Pell Center To Host Joint Cybersecurity Awareness Event During National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Newport, RI – For the fifth year in a row, the Pell Center is supporting the annual DHS National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) campaign as a NCSAM Champion Organization. This national effort, now on its 16th consecutive year, aims to raise public awareness about the importance of cybersecurity and share useful resources through social media and various events across the country. The Pell Center is also partnering with the RI Joint Cyber Task Force, SENEDIA, and OSHEAN to host a half-day cybersecurity awareness event that will focus on the most pressing cyber threats facing businesses, local governments, and municipalities, and the need to build a culture of cybersecurity across organizations. This free event will be held on Thursday, October 24th, from 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM at the Pell Center.
Pell Center Senior Fellow, and head of the Pell Center’s Cyber Leadership Project, Francesca Spidalieri, will moderate the discussion. The event is part of the Rhode Island Corporate Cybersecurity Initiative (RICCI), an ongoing effort designed to bring senior leaders across various industries
together to discuss the most pressing cyber threats facing corporate and public sector leaders in the digital age, while promoting best practices to prevent, protect, mitigate, respond, and remediate cyber incidents. This event will address some of the latest ransomware incidents, which are a significant and growing cyber threat for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as municipal and state agencies, and explore best practices to stop the spreading of those infections and mitigate damages.
In his keynote address, Cybereason’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Israel Barak will discuss the reasons why SMBs, as well as cities and towns across the United States, have become targets for ransomware attacks and why disaster recovery does not ensure security resiliency. Other cybersecurity experts will also cover cost-effective solutions to combat cyber threats, including automation, AI, and machine learning to improve visibility into the organization’s network, develop stronger security strategies, and ultimately better respond to and recover from cyber incidents. They will emphasize the importance of a well-trained and cyber-aware workforce that can become the first (and best) line of defense for organizations of all sizes and in all sectors, and help them better protect themselves, their employees, and their customers against the most common cyber threats.
This event’s speakers will include: Israel Barak, Chief Information Security Officer at Cybereason,O’Shea Bowens, CEO and Founder of Null Hat Security, and Matthew Wainwright, Chief Information Security Officer of the Town of Middletown, RI.
The event will be followed by the RI Joint Cyber Task Force’s (JCTF) monthly meeting.
To register for this event, visit the Pell Center’s Eventbrite page. For additional information, contact Francesca Spidalieri, Pell Center Senior Fellow for Cyber Leadership.