Todd Becker, Principal Consultant, Halock Security Labs

Todd has been an information technology professional for over twenty years with extensive experience in business process redesign, applications development and management. As a member of HALOCK’s Governance and Strategy practice, Todd helps organizations integrate risk management into the enterprise to comply with regulatory and legal obligations, prioritize their resources, and develop controls to manage their risk. Todd is an ISO 27001 Auditor and PCI QSA. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business MIS & Marketing from Miami University.

Neal Bridges, Director, Global Incident Response & Threat Management, Abbott Laboratories

Neal Bridges is a cybersecurity professional with over 20 years of experience in information technology and security. Over his career, Neal has exceeded in the strategical, operational, and tactical arenas of cybersecurity. His work at Abbott Labratories has highlighted his versatility in, not only providing offensive capabilities, but being able to transform that knowledge into an effective detection, response, and threat hunting strategy for a Fortune 135 (2017) company. He has developed, implemented, and executed a global Incident Response capability, successfully developed a robust M&A strategy for pre-and-post day one cyber threat hunting and assessment capabilities to identify any potential risk and quickly develop mitigation and/or remediation strategies. His 10 years serving in the United States Air Force culminated in being hand selected to build and establish the USAF’s first cyber function training unit where he developed specialized training for thousands of USCYBERCOM students on the latest, advanced offensive cyber techniques. Neal has extensive experience in the commercial world as he has spent time with one of the “Big 4”, managing cybersecurity and privacy engagements for PwC, and advancing the offensive cyber, red teaming, and penetration testing market in the greater Chicago area. Neal has done multiple tiered cybersecurity strategy and execution projects in the financial, energy (SCADA/ICS controls), health care, governmental, and R&D arenas. Neal has worked closely with the FBI to provide subject matter expertise in advanced attack tactics. Neal consults with organizations regularly applying his experience in diverse, large-scale enterprise environments. Experienced in making strategic level decisions to achieve tactical level objectives in arenas ranging from Department of Defense to the commercial sector, and is an industry leader in bringing adversary tactics to the operation execution of penetration testers through North America.

Ben Boyd, CISO, INFOSEC Consulting, Risk Advisory Integration Partners

A highly skilled IT/Security/Operations leader and mentor with experience in multiple industries around the globe. Specializing in business transformation through process optimization, automation, modernization, and user-friendly security.

A proven hands-on and inclusive leader with extensive technology, project management, and analytics expertise. Experienced in leading diverse teams of information technology professionals and leading innovative technology initiatives. Inspirational, passionate and skilled in public speaking and presenting persuasive technical positions to non-technical executives, partners, and stakeholders.

Throughout a long career in information technology, effectively used technology as a tool to accomplish multi-million-dollar budget savings, secure enterprises through company-wide policy frameworks, and seamlessly achieve business strategies and goals. 

Trent Greenwood, South Senior Manager, Sales Engineering, Carbon Black

Trent Greenwood is a District Technical Manager at Carbon Black. He has over 20 years of IT and information security experience with expertise in Intrusion/Advanced Threat Detection, Vulnerability Analysis, Network Architecture, Access Control, and Risk Management. Trent has spent the last year at Carbon Black where he leads the technical pre-sales engineering teams in the South & Southeast regions. He is responsible for all pre-sales engineering and support on Carbon Black end-point technologies. Trent is a trusted advisor to global Fortune 500 companies where he provides consulting on security management solutions to improve their security postures and develop a more mature incident response program. Prior to joining Carbon Black, Trent worked for RSA for over 8 years supporting their ASOC line. Trent has held several sales engineering and management positions for leading vendors in the e-mail security and firewall space.

Darren Guccione, CEO & Co-Founder, Keeper Security

Darren is regularly featured as a cyber-security expert in major media outlets including CBS Evening News, Fox & Friends, USA Today, ABC and Mashable. Darren was a keynote speaker at Web Summit 2014, Techweek Chicago 2015, and as a panelist for Advisen’s 2015 Cyber Risk Insights Conference. In 2014, Keeper won the Chicago Innovation Awards and in 2016 won the Global Telecoms Business Awards with Orange for Consumer Service Innovation. Darren was recently named in the Chicago Top Tech 50 by Crain’s Chicago Business.

He holds a Masters of Science in Accountancy with Distinction from the Kellstadt School of Business at DePaul University of Chicago and a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was the recipient of the Evans Scholarship and Morton Thiokol Excellence in Engineering Design Award. He was also the recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award presented by The Department of Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering. Additionally, Darren is a licensed Certified Public Accountant.

Darren is a community board member of the Chicago Entrepreneurial Center (1871) supporting the development of early stage companies and an advisor to TechStars – a Chicago-based technology incubator for innovative startups. Formerly, Darren served on the Committee of Technology Infrastructure under Mayor Richard Daley.

George Harrison, Named Account Manager, Infoblox

George has been working in Information Technology for 20+ years, with expertise in the areas of data center, application, network, and database monitoring and performance. In his current role at Infoblox, he is focused on DNS management and security.

Darin Hurd, Chief Information Security Officer, Guaranteed Rate

Darin is an Independent Management Consultant and Security and Risk Management Leader. Currently he is serving as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Guaranteed Rate.

In the past he was Managing Director of Information Technology at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago where he had overall responsibility for information security with past responsibilities covering governance, strategy, planning, risk management and vendor management. Darin has spent over a decade advising firms on a variety of strategic technology challenges.

Darin holds an MBA from Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management.

Steve Lawn, Senior Consultant, Halock Security Labs

Steve has been an information technology professional with over twenty years of extensive IT and security experience that includes architecture, engineering, technology evaluations, deployments, and operations across all security domains. As a member of HALOCK’s Governance and Strategy practice, Steve consults with organizations in specialty areas that include identity and access management, web security, forensics, incident response, and more to keep their systems secure. Todd is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP).

Tom McKowen, Executive Consultant, US Signal

Tom is an executive-level consultant who helps devise client IT strategies that support transformational change inside organizations. He works alongside CIO’s, CTO’s, CISO’s and their teams, by establishing and maintaining a company’s vision and strategy to ensure information assets and technologies are adequately protected and disaster recovery and business continuity plans are in place to reduce an organization’s operational risks.

Tom has a solid IT background with a primary focus on, Healthcare, Commercial Enterprise and Financial verticals. In the ever-changing IT world, he monitors and evaluates existing and new technologies and processes, keeping clients up-to-date with technology advancements that facilitate maximum value towards transformational change for their business.

Tom has a 25 year background as a technology practitioner and has led change in banking, finance, healthcare, and manufacturing industries. Prior to joining US Signal, Tom’s latest position was VP of Information Technology and Enterprise Architect for a large publicly traded financial institution.

Jeff Sadecky, Solution Architect, Fortinet

A game-changing, award-winning leader in solutions architecture, I have 20 years of expertise in expanding capabilities for Fortune 500 companies. A passionate technology visionary and pioneer, I strategically address and mitigate business, product, and technical challenges through enterprise cloud, collaboration, and social networking architecture.

I excel at customer-focused analysis and consulting, exploring all options to discover the most effective cutting-edge solutions. Working with large customers on complex, multi-year projects, I identify, position, and architect new technologies that resolve long-standing organizational challenges and connect professionals for efficient, ongoing collaboration.

A recognized expert in networking solutions, I have written more than a dozen blogs and published articles on enterprise cloud collaboration solutions and managing the cultural shift. I am also an articulate presenter in executive briefings and stakeholder meetings.

I have the CCIE certification (#7901) and a bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems (MIS). I’m currently pursuing a certificate in Business Analytics.

Mark Shipman, District Director of InfoSec, City Colleges of Chicago

Mark Shipman is currently the District Director of Information Security at the City Colleges of Chicago. CCC is the largest community colleges system in Illinois and one of the largest in the nation, with 5,000 faculty and staff serving more than more than 80,000 students annually at seven colleges and five satellite sites. Mark began his career building security technology to protect electric power grids and nuclear generation facilities. From there he moved to the financial sector before joining the Internet boom where he built security solutions for large online retailers in the early days of e-commerce. Since then he has brought his experience to technology, pharmaceutical, media, and HR benefits companies.

Dean Sorensen, Former Security Information Officer, Cook County Health

Dean is an Information Technology Leader with extensive experience in healthcare, financial industries, education, and professional services settings. Combines entrepreneurial business expertise with the strategic business savvy to enhance business operations and mitigate security risks. He is known for using both in-depth technical knowledge in security and practical business leadership skills to improve processes and enterprise compliance.

Process Improvement | Project/Program Management | Contingency Planning | IT Strategy | Network Design | Governance Policies & Action Plans | Infrastructure Management & Planning | Vendor Security Risk Management | Coaching & Mentoring