threat Alliance Information Sharing Group, and hosts the Cybersecurity Canon Project. His prior jobs include the CISO for TASC, the GM of iDefense, the SOC Director at Counterpane and the Commander of the U.S. Army’s Computer Emergency Response Team. Rick holds a Master of Computer Science degree from the Naval Postgraduate School and an engineering degree from the US Military Academy.

Jackie Groark is Director, Security/CISO for Veristor, a provider of transformative business technology solutions that helps customers accelerate the time-to-value for the software, infrastructure and systems they deploy. Groark fuses a strategic view of security operations with decades of cyber threat experience as she helps customers chart a course for comprehensive business protection. Prior to working with Veristor, Groark held cybersecurity positions at Southern Company, where she helped secure one of our nation’s most critical infrastructures – the electric grid.

Simone Petrella is CEO at CyberVista, where she leads the development and delivery of cybersecurity training and education curriculums as well as workforce initiatives for executives, cyber practitioners, and continuing education.

Previously, Simone was a Senior Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton where she helped build the firm's cybersecurity practice in the commercial sector focusing on the creation of cyber fusion centers and the integration of cyber threat intelligence, security operations, and cyber defense operations into effective cyber security operations. For a decade she led the firm's all source cyber threat intelligence business in the national security and Defense sectors, where she built out a threat capability and team with in depth subject matter expertise in all aspects of cyber threat intelligence, including intelligence support to both defensive and offensive operations. Her areas of specialty included predictive cyber intelligence based on an understanding of the threat adversary and developing service offerings to integrate intelligence into exercises to provide realistic cyber scenarios. Simone received her J.D. with honors from Catholic University's Columbus School of Law and graduated from Georgetown University with a B.A. in Government and a M.A. in International Law and Policy. She is a member of Women in International Security and is admitted to the New York Bar. A native of New Jersey, she has resided in Washington D.C. since 2000.

Gur Talpaz is a Managing Director within the Equity Research group at Stifel, an investment banking and asset management firm headquartered in St. Louis. Based in Austin, Mr. Talpaz focuses on the cybersecurity industry, with primary coverage of nearly all public names within the group. Within his coverage, Mr. Talpaz focuses heavily on emerging themes within the sector and has written extensively on topics ranging from the changing endpoint market to the growing importance of identity within security as well as emerging trends such as IoT and ICS security. Mr. Talpaz has been quoted and referenced in a multitude of publications, including CNBC, the Financial Times, Barron’s, and Forbes. Mr. Talpaz graduated with honors from the University of Chicago.

Kostas Georgakopoulos is the Chief Information Security Officer at Procter & Gamble based out of Cincinnati, Ohio and leads the company’s Global Information Security Program. Mr. Georgakopoulos is responsible for the firms Information Security Governance Framework, as well as developing, mentoring and managing a team of Information Security professionals to proactively address advanced persistent threats, blended targeted attacks, and application security threats.
 
Prior to Procter & Gamble Mr. Georgakopoulos served as the Americas Head of Security Technology at UBS where he provided subject matter expertise to senior management in the development, implementation and maintenance of the firms Enterprise Information Security Framework.
 
Earlier in his career, he served as CISO at NASDAQ OMX where he led the organization through a targeted APT breach and worked closely with the NSA, DHS, the FBI and US-CERT.
 
Mr. Georgakopoulos has also built and led security programs at Bank of China, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and People’s Bank.

He has spoken at various security forums including at RSA 2014 and has taught Cybersecurity courses at Fairfield University and Sacred Heart University.
 
He has earned a master’s degree in International Law & Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He received his undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts from UCONN.

Ralph is a Research Scientist focused on Applied Identity Intelligence at Facebook. Previously he was the Co-Founder and CTO of Confirm.io, an ID authentication company, which Facebook acquired in March of 2018. As an entrepreneur, he has had multiple exits over the last 25 years as he founded Blue Hill Research, Delfigo Security, Invenio and NTA and served as a public company CTO/CIO at Brooks Automation, C-bridge Internet Solutions and Excelon Corporation.

As the longest serving Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Ralph pioneered research on artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, mobile, neural science, and security technologies at the MIT Media Lab and Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) department. He holds a Sc.D. in information systems and is a graduate of the management program GPMD-MBA at IESE Business School, Barcelona, Spain.

As an author, Rodriguez co-wrote Windows NT Security - Step by Step and Computer Incident Handling – Step by Step, both published by the SANS Institute. Most recently Rodriguez collaborated with famed attorney and author Andy Updegrove as the technical ghost writer of two cyber-thriller novels called The Doodlebug War and The Lafayette Campaign.

From 2001-2018, Rodriguez served on the Board of Directors at the Academy of Applied Science as well as the Boards of Veramark Technologies, Inc. (OTC: VERA) and the Technology Expense Management Industry Association (TEMIA). In 2005, he was inducted as a Member National (MN) Fellow in The Explorers Club in New York City. He is a US Army intelligence veteran of the Persian Gulf War in 1990, as well as a holder of 20 US patents and international patent applications.

Doug is a Senior Security Specialist team at Splunk, part of a diverse, high-performing team focused on helping security and business executives manage risk and secure strategic initiatives.

He has authored patents, articles, and books on subjects including cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, IT governance, human factors, photographic lighting and 3D printing for fine art. An accomplished technical storyteller, he regularly speaks on cybersecurity to executive, business, practitioner and end-user audiences.

Doug earned his Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Anthropology, and Psychology, and Master’s in Engineering Management from CU Boulder, and continues to support educational programs. He lives in the Colorado forest with his wife and their four-footed children, spending as much time as he can in the Rocky Mountains not doing cybersecurity.

Trevin Edgeworth is Senior Director of Offensive Security Operations for Symantec and is responsible for building and leading teams that perform a broad range of adversary emulation and ethical hacking engagements against Symantec information systems and products to identify and address key gaps and strengthen Symantec’s resilience to advanced cyber threats.

Trevin is a passionate and driven cyber security leader with over 20 years experience. Prior to joining Symantec, Trevin built and led red teams for two Fortune 100 financial institutions, Capital One and American Express and has led other programs, including Cyber Threat Intelligence, Counterintelligence, Cyber Deception, Hunt and others. In addition to finance and tech, Trevin has worked in a variety of other verticals, including biotech and hospitality.

Trevin lives in Northern Virginia but has lived most of his life on the west coast in California and Arizona. He is an avid college football fan (Pac12) and also a self-professed Super Mario Kart champion and asserts that the three tenets of Super Mario Kart Mastery are shellmanship, lack of hubris and proper manipulation of the “B” button.

Derek is the CTO at Getvisibility, an AI data security and governance software company that uses Machine Learning to discover, classify and protect unstructured data. Derek has managed distributed development teams and built enterprise software solutions for 18 years as a CTO. He has worked in multiple industries from media and television to telecoms, finance, oil and cyber-security. Derek has managed large projects with vendors spread globally and delivering products from consumer electronics to high frequency trading software.

Mike Pappacena is a Partner at ACA Aponix, the cybersecurity and IT risk division of ACA Compliance Group. In this role, he performs cybersecurity risk assessments, conducts vendor due diligence, and contributes to policy authoring, staff training, and product development.

Prior to ACA, Mike served as a project manager for Jefferies LLC and worked on several compliance initiatives. In addition, he spent fifteen years at Goldman Sachs, where as a vice president in the Technology Division, he managed development teams supporting the firm’s Legal, Compliance and Audit, Sarbanes-Oxley, Operational Risk, and Technology Risk departments. He also managed Fundamental Equities and Alternative Investments in the GSAM division. Earlier in his career, Mike worked as an engineer at Long Island Lighting Company (now PSEG).

Mike earned his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from the Pratt Institute and his Master of Business Administration degree (Finance concentration) from Adelphi University

Garrettson Blight leads Booz Allen’s DarkLabs community, an elite team of security researchers, penetration testers, reverse engineers, network analysts, and data scientists dedicated to stopping cyber attacks before they occur. He has 15 years of experience partnering with clients in both the public and private sectors, with a particular focus on work with the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence community.

Andrea Little Limbago is a computational social scientist specializing in the intersection of technology, cybersecurity, and society. She is the Chief Social Scientist at Virtru, where she researches and publishes on the geopolitics of cybersecurity, global data protection and privacy trends, workforce development, and usable security. Her writing has been featured in numerous outlets, including Politico, the Hill, Business Insider, War on the Rocks, and Forbes and she is a frequent speaker at industry, government, and academic conferences. Andrea is also the Program Director for the Emerging Technologies Program at the National Security Institute at George Mason University. She previously was the Chief Social Scientist at Endgame, a cybersecurity software company. Prior to that, Andrea worked at the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC) as a computational social scientist. While at JWAC, Andrea received the Command’s top award for technical excellence for her analytic support across the Department of Defense. Andrea earned a PhD in Political Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Benjamin Eason serves as Principal and Chief Information Security Officer of The Carlyle Group, based in Washington, DC. Mr. Eason leads the security teams that enable business leaders to make informed, risk-based decisions and protect Carlyle’s critical information assets. Prior to joining Carlyle in 2012, Mr. Eason was the Security Engineering Branch Chief for the Administrative Office of the US Courts. Mr. Eason also served as a Director at Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner), consulted for Protiviti, and managed his own businesses. Mr. Eason holds a B.S. in Management from the University of New Orleans.