Speakers

Judy Baltensperger is a Project Manager for the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Dashboard at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). In this role, she oversees the development, implementation, and acquisition capabilities of the CDM Dashboard.

Prior to joining the CISA CDM Program, Judy has experience implementing mission critical/business essential information systems with the Technical Management Directorate (TMD) of U.S. Army, PEO-EIS, PdM P2E deploying IT capabilities for the European, Southwest Asia and Pacific Theaters. As well as serving as Systems Manager deploying IT capabilities with the NATO Consultation, Command and Control in Afghanistan, Drug Enforcement Administration and several IT capabilities facilitating Intelligence Community information sharing with the Department of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security on a global scale in hostile international environments.

Judy holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from Jones International University, a Master of Science degree in Information Security Analysis (MSISM) from University of Fairfax, and a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Marine Engineering Systems from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

Judy is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) with 20+ years of experience, a certified NSA 4012 Senior Systems Manager (CNSS), and a certified NSA 4011 Information Systems Security (INFOSEC) Professional (CNSS).

Judy was recently honored as one of the 2018 Federal Computer Week 100 Award Winners.

With over 20 years of public sector and commercial cybersecurity and identity and access management experience, Ross Foard supports DHS' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as a senior engineer in the Architecture and Engineering Center of Excellence. Ross has expertise in the architecture and technical integration of several
security domains and capabilities including Identity and Access Management, Cryptography,
Data Protection and Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA). Ross is the co-lead on the Federal
Mobility Group (FMG) Derived PIV Working Group (DPIVWG). This working group shares
information across federal agencies about industry practices in adopting Derived PIV
Credentials on mobile devices, both PKI and other phishing-resistant authentication. Ross's
professional goal is to help engineers and agency leaders understand how to identify and
prioritize cybersecurity risk and continuously mitigate that risk through a strong focus on
identity-focused ZTA.

Kevin Cox is the Deputy Chief Information Officer for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). In this position, Mr. Cox oversees all mission and functional activities required to support the Office of the Chief Information Officer, including service delivery, security, finance and budget, and policy. Prior to his current role, Mr. Cox served as Program Manager for the federal Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as well as the Deputy Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at the DOJ. Mr. Cox holds M.A. degrees from West Virginia University and the University of Chicago.

Richard Grabowski is the Deputy Program Manager for the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Cybersecurity Division. Through partnerships with agencies and industry, the CDM Program
fortifies the cybersecurity of civilian government data and networks by providing capabilities that
deliver relevant, timely and actionable information. CDM enables cybersecurity professionals to
manage risks by providing innovative tools, processes, governance and training required to
defend against cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities.

In this role, he has specific responsibilities for managing portfolios to deliver CDM capabilities
and services to program-participating Federal agencies. As the chief engineer of the program,
he oversees the day-to-day operations of the technical implementation efforts within the projects
under the program as well as the stragteic direction of the CDM Architecture.

Prior to Richard’s current role, he led the CDM Program’s senior technical staff as the
Architecture team lead. He started with CDM in 2014 as a Systems Engineer supporting the
CDM Dashboard and the Dynamic and Evolving Federal Enterprise Network Defense
(DEFEND; formerly Task Order [TO2]) Group C agencies. Previous to this, Richard spent over
nine years providing client/server, Windows administration and virtualization integration services
to the federal government.

Richard holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Systems and Information Engineering from the
University of Virginia and a Master of Science degree in Systems Engineering from The George
Washington University along with numerous industry certifications.

Amy S. Hamilton, Ph.D. is the Department of Energy Senior Advisor for National Cybersecurity Policy and Programs. She served two years as a senior cyber security policy analyst at the Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President. She served in the Michigan Army National Guard as a communications specialist and was commissioned into the US Army Officer Signal Corp, serving on Active Duty and later the US Army Reserves. She has worked at both the US European Command and the US Northern Command & North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) on multiple communications and IT projects.

She became a certified Project Management Professional through the Project Management Institute in 2007 and earned her Certified Information Security Manager certification in 2011. She presented on the “The Secret to Life from a PMP” at TEDxStuttgart in September 2016. She taught Project Management Tools at Colorado Technical University and was a facilitator for the Master’s Degree Program in Project Management for Boston University. She is an award-winning public speaker and has presented in over twenty countries on overcoming adversity, reaching your dreams, cyber security, and project management.

Amy holds a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Geography, from Eastern Michigan University, a Master of Science (MS) in Urban Studies from Georgia State University, Master in Computer Science (MSc) from the University of Liverpool, Master Certificate in Project Management (PM) and Chief Information Officer (CIO) from the National Defense University, and completed the US Air University, Air War College. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) at Regent University in their Organizational Leadership Program with a dissertation on “Unexpected Virtual Leadership: The Lived Experience of US Government IT and Cybersecurity Leaders transitioning from physical to virtual space for COVID-19.”

Amy’s motto is “A woman who is passionate about project management, public speaking, and shoes.”

Matt House, a cybersecurity professional with more than 20 years of experience, became the Program Manager of the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program in October 2022. The CDM Program, a flagship program of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), provides cybersecurity tools, integration services, and dashboards to participating agencies to help them improve their respective security postures by delivering better visibility and awareness of their networks and defending against cyber adversaries.

Mr. House has more than two decades of experience working in cybersecurity and information technology, including 10 years of experience in program management, focusing on complex software engineering and cybersecurity programs serving the federal government. He has actively supported government-wide efforts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to strengthen and enhance federal civilian agency cybersecurity postures, including the CDM dashboard implementation and EINSTEIN. Mr. House previously held positions with Microsoft Corporation, EGlobalTech, InfoReliance Corporation, which was acquired by ECS Federal in 2017, and the Logistics Management Institute.

A proven leader, Mr. House has successfully led the adoption of cloud capabilities for government agencies and managed programs valued at more than $100 million, teams with up to 110 people, and blanket purchase agreements with multiple, concurrent task orders.

Mr. House earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and physics from the University of Maryland and a Master of Science degree in information management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

As CDM Program Manager, Mr. House is responsible for working collaboratively with federal agencies and industry to deploy cybersecurity solutions that understand, manage and reduce risk to agency networks and data against cybersecurity threats. His role also involves managing portfolios to deliver CDM capabilities to agencies, engineering deployment and architecture-related activities, and leading various stakeholder engagement activities.

Betsy Kulick is a Senior Advisor to the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). She is currently detailed to support the Cybersecurity Division’s Office of the Technical Director.

As the former Deputy Program Manager and current Senior Advisor, she has specific responsibilities for managing portfolios to deliver CDM capabilities to agencies, engineering deployment and architecture-related activities, program support and acquisition, and outreach activities. Through partnerships with agencies and industry, the CDM Program fortifies the cybersecurity of civilian government data and networks by providing capabilities that deliver relevant, timely and actionable information. CDM enables cybersecurity professionals to manage risks by providing innovative tools, processes, governance and training required to defend against cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities.

Betsy was engaged with the program from its inception, helping shape the program approach and delivery to the 23 civilian Federal Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Act agencies, as well as to 80+ non-CFO Act agencies. Betsy has been supporting DHS since its establishment, having served as the Information System Security Officer for several early DHS networks, one of which connected the Federal government with private infrastructure entities.

Betsy holds a B.A. degree in political science from Pomona College in Claremont, CA, a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University in New York City and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional.

Paul Loeffler is the Portfolio Management Section Chief for the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program within the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Cybersecurity Division.

Loeffler oversees a team of seasoned portfolio managers responsible for leading the deployment of cyber capabilities across federal departments and agencies participating in the CDM Program.

Prior to Mr. Loeffler’s current role, he provided IT project management consulting services to cyber programs across CISA. Mr. Loeffler holds a bachelor’s degree in Information Sciences and Technology from Pennsylvania State University.

Doc McConnell is the Director of the Federal Enterprise Improvement Team (FEIT) at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). FEIT is a new team established within CISA’s Cybersecurity Division to reduce federal cybersecurity risk by strengthening CISA’s critical partnerships with other federal agencies and leading a coordinated approach to implementing federal cybersecurity priorities as a unified enterprise.

As the first Director of the FEIT, Mr. McConnell is responsible for building a team that integrates technical expertise, deep understanding of the federal cybersecurity environment, and creative approaches to solving tough problems. He also leads the team’s strategic planning to prioritize the most pressing cybersecurity improvements needed across the federal government, and the development of a new service delivery model to provide tailored services to agencies.

Prior to joining CISA in October 2021, Mr. McConnell worked as a Cybersecurity Policy Advisor to the Federal Chief Information Officer and Federal Chief Information Security Officer at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where he specialized in developing policies to attract and retain a highly qualified federal cybersecurity workforce, and in advancing OMB’s cybersecurity priorities through legislative strategy. Mr. McConnell also worked at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and in various consulting and advisory roles to federal agencies.

Mr. McConnell holds a Master of Information and Cybersecurity from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Public Policy and Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia.

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Wilbert Vaughn works in the Office of Information Security, as the HHS Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Program Manager at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Prior to HHS, He served in the United States Navy as a Cryptologic Chief Warrant Officer for 28 plus years, retiring in January 2005. After serving in the Navy, he worked in the private sector as a Senior Project Manager for the office of Chief Naval Operations CNO N20, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). He has been at HHS since February of 2015, where he has supported the implementation of the agency SPLUNK, Security Governance Risk and Compliance (SGRC) Archer and now CDM. 

Tristan Ahmadi is a Principal Solutions Architect with Elastic, based in Washington, DC. His background in enterprise software deployment and unstructured data analytics served both commercial organizations and Federal agencies, with a specialization in Natural Language Processing, entity extraction, and sentiment analysis. At Elastic, he currently builds search and analytic solutions for civilian agencies.

With more than a decade of experience in public sector IT security, Josh Brodbent has acquired a trove of knowledge on identity and privilege access management. In his capacity as regional vice president of solutions engineering at BeyondTrust, Brodbent works diligently with public sector organizations and government agencies to defend their networks. He also currently serves as industry chair of the ATARC Zero Trust Working Group. Prior to his five-year tenure with BeyondTrust, Brodbent worked as a security architect at Dell Technologies to develop secure solutions for multiple state and federal agencies.

Damon Cabanillas serves as the VP/ GM of Rapid7’s Americas’ Public Sector, Global Systems Integrator and LATAM GTM teams. In this capacity, he is chartered with helping organizations, and their associated supply chain, improve visibility into their exposed digital footprints partnering to mitigate Cyber Risk through people, process, technology and transparency.  Mr. Cabanillas has years of experience aligning solutions to address the no-fail mission requirements associated to regulated industry and has a deep passion for helping governments defend critical resources against the most sophisticated nation state cyber adversaries in the world.  

Mr. Cabanillas has led teams of Cyber evangelists for over 20 years at technology firms in various stages of their GTM maturation and scale out journey (large, medium and small) publicly traded and privately held startups. 

Before joining Rapid7 he was VP & GM of SecurityScorecard’s Public Sector GTM teams.  Prior to that he was Vice President of sales and operations at Carbon Black where he opened the Public Sector market for Carbon Black a pioneer in Endpoint Detection and Response.  Prior to that, he was VP of Sales for Juniper Networks, where he was responsible for helping Federal Agencies embrace open standard networking while transitioning to Software Defined Networking. 

Earlier in his career Mr. Cabanillas spent 15 years with Cisco Systems starting as an individual contributor and ending his tenure @ Cisco as a senior sales leader supporting customers in multiple market segments including U.S. Federal, local government (SLED), education providers (HEDU), retailers, healthcare and the global Fortune 100. His focus was and remains to be a consultative approach to securely implementing scale-out solutions that reduce friction, improve time to value, lower operational cost/complexity, while improving systematic processes that enable digital modernization across critical regulated market segments.
 

Joel Krooswyk is a 25 year veteran of the software development world. His journey from QA and Development into Product Management has led to him consulting on numerous enterprise agile and digital transformation initiatives. His passions for agility, automation, cybersecurity, and remote work led him to GitLab in 2017, where he currently serves as Federal CTO

Jared Phipps has been involved in cybersecurity professionally since 2001. As Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales Engineering at SentinelOne, Phipps uses his passion and experience in cybersecurity to advise prospects and clients through security projects. Phipps spent six years leading the sales engineering, professional services, and IR at Fidelis Cybersecurity. Prior to joining Fidelis, he worked for MITRE supporting NSA Cryptographic Modernization Programs for the United States Air Force. Phipps is a veteran of the United States Air Force, where he worked in cyber defense and offensive cyber operations.

Bio to be posted soon!

As NowSecure Chief Mobility Officer, industry veteran Brian Reed brings over a dozen years experience in mobile, security and risk including Good Technology, BlackBerry, BoxTone, and ZeroFOX working with government agencies, Fortune 2000 global customers and mobile trailblazers. With more than 25 years driving innovative solutions and securing customer success, Brian is a compelling speaker who brings unique insights with a global track record of success scaling startups and mid-size organizations. Brian is a frequent speaker at events including RSA, OWASP, Droidcon, FS-ISAC,  DevOpsWorld, Gartner, Mobile World Congress, and numerous vertical industry events. Brian is a graduate of Duke University.

Troy Vennon, Collaboratory ISAO Principle, Information Security Expert, Threat Intelligence and Information Sharing Evangelist. United States Marine. Real Estate Investor. Firearms Instructor. Wrestling Coach. Ohio State Football and Wrestling Fanatic.

Troy Vennon’s career spans 24 years and focused almost entirely in Information Security roles across several security domains beginning in 1998 with the United States Marine Corps as SNCOIC of the Marine Corps Network Operations & Security Center’s (MCNOSC) Marine Computer Emergency Response Team (MarCERT) until he joined the private sector in 2006 with Brent Huston at MicroSolved, Inc., as a security tester and evangelist. His career in the private sector has also seen him working in both small and large enterprises.

Troy is currently the Director of Security Innovation at GoSecure from a recent acquisition of Covail (formerly, Columbus Collaboratory) where he focuses on strategic and tactical Threat Intelligence, helping organizations operationalize Mitre ATT&CK to better understand their threat profiles, control coverage and control gaps, how control coverage drives Continuous Defense Improvement and affects risk and risk tolerance.

Alex Whitworth is an IT executive with more than 13 years of experience in all aspects of public sector sales, marketing and channel development. As Director at Carahsoft Technology Corp., he manages several sales teams, providing leadership and insight into the Public Sector IT marketplace. His teams play a major role in supporting the government’s evolving cybersecurity demands, with a deep focus towards supporting agencies with successful zero trust adoption. In addition, he leads Carahsoft Technology Corp.’s corporate strategic efforts in helping organizations meet compliance with the DoD’s CMMC initiative.

Natalie Alms is a staff writer at FCW covering federal technology policy, service delivery, customer experience and the government's tech workforce. She is a graduate of Wake Forest University and has written for the Salisbury (N.C.) Post. Connect with Natalie on Twitter at @AlmsNatalie.

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Adam Mazmanian is executive editor of FCW.

Before joining the editing team, Mazmanian was an FCW staff writer covering Congress, government-wide technology policy and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Prior to joining FCW, Mazmanian was technology correspondent for National Journal and served in a variety of editorial roles at B2B news service SmartBrief. Mazmanian has contributed reviews and articles to the Washington Post, the Washington City Paper, Newsday, New York Press, Architect Magazine and other publications.

Chris Riotta is a staff writer at FCW covering government procurement and technology policy. Chris joined FCW after covering U.S. politics for three years at The Independent. He earned his master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he served as 2021 class president.

Troy K. Schneider is GovExec's General Manager for Government Technology Brands, and for many years has been the Editor-in-Chief of both FCW and GCN, two of the oldest and most influential publications in public-sector IT. Both publications (originally known as Federal Computer Week and Government Computer News, respectively) were acquired by GovExec in 2021.

Prior to that acquisition, Mr. Schneider was General Manager of Public Sector 360, the government-focused business unit of 1105 Media. Prior to joining 1105 Media, Mr. Schneider was the New America Foundation’s Director of Media & Technology, and before that was Managing Director for Electronic Publishing at the Atlantic Media Company, where he oversaw the online operations of The Atlantic Monthly, National Journal,The Hotline and The Almanac of American Politics, among other publications. The founding editor of NationalJournal.com, Mr. Schneider also helped launch the political site PoliticsNow.com in the mid-1990s, and worked on the earliest online efforts of the Los Angeles Times and Newsday. He began his career in print journalism, and has written for a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, WashingtonPost.com, Slate, Politico, Governing, and many of the other titles listed above.

Mr. Schneider is a graduate of Indiana University, where his emphases were journalism, business and religious studies.