SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

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.

Richard Diver, Cloud Security Architect, Insight

Richard Diver has over 20 years’ international experience in Technology with a deep technical background in cloud security, mobility, identity management and information security. He works at Insight as the lead for Cloud Security Architecture, covering the Azure and AWS platforms and working with our key vendors to deliver comprehensive cloud security solutions. Richard joined the company whilst working in Western Australia as a consultant delivering a range of security solutions based on Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and the Enterprise Mobility Suite, and is now based in Chicago, Illinois.

Richard brings a wealth of knowledge and experience along with an agile creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. He is focused on helping Insight customers on the transformation journey into the future of Cloud, by developing Consulting, Design/Architecture, Implementation, Optimization and Managed Services.

Alex Holden, Founder & CISO, Hold Security

Mr. Holden is credited with the discovery of many high profile breaches including Adobe Systems, JPMorgan, and the independent discovery of the Target breach. In 2014, he led Hold Security to discover the largest breach of data to-date (CyberVor): 1.2 billion stolen credentials gathered from 420,000 exploited web sites.

Under his direction, Hold Security is helping businesses of all sizes with their data security needs, including Fortune Global 500 companies. Considered one of the leading security experts, Mr. Holden regularly voices his expert opinion in the mainstream media including CNN, New York Times, and Reuters.

Mr. Holden works with clients to address their IT security, investigative, and forensics issues, ranging from penetration testing and critical incident response to full-scale security solutions. A nationally-recognized expert in designing, maintaining, and auditing information security solutions; Mr. Holden has over 15 years of experience in computer security and networking. By designing, implementing, and maintaining company-wide, end-to-end security solutions, Mr. Holden works with all the areas of a company to assess security risks, design policies to comply with HIPAA, PCI, SOX, and SEC/FINRA regulations, identify and fix security issues, as well as successfully lead the enterprise to pass internal and external IT security audits.

Prior to joining the consulting world, Mr. Holden worked for over 10 years as the Chief Information Security Officer for a large brokerage firm in the United States. He also has extensive experience in Windows, Unix, and network administration along with corporate information security governance. He holds a number of IT certifications, including CISSP. Mr. Holden is a frequent speaker on IT security issues, and teaches IT and business security education programs.

Dave Klein, Senior Director, Engineering & Architecture, GuardiCore

Dave Klein is the Senior Director of Technical Evangelism for GuardiCore. With more than 21 years of real-world cybersecurity experience he works with GuardiCore teams, customers and industry thought leaders to address the challenges of securing modern hybrid cloud environments. Dave encourages CISOs faced with securing their organizations to adopt security solutions and best practices that work easily and seamlessly across heterogeneous hybrid cloud environments. Dave has spoken on a wide variety of cybersecurity topics including micro-segmentation, crytpojacking, hybrid cloud adoption, PCI compliance, educating on the stages of the cyber security kill chain, understanding interactions between the physical and cyber worlds as it relates to the radicalization and arming of domestic terrorists and using cyber forensics in real world criminal cases.

Fred Kwong, CISO, Delta Dental of Illinois

Dr. Fred Kwong has been in the information technology field for the past 15 years in working in education, financial, and telecommunication sectors. Fred currently works at a Farmers Insurance where he currently is the Global Head of Privileged Access Control. Fred is currently building a new program seeking to govern, control, and profile privileged identities throughout the enterprise.

Fred’s work includes the creation of security and privacy policies, standards, and procedures. He is a subject matter expert in PCI, leading organizations to pass their report on compliance. With an extensive background in IT technologies, Fred continues to challenge the status quo by providing guidance in security and network architecture creating holistic designs that align to todays’ threat vector for organizations.

Fred has a passion of combining IT skills with organization development values. His broad range of IT skills has allowed him to view IT from many different paradigms and present them to the business partners in an easy to understand language. Fred servers as an adjunct professor at Benedictine and Roosevelt University teaching courses in international business, organization behavior, project management, and information systems. He holds a Ph.D. from Benedictine University and earned his master’s degree in business administration from Roosevelt University. Fred is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP), a Certified Information Systems Manager (CISM), and a PCI Professional (PCIP).

James Mountain, Director of Information Security, Information Technology, Palmer College of Chiropractic

James Mountain is an experienced leader with over 16 years in IT. His current role is the Director of Information Security for Palmer College of Chiropractic providing strategic leadership and direction for campus academic technology applications and initiatives. His past work experiences include private, public and government industries. He has been a CISSP since 2011 while he worked for the Department of Defense. His main areas of focus are security, risk management, and infrastructure stability.

Ryan F. O’Halloran, Vice President of Managed Services, Access One, Inc.

Ryan O’Halloran, Vice President of Managed Services, offers broad knowledge from 11 years of experience in Engineering, Managed IT and Cloud Services. Previously, Ryan served as the Principal Cloud and Managed Services Architect for Mindsight (a premier Cisco Partner in Chicagoland) as well as the Director of Technology at Framework Communications (Managed Services Provider). Ryan has held numerous industry certifications in Networking, Data Center, Cloud, Security and Consultation.

Leon Ravenna, Chief Information Security Officer, KAR Auction Services, Inc.

Leon has over 25 years’ experience in Healthcare, Financial Services and Technology companies. He leads Global Security Strategy, Execution, Privacy and Compliance services.

Leon is currently CISO of a $3B multi-national company in the auto auction and services space. Providing Security, Privacy & Compliance expertise for over 17,000 employees. Leon has led nationwide support, Web & CRM development efforts, data center builds, infrastructure for SaaS companies in the medical and financial space.
Leon has extensive experience in Regulatory, Compliance & Privacy having managed ISO27001, HIPAA, SSAE-16, PCI and NIST system builds and audits. In addition to holding a PMP.

Leon is one of a very small group world-wide to hold 6 major Global Privacy certifications including CIPM, CIPP/ C and CIPP/ E, CIPP/ G, CIPP/ US and FIP. 

Steve Shelton, RSM, Avanan

Steve Shelton has over 15 years of IT sales experience helping organizations protect their people, processes and data. Steve brings a variety of knowledge to his customers, which he developed from his tenures at CDW, Verizon, Symantec, RSA and Proofpoint. He believes the best working relationships come out of integrity, trust and care. Steve’s main goal is to make the lives of those around him better in any way he can.

Steve has a variety of interests outside of work, including Tai Chi, yoga, nutrition, parent coaching and staring at goats. 

Ken Squires, CISSP, HCISPP, CISA, CRISC, ISO 27001 AUDITOR, Principal Consultant, HALOCK Security Labs

Ken Squires is a Principal Consultant for HALOCK Security Labs. He has over 22 years Information Security experience with a unique security background that started in the Marine Corps where I implemented and managed classified systems.

Ken serves as a Virtual CISO and Third-Party Risk Management lead managing multiple information security management systems and both internal and external/service provider assessment programs based on ISO 27001/27002, NIST, HIPAA and PCI controls. He has presented findings and remediation projects to C-level sponsors and executive leadership teams, plus implemented Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) based on ISO 27001. Ken has planned, designed and implemented numerous projects on security policy and incident response while building intellectual capital for HALOCK’s Professional Services Framework including reporting, checklists, templates, testing methods and techniques, and research.

Ken earned his Bachelor of Science in Information Security administration from Strayer University.

Doug Wick, VP Product & Marketing, ALTR

Doug leads product and marketing at ALTR. With over 20 years of startup experience, he has broad experience managing product conception and development through to market success. His last role was as CEO of TradeLive, a startup marketing place for IT equipment, with previous executive roles leading product management, sales, and marketing. He is an alumnus of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.