SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Michael Babischkin, Vice President, Deputy Director of Information Security, Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago

Michael Babischkin is a 22 year veteran of the US Coast Guard. His diverse Coast Guard career has included assignments ranging from Search and Rescue boat crew member at Station Cape Cod Canal MA and radio communications operator onboard the US Coast Guard Cutter MIDGETT to IT Instructor, Assistant Information Systems Security Officer for the Coast Guard Great Lakes region to Assistant Branch Chief at the Coast Guard’s Telecommunications and Information Systems Command. Michael retired from Active Duty as a Chief Warrant Officer in 2014.

Since retiring from the Coast Guard Michael has worked at two different Fortune 300 companies leading the comprehensive transformation of their global cybersecurity incident response programs, building a security monitoring and incident program with an international footprint from scratch at one company and completely revising the organization and maturing the program of the other.

Michael was recently appointed the Deputy Director of Information Security at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago where he has been for the past three years. He lead’s the Bank’s Threat and Incident Response team and provides security expertise and leadership to the Bank’s strategic initiatives.

Mohammed Bagha, Chief Information Security Officer, Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, L.P.

Mohammed Bagha is a pioneer in the field of cyber-security with 25 years of experience at organizations around the globe. As a security executive, he combines strong technical expertise with business savvy and excellent communications skills.

Patrick Benson, Systems Engineer, Veeam

For over two decades I’ve been involved in the IT industry starting with desktop support. I have steadily moved upwards, having been a network administrator, manager of the IT staff, network supervisor for an ASP division with data centers around the globe, a senior systems engineer designing new components and refining the existing infrastructure for a global organization, and a solutions architect for a VAR advising clients and designing complex infrastructures as a pre-sales resource.

In my current role, I am a Systems Engineer with Veeam Software. I help my customers prepare for and overcome the worst-case scenarios that could threaten their organizations. I consider it a privilege to be entrusted with designing their disaster recovery and business continuity solutions, and I humbly do my best to make sure they are protected when a disaster strikes.”

Shira Dankner, Director of Security Services, NineStar Connect

Shira Dankner has been with NineStar Connect, a combined utility, for over 10 years, starting as a Network Engineer and currently working as Director of Security Services. She earned her Master’s in Digital Forensics from Purdue University and her Cyber Defense Operations graduate certificate from SANS.org. She is currently working on her Industrial Control Systems Security graduate certificate.

Sebastiaan Gybels, Chief Information Security Officer, CoinFlip

Sebastiaan is the Chief Information and Chief Information Security Officer at CoinFlip. Prior to Coinflip, Sebastiaan led cyber teams with Northern Trust, NextCapital and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. As a subject matter expert in the field of payments and CyberSecurity, he has been instrumental to key initiatives, including Regulatory CyberSecurity assessments for the financial system in the US, security implementations and the establishment of security metrics and Board reporting.

Prior to moving to the United States, Sebastiaan was with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) Belgium & US, where he worked with a variety of global organizations assessing their IT/Cyber environment and providing guidance to address risks from a compliance, security, and regulatory perspective.

Sebastiaan has a degree in Computer Science and Accounting from his college in Leuven, Belgium and has the following certifications: Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Data Privacy Solutions Engineer (CDPSE), Certified in Risk and Information System Control (CRISC) and Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA). 

Dan Krueger, BLICK Art Materials, Director of IT Infrastructure and Cybersecurity

Highly skilled and hands-on Senior IT Technical Leader with over 18 years of Enterprise Cybersecurity and Infrastructure experience who can develop and execute tactical and strategic Enterprise Information Security and IT programs.

Manage projects and people in cross-functional and virtual IT team environments in an effort to exceed company goals. Ability to communicate effectively with Executive Leadership, Business partners, peers, vendors, and team members in providing direction that inspires confidence among all levels of IS and Business organizations.

A strong, proven Servant and Thought Leader with a history of producing immediate and value-added results.

Fred Kwong, Ph.D., Vice President, Chief Information Security, DeVry University

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).

Dr. Edward Marchewka, CIO – Pryor Health / Founder – 3LC Solutions 

My primary role is with Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donor Network as the Director of IT, Data, and Security Services. Providing leadership for Information & Technology Services, Data, Reporting, & Analytics, and Information Security.  I also serve as the HIPAA Security Officer in this role.

I also run 3LC Solutions, which started as a passion project because I believe, from the front lines to the Board room, IT and Information Security leaders have to be able to tell their story to help decision-makers make decisions to gain support, funding, and resources they need to enable the business to move faster. It has morphed into a platform that helps IT and Information Security leaders prioritize their IT and Information Security risks and enables them to tell a better story.

I hold a Doctorate in Business Administration. My research interests are in line with my two roles mentioned above, Information Security, Process Improvement, and Risk Management. My dissertation is titled, “Reducing Cybersecurity Risk Information Asymmetry Phenomenon: A Prescriptive Approach to Effectively Communicating Cybersecurity Risk.”

Stu Parker, Vice President, Kiteworks

Senior Technical Leader with over 40 years of Enterprise IT, Development and Cybersecurity experience who leverages, Lean and Six Sigma best practices and Operations experience to modernize and align technology to business requirements.

Provides achievable strategy, measured outcomes and portfolio governance with Executive IT, Risk, Security, Compliance and Privacy Leaders creating best practices to transform and modernize technology to demonstrate how organizations can create business value, drive new routes to revenue while meeting global compliance, mitigating risk and protecting the supply chain.

Nitin Raina, Chief Information Security Officer and Global Head of Enterprise Risk, Thoughtworks

Nitin has close to 24 years of experience in performing IT, Security and Risk leadership roles for various organisations and serves as a global advisor tasked with prioritizing and evaluating trade-offs and conflicts among various security initiatives within the realm of ThoughtWorks businesses.

Proven leadership with key skills like security governance, compliance, budgeting, hiring, risk management, project management, mentoring, negotiation, and problem-solving skills demonstrated throughout his career.

Expert in translating between technical and business contexts; people, processes, technical aspects of technology, and in assisting organizations delivering effective, secure, and business-enabling solutions. Stakeholders/CxO advisory experience in IT/ITes organizations. Customer-focused and strategic mentality. Problem-solving and process-oriented. 

Mark Shipman, Deputy CISO, Cook County, Illinois Government

CISO with over 30 years of experience in high technology environments across global locations. A proven track record of delivering technology solutions and cost reduction strategies. Skilled at analyzing existing operations and implementing the strategies, processes, and technologies to improve security, compliance, productivity, and efficiency. Directed globally dispersed teams and technology. Interfaced and provided solutions to Government and Fortune 500 companies.

Jason Shupp, Director of Solutions Engineering, Silverfort

Jason Shupp is a Director of Solutions Engineering for Silverfort. He is a USMC veteran and Cybersecurity expert with 20+ years of experience. Jason works with organizations to protect critical enterprise resources from identity-based attacks.

Prakash Sinha, Sr. Director & Technology Evangelist, Application Security & Delivery, Radware

Prakash Sinha is a senior director of application security and availability and a technology evangelist for Radware and brings over 34 years of experience in product and corporate strategy, product management, product marketing and engineering. Prakash has been a part of executive teams of four software and network infrastructure startups, all of which were acquired.

Before Radware, Prakash led product management for Citrix application delivery and application security products. Prior to Citrix, Prakash held leadership positions in architecture, engineering, and product management for ETL, WAF, ESB and B2B integration hardware and software at leading technology companies such as Cisco, Informatica, and Tandem Computers. Prakash holds a Bachelor in Electrical Engineering from BIT, Mesra, and an MBA from Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Greg West, Director, ManTech Advanced Capabilities Team, ManTech

Mr. West currently oversees the operations and growth for ManTech’s Advanced Capabilities Teams by driving customer and partner engagement through innovation and advanced integration of irregular and emerging technologies. He contributes to the company’s organic growth by overseeing the development of solutions for customer requirements that cannot be met with normal solution strategies. He also plays a key role in developing the corporate strategy for growth within ManTech’s Innovation & Capabilities Office across the five ManTech Technology Focus Areas (TFA): Mission & Enterprise IT (M/EIT); Cognitive Cyber (C2); Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and Analytics (A3); Data at the Edge (D@tE); and Intelligent Systems Engineering (ISE). As the ACT Director, Mr. West ensures that digital solutions and security are engineered into mission success across the US Navy and Marine Corps.

Prior to coming to ManTech, Mr. West spent over 15 years providing Cyber Security and Digital Engineering support to various customers across the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. He was instrumental in supporting the FAR mandated NIST SP 800-171 Risk Management Framework Controls for multiple DoD Commercial Partners such as Cummins, Geo North, Tatitlek, and multiple VA support entities to ensure soldiers, sailors and veterans continued to receive consistent and secure services.

Mr. West also served in the U.S Navy and U.S. Army filling several science and cyber related roles during multiple CONUS and OCONUS stations with deployments to Africa, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Jason T. Williams, VP – Field Engineering, Halcyon

Jason T. Williams is a subject matter expert in information technology and business processes.

Jason leads the East region for Halcyon, the first dedicated anti-ransomware engine built to combat today’s most destructive cyberthreats!

He has fulfilled various roles in the industry within his 23-year career. He has designed and implemented datacenter, network, security and voice architectures in various capacities at the Associated Press, Vonage, A.C. Moore and other organizations. These architectures included products from various vendors like Brocade, Cisco, Dell, Foundry, Juniper, Nortel, Palo Alto and SonicWALL.

After leaving his “end user” heritage, Jason has been a Global Senior Director, Regional Director, Team Lead as well as a Senior Network and Security Architect/Engineer at SafeGuard Cyber, Optiv, IBM, Dell, Nortel, Integration Partners and Carousel Industries. In his latest role at SafeGuard Cyber, he was a Global Sr. Director of Technical Solutions responsible for building out the Architect and Engineering division. Prior to SafeGuard Cyber, he was a Regional Director for NJ/NY at Optiv, managing a $45M+ line of business across 9 Account Managers. In addition, he still operated as a Senior Solutions Architect (Player/Coach) creating solutions for customers to meet Governance, Risk and Compliance initiatives as well as build Next Generation Security Programs to mitigate threats and meet business-based outcomes in this highly “Cyber Warfare” era.

Jason has worked with and for the partner community in various capacities. He has trained partners on the various products in the associated portfolios to deliver solutions to meet customer’s foundational and technical requirements, joined partners in each phase of the sales cycle to provide a great experience for both the partner and customer as well as helped build up a partner’s presence in the various regions for business expansion. Jason’s experience, brand and reputation is well known in InfoSec and Network communities due to his enthusiasm, reliability and drive to help make all aspects of a sales engagement successful and enjoyable.

When Jason is not working on Network and Security solutions, you can find him with his wife and two daughters at the shore, outdoors with his dog, coaching archery students or on the archery lines.

Robert Yu, Principal Architect, AOHWV

Seasoned Enterprise Security Architect & Solutions Delivery Manager with over 22 years of experience in areas of Customer & Workforce Identity and Access Management, Cybersecurity, Azure Cloud & Infrastructure, Cloud Security.

Ray Zellmer, Director Technology Consulting Security & Privacy Strategy, Protiviti

Ray Zellmer is a dynamic executive with a proven track record of innovation and leadership in cyber security, strategy, digital transformation and risk management. Prior to joining Protiviti as a Director in their Security & Privacy Strategy Practice, Ray held leadership positions in Internal Audit, Investigations, Digital Transformation Office, Cyber Security and Information Risk Management at Northwestern Mutual, a Fortune 100 Financial Services firm. In addition to his leadership roles, Ray helped start Northwestern Mutual’s Enterprise Risk Management, Data Governance and Privacy Programs. Ray excels at creating collaborative environments where business and risk leaders work together to accelerate business value by creating governance and risk management practices that enable strategic priorities while effectively managing risks.

Ron Zochalski, CTO & CISO, Lake County, Indiana Government 

CTO & CISO for Lake County Government – Superior Courts Juvenile Division on the zero trust journey to protect data, assets and buildings for current and emerging security threats. I have the ability to break down the financial and technical risks and issues to both technical and the non-technical professionals including the boardroom and get buy in. This is not an easy task.

Ron also has spent the last 12 years teaching at Indiana University Northwest teaching students to understand and use various technologies, Personal Finance and Business Administration.

Ron’s 20+ year journey started in Financial Services then to Automotive, Newspaper/Media, ECommerce, Supply Chain, Mobile and currently Government and Courts. It’s always the questions you don’t know to ask are the ones that give you an issue.