Personally, I’ve always found it a little odd that September is the designated month for insider threat awareness. The fact that insiders are responsible for more than half of organizational data breaches should really warrant that the subject be top of mind every day. Given the Code42 focus on insider risk detection and response, we hear about insider threat scenarios first hand through our customers, partners and industry alliances. And there are many! So why keep these very important conversations in silos? If we all share this information openly and candidly, it would lead to organizations being better equipped to tackle insider threats. So for us at Code42, September is about inaugurating the Insider Risk Summit, a new and entirely virtual event on September 17.
Insider Risk Summit 2020: A community of practitioners
We are thinking about the Summit as a security community event. Our partners for this event include Crowdstrike, Cybrary, Duo Security at Cisco, Exabeam, Okta, Optiv, Palo Alto Networks, Rapid7, Splunk, Sumo Logic and The Cyberwire. In addition to being well known security players, what excites me about our group is that we share a common cause around solving some of the world’s most complex security problems. During the event, attendees will find presentations for general session audiences and more specialized break-out tracks as well as opportunities for networking, taking in product demos, hosting 1:1 meetings or attending pre-recorded educational sessions. While the agenda serves up a variety of topics, every session is tasked with presenting relatable real-world scenarios. And it’s free to attend!
The Agenda: variety and real-world experience
Our event is built to give our community the opportunity to learn from industry experts, practitioners and above all each other. Here are a few of the agenda topics that I’m most excited about.
- Michael C. Theis, will deliver the opening keynote speech, “Insider Threat or Insider Risk — What Are You Trying to Solve?” Mr. Theis is a U.S. Intelligence community veteran, CISSP, special agent in charge (retired) and chief engineer for the Strategic Engagements National Insider Threat Center in the CERT Division, and serves as a senior member of the technical staff at the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. Michael’s co-presenter is Joe Payne, Code42 CEO and president and someone who’s been in the security game a long time. Expect lots of experience and wisdom to come through in this session.
- Deloitte Consulting’s Managing Director of their federal practice, Michael Gelles, will talk about managing insider threats during COVID-19.
- U.S. Air Force and Space Command veteran, cybersecurity expert, Cybrary Advisory Board Member, and CEO and Founder of HypaSec NL, Chris Kubecka will share the real-life consequences of insider threat cases that involved pirates off the African continent and a nuclear facility. With a session title “Pirates and Nukes, Insider Nightmares,” it’s sure to be interesting!
- Featured speaker retired U.S. Navy Chief Dr. Chase Cunningham will lead a dive deep on the Zero Trust model. I’ve known Chase a number of years now and what continues to fascinate me about him is his raw and transparent presentation style. Known as Dr. Zero Trust himself, I look forward to hearing how the Zero Trust approach can be applied to everyday situations like insider attacks. There are enough organizations asking questions about the Zero Trust approach so this session will be a great opportunity to interact with Chase and get answers.
- Dr. Ivan Joseph, vice president of student affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University, will be delivering a session entitled, “Fueling Success Through Diversity and Inclusion.” This is a timely topic and represents the community’s commitment to address racial justice issues head-on. As a Minneapolis based company, I can tell you this is a very important issue for Code42 in light of what transpired in the city only a few months ago. In this moving and perspective-shifting session, Ivan challenges audiences to think about diversity and inclusion in new ways. Ivan shares insights and experiences from his own remarkable story. I personally know Ivan and am really excited for him to deliver this powerful message.
- The icing on the cake is really access to all the security practitioners, leaders and experts from Code42, Crowdstrike, Duo Security at Cisco, Elevate Security, Exabeam, Okta, Optiv, Splunk, Sumo Logic, Tesla and The Pokémon Company. Everyone is going to have a platform to discuss and deliver some compelling data, ideas and approaches to data security for the modern day workforce.
For our customers, partners and the security community
At the end of the summit, the feedback I’d most like to hear would be something like,
“That changed how I think about insider threat.”
“That session was enlightening and gave me some ideas for my organization.”
“I’m going to apply that approach to my organization.”
“I can’t wait to attend this again in 2021!”
You get the gist! The Summit is really built around our customers, partners and the security community. I’ve often commented that while organizations might compete at a business level, there is a sense of camaraderie when it comes to providing joint solutions to help customers when they need it most. See you at the Summit.