SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Matthew Berrey, Enterprise System Engineer, Veeam

Matthew Berrey is an Enterprise System Engineer for Veeam Software. Matthew has close to 20 years of IT experience managing business system infrastructures across a variety of diverse industries including manufacturing, education, advertising, commercial real estate, and banking. Matthew has the proven ability to solve challenging business demands and deliver solutions tied to business growth, organizational development, and system optimization. A skilled problem-solver always looking for a challenge.

Matthew has a Bachelor of Science in Business Information Systems from DePaul University-Chicago. A previous PAWS Chicago volunteer of the month and active foster parent, Matthew loves spending time helping animals in need.

Matthew resides in Madison, WI with his wife, two children, and cattle dog.

Micki Boland, Global Cybersecurity Architect and Check Point Evangelist, Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd.

Micki Boland is a global cybersecurity warrior and evangelist with Check Point Software Technologies Office of the CTO. A practitioner with 20 years in IT, cybersecurity, emerging technology innovation, Micki holds ISC2 CISSP, Master of Science in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas at Austin, MBA with Global Security Concentration from East Carolina University. Micki writes cybersecurity articles for Cybertalk.org, has written for Dark Reading, Silicon Angle and Decipher, and is speaks frequently with the broadcast media and radio shows regarding cybersecurity for and in emerging technology, the global threat landscape, tips and resources for consumers and enterprise organizations, Dark Web, Cyber Warfare, AI (ML) in cybersecurity, cloud security and DevSecOps.

Nathan Borg, Enterprise Architect, Joliet Junior College

MCSE; MCTS; Citrix CCA; Comptia Network+; Comptia A+; Comptia Security+; Comptia Server+

Specialties: Citrix XenApp (Presentation Server), Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, Microsoft Desktop/Server Virtualization, Cisco MDS/NX, HP/NetApp Storage

Chas Clawson, Field CTO, Security Solutions, Sumo Logic

As a technologist interested in disruptive cloud technologies, Chas joined Sumo Logic’s Cyber Security team with over 15 years in the field, consulting with many federal agencies on how to secure modern workloads. In the federal space, he spent time as an architect designing the Department of Commerce ESOC SIEM solution. He also worked at the NSA as a civilian conducting Red Team assessments and within the office of compliance and policy. Commercially, he has worked with MSSP practices and security consulting services for various fortune 500 companies. Chas also enjoys teaching Networking & Cyber Security courses as a Professor at the University of Maryland Global College.

Nicos Digrindakis, Disaster Recovery Manager, University of Chicago

Specialties: IT Disaster Recovery
Business Continuity
CBCP Certified
Implementing ITIL
ITIL Foundation Certified
Futures Industry Association (FIA) Industry-Wide Disaster Recovery Test Steering Committee
Experienced JIRA Admin

Armando D’Onorio, Senior Consultant & CISO, Higher Ed

Over 20 years of experience; leading the overall strategic and technical delivery of critical security initiatives and transforming business value. A multi-faceted cyber and information security leader leveraging technology to drive operational excellence, reaching strategic goals by influencing and communicating threats and risk-related concepts to technical and non-technical audiences, lessening the odds and impact of cyberattacks, and successfully implementing standards across the organization synergizing people, processes, and technology and aligning them with business functions to drive operational excellence, compliance, and accountability. 

Proven ability to create strong IT governance structures, raise security awareness, and lead incident response & security investigations (minimizing risk/disruptions).

Sudarsan Kannan, Director, Cloud Security, Uptycs

A strong Security focussed Product Management leader with expertise in setting strategy, execution & operational planning for a product portfolio Excels in driving continuous business results and customer value by defining & bringing products to market.

Functional Mastery across all facets of Product Management areas including business development, product definition, planning, delivery (GTM), customer/partner interaction & internal organizational effectiveness (leading teams).

A team builder who believes in driving empathy, building trust, building leaders, and bringing required change within teams thereby elevating the performance.

Patrick Kinnard, Senior Server Enterprise Operations Manager, Chicago Public Schools

Patrick Kinard is a Senior Server Enterprise Operations Manager at the Chicago Public Schools. He has more than 30 years of information technology management experience in the private and public sectors.

Today, Patrick has a senior role in managing the data service centers for one of the world’s third-largest school districts. He is responsible for all central data center, cloud, and on-premise school-based server operations.

Patrick’s previous experience is as an Associate Vice President at J.P Morgan Chase as the leader of the virtualization engineering group, managing technical staff and private cloud environments around the globe for five years. He also served as an engineering manager at HP directing teams that supported brands like General Motors, American Airlines, and BP.

Committed to service and developing others, Patrick has more than 20 years of experience as an information technology instructor supporting underrepresented groups, which is easily one of the highlights of his career. He operates as a mentor and coach to some of Chicago’s most promising information technology students, leaders, and entrepreneurs.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Southern Illinois University and has earned multiple information technology management certifications.

Trent Ridgway, Head of Cloud Infrastructure & Security, Anning- Johnson Company

Senior Cloud Security Engineer with delivering corporate Business & IT solutions.  My role encompasses the entire project management cycle and the execution of key tasks. My role assists direct support of business revenue objectives and cost-saving measures. I have successfully eliminated 100% of on-premise server infrastructure for business and operate 100% in the cloud and SASE partners. Had zero impact on business productivity and downtime when moving to a work-from-home model overnight for the pandemic.

Daniel Ryken, Senior Systems Engineer, Secureworks

Daniel Ryken is a Senior Security Systems Engineer with Secureworks. He has worked in communications security for more than 30 years.

Over the years Daniel has obtained broad experience across multiple security domains. He enjoys seeing the forest for the trees to ensure security solutions work together. If the best solutions all work independent of each other their will be gaps. His experience includes: Cyber security monitoring, network security, end point security, encryption, cloud security, and hyperconverged compute systems. Prior to his time in the private sector Daniel served in the US Army securing voice and data communications.

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.

Annur Sumar, Chief Technology Officer, Cloud Unity

Annur Sumar is a Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter MVP and technology consultant in the areas of Infrastructure Design, Enterprise Content Management, CRM, Microsoft Azure, System Center and Cloud Technologies. Annur is an industry recognized leader and independent speaker around strategic service automation, technology driven process improvements, IT service alignment, engineering best practices and operations management. All of which are targeted in his presentations to helping businesses with complex IT environments lower Total Cost of Ownership and raising Return On Investments.

Prior to joining a Microsoft Partner Consulting firm, Annur served as a Vice President of Technology for Duff & Phelps. One of the world’s leading independent financial advisory firms serving client needs in the areas of valuation, investment banking, transaction advice, and dispute consulting. During his tenure at Duff & Phelps, Annur worked closely with Microsoft product teams and case study managers in providing invaluable feedback around how businesses such as his were able to benefit from cloud technologies that were molded into business solutions. As a Microsoft MVP and industry expert, Annur brings 10 years of experience to work actively with other MVPs and Microsoft Partners to provide industry insight and strategic direction.

Ken Wisniewski, Sr. Cybersecurity Security Architect, Sayers

Ken Wisniewski is a Sr. Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at Sayers with 10+ years of Cybersecurity experience. Ken works with clients to solve complex cybersecurity challenges and is responsible for architecture, design and implementation with significant experience and accreditation in Cloud Security, Network and Gateway Security, Endpoint and Mobile Security, Security Monitoring and Operations. Prior to joining Sayers, Ken led the network security team at a Fortune 100 financial institution where he managed a various array of network security technologies.