Jim Desmond, Chief Information Officer, Elevate

Jim Desmond is a career security professional and the Chief Security Officer at Elevate, a financial technology firm based in Fort Worth, Texas. He has over 20 years of experience in technology & security leadership with a primary focus on financial services working for such companies as National City Bank (now PNC), Intuit, Merrill Lynch and Vantiv. Jim holds an undergraduate degree from The Ohio State University, a masters degree in Information Assurance from Norwich University and multiple security certifications including CISSP and CFE. He is an inveterate fan of all Cleveland sports, yes, even the Cleveland Browns.

Jim Anthony, VP Cybersecurity, Cyxtera

Leading Cyxtera’s Cybersecurity Solutions Engineering Team since 2015, Jim spent the previous 10 years serving as a Sales Engineer for AT&T’s Hosting and Managed Services Division, as the Director for Data Return’s IT Operations Outsourcing Division and as the Vice President of Sales Engineering for Verizon’s Cloud and Managed Hosting group (formerly Terremark). His focus has been on large, complex security and managed hosting opportunities that leverage consolidation, virtualization and cloud services as major parts of the delivery method. Prior to Data Return, Jim held various positions with Content Delivery Network, ERP and Database Software Companies and owned his own consulting company from 1996 through 2000.

He earned his Bachelors of Science in Accounting and Computer Science from Minnesota State University at Mankato and resides in San Diego with his wife.

James Beecham, CTO & Founder, ALTR

James Beecham is a computer engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded ALTR in 2014 and leads ALTR’s technology and engineering teams. Previously, James worked at an algorithmic options trading platform leading research and development, working on ultra-low-latency approaches to in-line data security. He also worked as an embedded systems engineer at Texas Memory Systems prior to the acquisition by IBM. James holds multiple software patents, and is an alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Stephen Bird, Channel Account Executive, Comodo Cybersecurity

Stephen comes with over 25 years of experience in IT and the IT security and an insatiable curiosity in finding better ways to do things.

Kurt Hagerman, CISO, ARMOR

Kurt is a Principal in the Cyber Risk Services practice at Coalfire. In this role he provides strategic security advisory services to Coalfire customers across multiple industry verticals with a specialization in cloud and tech.

Prior to Coalfire, Kurt served as Chief Information Security Officer for Armor for six years. He was responsible for the governance, risk and compliance side of the security mission for customer facing products. He regularly consulted with Armor prospects and customers on PCI, HIPAA and financial services regulations and helped them understand how these regulations impact their business and how Armor could help them meet their regulatory responsibilities.

Kurt regularly speaks and writes on information security topics in the payments and health care spaces as well as on cloud security. He holds CISA and CISSP certifications and is an active participant with local chapters of ISACA, CSA and ISSA.

Mark Houpt, Chief Information Security Officer, Databank

As Chief Information Security Officer of DataBank, Mark brings over 25 years of extensive information security  and information technology experience in a wide range of industries and institutions. Mark joined Edge Hosting in January of 2015 and DataBank in September of 2017 with the acquisition of Edge Hosting. In his leadership position, Mark’s responsibilities include strategic planning, oversight of security and compliance, as well as  providing subject matter expertise for developing and maintaining a comprehensive, integrated information security and compliance program.

Mark is a successful security entrepreneur, previously owning and operating a security consulting firm and hosting a security blog. Also, he has been responsible for security and compliance solutions at Fortune 50 financial and banking institutions, health care entities, the CTO in a higher education institution, a technical operations manager in a startup as well as the role he credits for starting it all, a Cryptologist with the U.S. Navy.

Mark holds numerous security and technical degrees and certifications including a Masters in Information Security and Assurance, the Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Ethical Hacker  CEHv9), Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator (CHFI), Security +, Network + and A+. Mark is an expert in the understanding and the interpretation of FedRAMP, HIPAA and PCI-DSS compliance requirements and is fluent in translating these requirements into common sense language for our customers. Mark is qualified for DoD IAT Level III, IAM Level III, IASAE Level II, CND Analyst, CND Infrastructure Support, CND Incident Responder, and CND Auditor positions and responsibilities. Mark is an active member of ISC2, ASIS International, CompTIA, IAPP, ISACA, among other leading national and international security organizations.

Sailaja Kotra-Turner, Director, IT Security & Risk Management, Brinker

Over the course of a 20 year career, Sailaja has managed teams of IT professionals in support of various IT functions like IT Operations, Enterprise Applications, Manufacturing etc. Over the past few years, Sailaja has focused on leading IT Security teams in areas of Disaster Recovery, Security Operations and Strategy, Security Awareness and Identity Management.

Although a large part of her career was spent at Texas Instruments, Sailaja is currently the Director of IT Security and Risk Management at Brinker International and is responsible for design, implementation and maintenance of controls and procedures to ensure the integrity and security for all computer-based systems and networks across all technical platforms.

Sailaja holds an MBA from the Cox School of Business (Southern Methodist University). She lives in Fairview with her husband and kids.

Scot Miller, SVP, CISO, Mr. Cooper

Scot Miller, CISSP, CISM, is the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Mr. Cooper. Previously, we was Vice President and former Chief Information Security Officer for Health Management Systems (HMS). He serves on the Dallas CISO Board, has presented on advances in Information Security and Technology Governance at consortiums in Florida, Texas, New York, Arizona, and Connecticut, and has been quoted in national magazines and other industry symposiums. Scot built high performing Security and Operations teams from the ground up, and over the past three years, brought HMS’s Security Incident and Asset Management programs to a new level.

The supporting projects won two CSO50 Awards from a pool of national and international candidates for innovation and meaningful impact on a business. Because of these programs, HMS saw a decline of 300% in threat incidents year-over-year and a steep decline in elapsed remediation time amongst other positive impacts. The following year, his team was nominated for ISE project of the year and won a 3rd CSO50 award for Secure Cloud Foundation. This is the sixth successive year that the HMS Security Organization has netted a CSO50 award.

Chris Morris, Security Specialist, Forcepoint

Chris got his start in the security world on the opposite side of the firewall as a Signal Intelligence Collections Operator for the United States Marine Corps. After 2 tours in Iraq, he returned to Texas to The University of Texas. Afterwards, joining the Raytheon-Websense team as an analyst he has filled a variety of roles within Raytheon-Websense as it transitioned into Forcepoint. Chris has worked with companies of all sizes across North America to help them to attain their security goals using common sense solutions without interrupting business. He is currently helping enterprises adopt transformative technology without exposing their networks to undue risk.

Robert Pace, Vice President, Information Security and Compliance, First American Payment Systems

Robert is the Vice President, Information Security and Compliance for First American Payment Systems. He is responsible for the Information Security and Compliance for First American Payment Systems’ portfolio of companies. Responsibilities include establishing strategy for IT governance and security operations and for payment processing services in multiple market verticals, while providing foundational controls to meet demanding compliance reporting requirements.

Robert’s career spans over 20 years in leading global teams in the delivery of IT Security operations. Robert has been influential in designing and leading operations at Dell Services, Dell SecureWorks, Williamson-Dickie Mfg. Co., Bell Helicopter, Textron and Ameritech. Robert also has consulting experience obtained while working at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Robert has a Bachelor of Science Degree from Michigan State University and a Master of Science Degree from Walsh College of Business and Accountancy. Robert has completed the Executive Leadership Program at Thunderbird – Gavin School of International Management. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Chief Information Security Officer (C|CISO), ITILv3 and a Certified Six-Sigma Green Belt.

Randy Potts, Managing Director – InfoSec, Real Time Resolutions

Randy Potts is the CISO for Real Time Resolutions, Inc. He received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and an MBA in Cyber Security from The University of Dallas, the only MBA program endorsed by the NSA. Mr. Potts is a CISSP with over a decade of experience in Information Security. Randy began his career in the defense industry supporting deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and spent several years as the Security Architect for Experian, a global company serving financial institutions. Randy has pushed Information Security into the boardroom, overseen the security of over 3 billion dollars in acquisitions, and secured identities for hundreds of millions.

Tim Roddy, Vice President of Product Strategy, Fidelis Cybersecurity

As Vice President of Product Strategy, Tim Roddy is responsible for Product Management, Product Marketing and Analyst Relations at Fidelis Cybersecurity. Prior to joining Fidelis Cybersecurity Mr. Roddy served in both product management and product marketing roles over a 12 year period at McAfee and Secure Computing (which was acquired by McAfee). At McAfee he was responsible for Product Marketing of their web security, email security and data protection solutions. He also was responsible for product management of the web security product line and led the initiative to build out its multitenant saas web proxy architecture. Prior his tenure at McAfee, Tim was Director of Product Marketing for enterprise content management software vendor Stellent for four years, during which time Stellent doubled its revenues to a $120MM annual run rate. Tim has over 20 years of high technology experience at firms such as Stellent, Alliance Data, CyberCash, and General Dynamics. Mr. Roddy has spoken at numerous industry events at the local and national level. Mr. Roddy earned an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA and BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Paola Saibene, Data Privacy & Data Protection, Business Integrity & Compliance, Flowserve

Paola Saibene has an extraordinary background that blends multiple areas of over the last 24 years, technology ranging from programming, network, systems and architecture, to cybersecurity and risk management, and folding them into her efforts in digital transformation and innovation. Additionally, her dual masters degrees in psychology and linguistics are leveraged in her digitalization approach to the enterprise.

Paola has been a CIO/CTO four time, two of which in multi-billion dollar organizations, serving both in the public and the private sector. She blends sustainability methodologies within ecosystems strategies to maximize efforts and reduce cost.

Presently Paola runs the Data Privacy and Data Protection Office at Flowserve.

Peter Tomaszewski, CISO, Pharmaceutical Strategies Group

Peter Tomaszewski has over 20 years’ experience in Cyber Security, Information Security, and Information Technology. Peter is a technology leader and is the founder of SR3 Cyber Security. Peter has a passion for developing Simple, Secure, Sustainable, Redundant, Resilient and Reliable Cyber Security, Information Security and IT solutions.

Peter has held various positions in Financial Services and Health Care companies including Network Security Engineer, Information Security Officer, Information Security Manager, HIPAA Security and Privacy Officer and Chief Information Security Officer. Peter holds ISACA CISA, CISM, CRISC certifications as well as (ISC)2 CISSP.

Doug Wick, VP of Product and 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.

Gregory Wilson, Head of Information Security, 1st Global

Gregory Wilson is the Head of Information Security at 1st Global and has more than 15 years’ experience in Information Security and Risk Management. Greg is responsible for Information Security, IT Compliance, Privacy and E-Discovery. Greg has led information security teams and worked in risk management efforts at companies such as TPG Global, Lehigh Hanson, JP Morgan Chase and Verizon. Gregory Wilson currently serves on the Dallas CISO Executive Committee Governing Body and is a SecureWorld-Dallas Steering Committee member. Greg is a CISSP, CISM, CGEIT, PMP and PSM and has his Series 7, 66 and 24. He also has a Bachelor’s degree from University of Nebraska in Public Administration and a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Oklahoma.

John Woods, Vice President, Information Security, PDX Inc.

I am a visionary and forward thinking individual who is never satisfied with the status quo in technology. I continually look to improve an organizations IT and Security posture by leveraging current and upcoming technologies, practices, and techniques.

I hold current credentials as a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certifications for information and corporate security.

20+ years experience in the pharmacy and IT industries. 15+ years experience in various IT management positions.

My strengths include leadership, solution design, development and implementation, software design and development, project planning and implementation, process design, performance metrics definition and continuous improvement, customer communication, methodologies development, communication, mentoring, the ability to convey complex technical solutions to non-technical audiences, and identification of potential business partners that would enhance the overall product and service offering.