Dear readers,

Back in September 2008 (one year in to founding CDM) we ran our very first summit for C-level execs in financial services. Little did we know that Lehamn Bros, Bear Stearns , WAMU and others would (unfortunately) declare bankruptcy four days before our very 1st gathering in Scottsdale, AZ. The summit (somehow) run exceptionally well and we ‘bared the storm’

This is different, but COVID-19 has businesses concerned and the event industry is no different. Large scale events like SXSW & RSA are seeing premier sponsors back out. The Mobile World Congress was cancelled and major companies like Visa, Facebook, and Ford are limiting work travel for their employees.

At CDM Media, we host/support 300+ events every year. We specialize in local, intimate summits, think tanks, and roundtable dinners which are very different to the large scale global/national events that we’ve seen cancelling/shifting in days gone by. With smaller numbers, comes more contained environments but even still, we are closely following constant updates surrounding the Coronavirus to make sure we are keeping our attendees & partners as safe as possible. My team are following guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as keeping up to date on travel restrictions, whilst seeking general advice from local government agencies/officials. In addition, we’ve spoken to all our event host partners who will be playing their part to provide locations that are safe and sanitized. Proactive management has helped our clients/attendees prepare and plan with purpose. Knowing that, our number one priority is people’s health and safety.

Right now it’s business as usual for our events and given the outstanding support from both our C-Suite community and event partners, we’re very optimistic that our events will go ahead as planned. For our part, we will continue with our relentless efforts to make them incredible learning, sharing, and networking experiences.

The ripple effect of concern surrounding this virus can be felt in various industries and communities. We have ongoing discussions with our staff about keeping them safe and following protocols set by the WHO and CDC. Like most other industries, precaution is key and we will continue to do what is in the best interest of safety, for everyone involved.

Sincerely,
Glenn Willis
CEO

PS- We urge all CDM event attendees to adopt the ‘virtual handshake’ (elbow pump/heel tap) at our upcoming events.

Wouldn’t it be nice if life were more automated? Thankfully it is. Before we start panicking that robots will steal our jobs, let’s focus instead on how robotics and AI can improve our jobs. Some industries (like sales) depend on personal touches, but there’s more to sales than just a phone call.

The best sales tend to stem from lengthy research. When aspects of research are automated, an algorithm can quickly identify buying trends. Data extracted by AI gives a more rounded picture of a sales target than old school methods. Decisions can be made based on data rather than hunches. This efficiency can cut the time ordinarily spent at the top of the funnel.

The same way travel companies use an AI algorithm for setting airfare prices, sales companies can use AI to customize price proposals for the most advantageous deals. AI can also be helpful in determining whether a customer is likely to go for an up or cross-sale. Sometimes the cross or upsell with the wrong target can end a deal in its tracks. Reliable forecasting can fix that.

Sales organizations that resist the imminent AI advances will likely struggle. Historically the sales industry is slow to adapt to big tech changes. As more companies digitize operations, the days of cold calling will become extinct. Even today, many corporate email and phone systems have machine learning in place to screen out unwanted solicitation.

Companies that embrace AI will reap its rewards. Consumer buying choices are already largely effected by AI. An algorithm determines what streaming choices are best suited to our tastes. Our phones know more about our buying choices than we do. Tracking pixels embedded in web pages generate retargeting that aims to get you to buy that thing you were looking at online. Organizations with the highest level of customer satisfaction are doing so by pivoting their sales strategy based on machine learned data.

More resources…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2019/09/20/how-companies-are-using-ai-to-improve-sales/#180f06585dc0

https://www.resourcefulselling.com/ai-is-changing-sales/

Data security continues to be the biggest threat to most organizations in the US. With the new revelations (and subsequent charges in the 2018 Equifax breach) cybercrime will remain a trending topic. Many consumers are still waiting for a piece of their settlement from the class action lawsuit as a result of the breach.

What worries experts more than traditional hacking are the alarming rise in ransomware attacks. Ransomware differs from malware or a typical security breach in that victims’ software is held hostage until hackers are paid. Ransomware has become much more innovative. Some companies even specialize in it.

In the past ransomware was somewhat rare as it required criminals to be well-versed in coding. Today’s digital intruders are much savvier and work with third party programmers. This phenomenon is not all that different from Software as a Service (SaaS). Instead of useful, problem solving software, Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) lives in the shadows of the internet. Developers are creating and selling products that make ransomware easier to deploy.

One of the most egregious instances of ransomware occurred in 2016 when Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid over $17,000 in bitcoin to get their operations back online. For hackers, medical records are a hot commodity as they have endless potential for blackmail.

The idea of hackers getting into medical and government records is a frightening notion, but scarier still is the remote capability to shut down operations of vital services. This is especially precarious when considering electric power grids. With an efficient RaaS program, even a low-level cybercriminal could potentially bring an organization to a total standstill. Cyberwarfare will likely replace the battlefields of yore. Instead of striking cities with drones, one could use ransomware or malware to suspend electricity and other forms of digital communications.

The best way to avoid paying out for ransomware attacks is to always be backing up your systems and data. Diversify backups between cloud and hard storage. With growing dependence on cloud storage comes a greater need for quality cloud security. As futuristic as ransomware attacks sound, having a contingency plan is another strategic way to avoid the fall-out. Just as your office has a plan for a fire or tornado, so too must there be a plan for data breaches and ransom attacks. As they say, a good offense is a good defense.

More Resources…

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/09/technology/ransomware-attacks.html

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ransomware-2020

It’s no question the Iowa Democratic Caucus of 2020 was a mess. Reporting was delayed for days and what data did come out is subject to much scrutiny as data sets did not match up. While the 2020 election cycle moves on, many are left wondering what happened?

The simplest answer is that the app developed by former campaign staffers broke. Traditionally, the Iowa Caucus relied on precincts dialing in their results. This year, an external app was used so that election officials could report their results. The app was not previously tested and wasn’t able to handle the volume of submissions. The phone lines were also not equipped to handle the volume of inbound calls from election officials, leaving many people on hold for hours.

Cybersecurity experts are baffled by the lack of testing. The Iowa Democratic Party is reassuring media outlets that no hacking occurred, and the data was not compromised. With such seemingly minimal oversight, it’s hard to trust the future use of such an app. The results of future elections will likely be called into question if efforts to modernize processes aren’t fully vetted. The big world impact could be a continued decline in public trust of elections, which has serious implications.

What the situation in Iowa taught us is that critical voter data is vulnerable when newly developed technology is rushed into use. Unfortunately for the state of Iowa, this snafu has called into question its significance as a gauge for predicting election outcomes.

More Resources…

https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2020/02/04/went-wrong-iowa-caucuses

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/04/politics/iowa-caucuses-what-happened/index.html

It’s been said that humans are becoming nothing but data for companies. That’s certainly a cynical outlook, but it’s not entirely wrong. As the CCPA ratchets up regulations on how companies can store and collect data on users, it begs the question what happens to our data after we die?

Several companies specialize in the destruction of your consumer data after you pass on. Recently California enacted data security laws that now allow you to request a company destroy any data they’ve collected on you. This option is currently only available to California residents, but it’s expected that other states will follow suit shortly.
If you’re dead, why would you care about your personal data? Good question. Think about it this way, all the iTunes music and movies you’ve purchased over the years, are actually the licenses to stream the content, not the actual content itself. Those licenses expire upon your end of life. Not leaving behind digital copies of your favorite films to friends and family may sound like a frivolous thing to worry about, but the implications of your digital footprint are much bigger.

Consider your medical records. The UK legally stipulates that medical records must be kept for at least 10 years after you die. Access is considerably restricted, but it is out there and subject to data breaches. Is there anything in your medical history you’d prefer stay private?

Most if not all search engine and email companies do not have any limits on how long it can store the private content of emails, cloud storage or other personal details. Would you be okay with your entire inbox being exposed to the world in the event of a breach? Probably not.

Some consumer companies do not have a great reputation for data security. When you are alive, you’re able to control what happens to your data and privacy in the wake of a data hack, but in death you and your reputation are powerless. There are things you can do now to prevent potentially embarrassing information to be leaked but it requires a careful comb of your digital profile. Perhaps you should be asking more companies to destroy your data, and maybe be more mindful about whose cookies you freely accept online.

More resources

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/02/01/what-really-happens-to-your-big-data-after-you-die/#242b72e61184

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612283/six-things-to-do-with-your-data-before-you-die/

If we’ve learned anything from global politics, it’s that every piece of technology equipment is vulnerable to hackers. The very idea of a data breach is enough to keep a security executive (or CISO) up at night. Bad press, huge revenue losses, eroded consumer trust and worse, heavy penalty fees have led the industry to develop the Zero Trust model.

Zero Trust is fairly literal. Meaning, it’s a security system that does not trust any user attempts to access (or work within the applications), of an enterprise system unless their ID can be verified at several points. It was created by John Kindervag of Forrester Research in 2018. Since then it’s become a buzz word that few truly grasp the meaning of.

Ordinarily, an organization’s data accessibility assumes that if you are able to log in, you can be trusted. This model has become outdated as cybercrime gets more sophisticated. 64% of organizations have experienced a phishing attack in the past year. Most hacks are the result of a phishing link in an email being clicked on. In fact, 90% of data breaches involve some sort of phishing element. Often the entry point for a hacker isn’t where the data they want lives, but it grants them access to whatever isn’t restricted. Zero Trust aims to make these kinds of scams impossible. If implemented correctly, attempts to hack into an enterprise system would trigger alarms for the security team, thus thwarting the attack before it starts.

Many organizations do not have the resources to entirely overhaul their current security measures, but thankfully Zero Trust is scalable to fit the needs of your organization. There are many iterations of Zero Trust and some of them may already be in use at your company. A lot of IT staffs have already started rolling out pieces of Zero Trust, including virtual seminars and fake phishing scam links in employee email accounts. The bigger Zero Trust picture is that data breaches are preventable, but it comes down to good training, strong security measures and knowledgeable security professionals.

Futher reading…

https://www.phishingbox.com/resources/phishing-facts

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/what-is-a-zero-trust-architecture

March 19, 2019 – Loews Hollywood Hotel, Los Angeles, CA

While there were subfreezing temperatures in Chicago, we were thrilled to hold our CIO and CISO Southern California Summits in beautiful Los Angeles, CA at the Loews Hollywood Hotel. These summits welcomed CIOs and CISOs as well as other IT/security executives throughout SoCal and featured conversations and thought leadership discussions around the latest topics including digital transformation, augmented analytics, smart spaces, cybersecurity, blockchain and much more.

A special thank you to our speakers for their excellent insight throughout this busy day:

• Tim Moran, Former Senior Vice President of Global Information Technology Financial Systems, Live Nation Entertainment (Master of Ceremonies)
• Paul Love, CISO, CO-OP Financial Services – All Eyes on You
• Nayaki Nayyar, President, Digital Service Management, BMC Software – BMC Helix: Future of Service Management
• Jeanne Holm, Deputy Chief Information Officer, City of Los Angeles – The Future of Autonomous Things
• John Gormally, Strategic Account Manager, BlackBerry – IOT EOT Security and Beyond!’
• Charles Sims, Director of IT, LA Clippers – Leveraging Cloud Identity for a Secure & Automated Enterprise platform
• Nemi George, Vice President, Information Security Officer | Service Operations, Pacific Dental Services – The Solution for Your Legacy System’s Security: The Cloud
• Amanda Mosello, Senior Security Engineer, Imperva – From the Front Lines: 5 Best Practices for Application Defense in Depth
• Guy Reams, Regional VP, Insight Cloud + Data Center Transformation – The Power of Pink: A Curious Investigation into the Influence of Female Leadership
• Brad Beutlich, Vice President of Sales Western Region and LATAM, nCipher – Relying on Perimeter Security is Dead
• Mark Norato, Senior Director, Healthcare Vertical, Tableau Software – Tableau’s 2019 Top 10 Business Intelligence Trends: Understand what’s driving BI innovation in Healthcare and Large Enterprise
• Michiel De Bruin, Chief Information Security Officer, Community Memorial Health System – Machine Learning Is Here to Help, Not Replace
• Jacob Burgess, Area Information Officer, Kaiser Permanente – Immersive Experiences
• Aaron Hopkins, Regional Sales Manager, Capriza – How to Accelerate and Simplify Approvals, and Why It Matters
• Bryan Ackermann, SVP and CIO, Korn Ferry International – How Augmented Analytics Will Help Your Organization
• Richard Greenberg, Information Security Officer, County of Los Angeles – Breaches Are Everywhere. What’s a Good Security Leader to Do?!
• Matt Clemens, Technical Director, Arxan, Inc – Mobile and Web App Security: How Do You Know You Got It Right?

Also, special thanks to the panelists who participated in the Executive Visions panel, The Revitalizing Change in the Role of the CXO, as well as the Women in IT Panel, Building a High-Performance Team for Digital Transformation.

Executive Visions Panel:

• Tim Moran, Former Senior Vice President of Global Information Technology Financial Systems, Live Nation Entertainment (Moderator)
• Mark Van Holsbeck, CISO, Avery Dennison
• Lance Hassell, Chief Operating Officer, Covenant Care
• Kathy Linares, VP of IT, Insulectro
• Paul Love, CISO, CO-OP Financial Services

Women in IT Panel:

• Helen Norris, Vice President, Chief Information Officer, Chapman University
• Louise Brandy, VP of Enterprise Applications, Essex Property Trust
• Kathy Linares, VP of IT, Insulectro
• Nayaki Nayyar, President, Digital Service Management, BMC Software
• Nicole McMackin, President and CEO, Irvine Technology Corporation
• Carol Fawcett, Corporate Vice President, Chief Information Officer, Golden State Foods

We are confident that our attendees created new connections with their peers, uncovered one or more new ideas that will impact their digital transformation efforts and found several new solution providers that can help them achieve their goals. We look forward to seeing everyone again at next year’s CIO and CISO Southern California Summits!

March 14, 2019 – Four Seasons – Brickell, Miami, FL

We took our talents down to South Beach for our CIO & CISO Miami Summits on March 14, 2019 at the Four Seasons in downtown Miami. These summits welcomed CIOs and CISOs as well as other IT/security executives throughout the South Florida and featured conversations and thought leadership discussions around the latest topics including digital transformation, augmented analytics, smart spaces, cybersecurity, blockchain and much more.

A special thank your to our speakers for their excellent insight throughout this busy day:

• Gary Eppinger, CISO, Carnival Corporation – All Eyes on You
• David Less, CIO, JL Audio Inc. – How Augmented Analytics Will Help Your Organization
• Luis Noguerol, NOAA Information System Security Officer, US Department of Commerce – The Future of Autonomous Things
• Ben Tedesco, Security Strategist, Carbon Black – Hunting in the Depths: The Need for a Strategic Threat Detection Model
• Annalisa Fernandez, Intercultural Strategist, Because Culture – Technology Across Cultural Borders
• Scott Gibson, Regional Sales Director – US South Region, Silver Peak Systems – Enabling a Business-First Network: Moving from Software-defined to a Self-driving Wide Area Network
• Scott Luongo, IT Solutions Client Partner, CenturyLink – Where Are We on Our Journey? Effective Dashboards for Decision Making
• Chris Harrison, CTO, Nova Southeastern University – A.I. – The Future Technology Disruptor of all Industries and Sectors
• Joe Tomasone, SE, Southeast, Thales eSecurity, Inc. – Everything Old Is New Again
• Sapana Patel, Sr. Director of Solution Delivery & Architecture, Spirit Airlines – Mobilizing Workforce (Business Anywhere)
• Rich Vidil, VP, Sales Engineering, Enterprise, GTT Communications – What’s the Big Deal about SD-WAN? Seeing the Forest for the Trees
• Don Cox, Chief Information Security Officer, MEDNAX, Inc. – Machine Learning Is Here to Help, Not Replace
• Tery Howard, Former SVP & CTO, Miami Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium – What’s the Next Stop On the Transformation Journey?

Also, special thanks to the panelists who participated in the Working Lunch – Diversity by Design in Artificial Intelligence

• Annalisa Fernandez, Intercultural Strategist, Because Culture (Moderator)
• Gary Eppinger, CISO, Carnival Corporation
• Lars Schmekel, CISO, Miami Dade County
• Chris Harrison, CTO, Nova Southeastern University
• Greg Taffet, MC, Board Member of South Florida Digital Alliance, former CIO, US Gas and Electric

We are confident that our attendees created new connections with their peers, uncovered one or more new ideas that will impact their digital transformation efforts and found several new solution providers that can help them achieve their goals. We look forward to seeing everyone again at next year’s CIO and CISO Miami Summits!