CIO & CISO Chicago Summit Recap

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Thank you to all delegate attendees, sponsors, the Westin River North and the rest of the CDM Media team for a fantastic event in Chicago, IL on March 8th, 2018. Delegates from companies like Aon, New York Life Insurance, GE Capital, State of Illinois and more joined our sponsors (Cybereason, Prevoty, Thales eSecurity, Cherwell Software, IBM, Soliant Consulting, Winthrop Resources, Workday) to discuss the topics around Digital Transformation Is a Journey, Not a Destination.

The day kicked off with a presentation by Nevin Zimmermann, CIO at GE Capital, about CIOs’ dilemmas (“What is your strategy? Do we have the right people? What is the cost?”) and solutions (leveraging startups, learn to fund, get efficient, know your team).

The summit attendees spent the remainder of the day in numerous think tank sessions, panels, roundtable meetings to discuss the industries’ top trends and topics. The discuss went deeper into digital transformation and specific challenges around artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and different strategies.

The CIO of the State of Illinois, Ken Lonbom, shared details from his presentation on what Illinois’s IT department has done to stay secure as well as incentivize start-up growth in Chicago as the new Silicon Valley. Erik Devine, CISO at Riverside Healthcare, shared his struggles of a reactive industry and attempting to stay “proactively reactive.”

After a full morning of discussion, the summit was rejuvenated through the panel discussion after lunch. Tim Walter, CIO/SVP at Randa Accessories, Paige Adams, Group CISO at Zurich Insurance, and Mark Lovelace, VP & CIO at Masterlock, shared what their biggest threats were and how to combat them. The biggest takeaway from this session was that they wanted their department to be enablers and preventers. They are not looking to respond to requests with a “NO”, but rather a “HOW”.

Along with that, the panel shared how they are looking for solution providers who do not just want to sell a product, but actually partner with them in order to solve their problems. And that’s exactly what the sponsors wanted. Two sponsors came back to the CDM Media team and shared their successes and confidence that relationship were created.

In addition, a journalist from Inc. Magazine came in to interview the executive attendees and sponsors as well as our CEO, Glenn Willis.

Stay tuned for news and updates on our next CIO & CISO Chicago Summit on October 18th, 2018 as well as other opportunities to gather as a community to learn from each other.

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