Session Speakers:

Chris Maurer Assistant Professor University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce SIM At-Large Member	Keri Pearlson Executive Director, Cybersecurity MIT Sloan Research Consortium Founding President, SIM Austin	Daniel Gorecki Global Information Security Manager CISO for Ascot Group

It is well known that insiders are the weakest link in any organization’s cybersecurity program.  While technical components can be developed and configured to block harmful activity and report on suspicious actions taken within the IT environment, people cannot be programmed in the same way.  As such, organizations expend effort training employees on secure computing practices yet we continue to see serious breaches tied back to human error or exploitation suggesting that employee training is not enough to combat pervasive cybersecurity threats.  Rather, successful protection requires a new mindset that comes from a robust culture of cybersecurity across the entire organization.

Join your fellow SIM members for an interactive discussion on the challenges associated with developing a secure culture and instilling a protectionary mindset at all levels within the organization.  Data from the SIM IT Trends Study will be presented to highlight the current state of cybersecurity within organizations, then leading academics and industry professionals will guide participants through an information sharing session aimed at providing best practices and advice that can be immediately applied within your organization.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Chris Maurer has extensive experience in various cybersecurity-related fields, including risk management, vulnerability assessment, security awareness and training, business continuity planning, and IT governance. He currently serves as the Associate Director of the Cybersecurity for Business Leaders certificate program at the McIntire School of Commerce and maintains active research and teaching interests in various cybersecurity-related topics.  His research has appeared in MIS Quarterly, Communications of the ACM, European Journal of Information Systems, and MIS Quarterly Executive and has been presented at leading international IS conferences. He is also a member of the Society of Information Management IT Trends Study research team. Prior to earning a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, Chris worked for KPMG as an IT Auditor and served as the Director of Security and Controls for TRX Inc.

Dr. Keri Pearlson is the Executive Director of the research group Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan (CAMS).  Dr. Pearlson has held positions in academia and industry including Babson College, UTexas-Austin, Gartner’s Research Board, CSC, Hughes Aircraft Company, and AT&T.  She was the CIO for Shalom Austin.  Her research studies topics at the intersection of MIS, business strategy and organizational design.  Her current research projects focus on how organizations build a culture of cybersecurity, how to manage the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of AI/ML systems and how organizations build trust to share mitigations for cyber breaches.  She’s the lead author of the popular MIT textbook: Managing and Using Information: A Strategic Approach (7^th edition published Jan.2020) and co-author of Zero Time: Providing Instant Customer Value. She has written dozens of papers and case studies, many of which included ground-breaking work which has influenced how managers and leaders think about, and manage, information. She was the founding President of the SIM-Austin chapter and has held various other positions on the SIM Management Council and Committees.  Dr. Pearlson holds a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) in MIS from Harvard Business School, a Masters (MS) in Industrial Engineering and Bachelors (BS) in Mathematics from Stanford and was a member of the Harvey Mudd College class of 1979.

Mr. Daniel Gorecki is Global Information Security Manager & CISO at Ascot Group. In this role he manages a global team for information risk management, and cyber resiliency for the global organization.  Prior to joining Ascot Group, he was the CISO at Aramark, and held the CISO and CIO roles at Intercept Pharmaceuticals.  Dan maintains the certification for Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Data Privacy Solutions Engineer (CDPSE), has completed SIM's Regional Leadership Forum for IT Executives, and holds a B.E. in Computer Engineering from Stony Brook University.

If you require special assistance of any kind, please call us at 800.387.9746 email us at  lrudy@simnet.org.