agenda

Executive Boardroom

HowHybrid Cloud can be used for Risk Management and Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation is driving rapid adoption of public clouds to accommodate dynamic business development and operations. How do companies leverage assets created in different datacenters? How can executives manage the risk of an evolving and often transient vendor ecosystem? Knowing what do look for in a strategic advisor, how to create a hybrid cloud based on open standards, and best practices to adopt are critical and necessary to be prepared for future growth. 

Key take-aways: 

Red Hat can help CIO's get prepared for future growth and help solve IT challenges. Open source software has made way for many technological advances, including hybrid cloud computing, big data, social, mobile and containers. As the global leader in enterprise-class open source software solutions, Red Hat and its partners are well-positioned to help customers achieve operational excellence and continue to innovate so they can effectively compete as a digital enterprise.

Executive Boardroom

Best-of-Breed or Consolidated: Principles in Security Architecture Design

When it comes to implementing network security infrastructure there are two schools of thought: use best-of-breed point solutions, or go with all round consolidated platforms. Pros and cons abound for either approach revolving around varying levels of protection, integration, and administrative overhead but the increasing complexity of current security infrastructure is showing a winning approach. Even though consolidated solutions may offer greater benefits in the long run, no one exists in a green-field situation when it comes to network and infrastructure security so careful planning is required to ensure the necessary protection.

Takeaways:

Executive Boardroom

Cloud Adoption Challenges on a Macro Level

The hype around the cloud is pervasive and can be potentially overwhelming but numerous studies have shown that tangible benefits can be had, whether in cost savings, efficiency improvements, or flexibility enhancements. That said numerous impediments exist to not just realizing that value, but even considering adoption; regulatory issues, integration challenges, business process revamp, and a dozen other challenges can halt cloud projects in their tracks before they get off the ground. In this group discussion we'll explore those inhibitors, understanding which challenges prevent adoption and what can be done to overcome them.

Takeaways:

Executive Boardroom

Security in an Outsourced World

Building security into your enterprise processes, and integrating it with your existing technology investments has never been more critical or complicated than it is in this era of decentralized computing, and ever-tightening compliance requirements. Furthering this complication is the impact that partnering deals can have since infrastructure, applications, and even data may now longer be under your direct control. To be able to ensure efficient and effective security capabilities you need to understand the nature of the threats that exist today, the impact a sourcing relationship can have on these threats, and the mitigation strategies and tools key industry leaders are using to address the challenge.

Takeaways:

Executive Boardroom

Proving the ROI of IoT

We all know that ROI calculations, on the surface, are simple mathematical formulas: compare the cost of investment against the value of the return over a given and agreed upon period. But determining exactly what each side of the equation entails and totals is the challenging part, and nowhere moreso than in burgeoning areas such as IoT adoption where use cases are still not clearly understood, and technology costs are highly variable, and all the components related to cost may not yet be quantifiable. The benefits are there, as a number of enterprises are discovering with early pilot programs, but CIOs must enter this area with their eyes wide open to ensure that early IoT implementations have the ROI necessary to keep more complex projects moving forward.

Takeaways:

Executive Boardroom

Balancing Reactivity and Proactivity in Enterprise Security

As with all things in life, the focus on how to conduct enterprise security ebbs and flows between varying degrees of reactivity and proactivity. In the old school Security 1.0 world, where the focus was almost completely on network security, efforts were in general proactive in nature with firewalls and anti-malware seeking to prevent threats before they even occurred. This didn't work so well and so Security 2.0 focused on reactivity, wrapping things like encryption around the data so that even if a breach occurred, the loss would be mitigated. Yet breaches, and losses, continue to occur. So if primarily proactive security doesn't work, and if primarily reactive security also doesn't work, how then do we find the right balance between the two to find a security posture that does work?

Takeaways:

Executive Boardroom

Planning for a MultiCloud Future

The promise of the cloud is almost beyond compare; infinite computing resources, unmatched reliability and uptime, instantaneous service availability, simplistic self-service and provisioning, and the low-low prices of a buy by the drink model. These are the reasons behind the rush to the cloud that we are currently experiencing, but the wholesale adoption does bring a downside " as more and more capability is moved to the cloud, more and more cloud providers are utilized since, for the most part, each provider offers only a limited suite of services. The MultiCloud environment that creates a new set of challenges that IT leaders need to overcome, notably resiliency, interoperability/integration, and security and compliance through careful planning and the lessons learned from building complex on premise distributed systems.

Takeaways:

Executive Boardroom

Identity and the New Age of Enterprise Security

From a technology standpoint, as a society the world of business has gone through two distinct stages in the evolution of its information security focus. The first addressed network based protection and preventative controls such as firewalls and anti-malware. The second looked at data-centric and detective controls such as encryption and intrusion/extrusion monitoring. Since breaches continue to occur at a record pace, what is need new is clearly a new evolution, one that pushes towards individual focused security through granular user monitoring and management as provided by solutions such as Identity and Access Management. While IAM isn't a new technology field, it is one whose time has come and CISO need to begin investing in modern-day, light-weight, easy to implement IAM solutions now to stay ahead of the curve, and reduce enterprise threats. 

Takeaways: 

The breach onslaught demonstrates that existing security solutions are incapable of defending current threats 

Enterprises need to begin looking at security from an activity perspective rather than an artifact perspective 

IAM provides activity insight, and therefore threat awareness, no other platform can equal

Executive Boardroom

Sourcing Enabled Business Transformation

Innovation is more than just a buzzword; it's fast becoming the mantra by which successful companies live. As enterprises strive to become ever more agile, offloading mundane responsibilities to sourcing partners can free the resources to become innovative. While beneficial, this really only scratches the surface as it still requires and relies on your resources to undertake that innovation journey. Partners that can bring innovation wherewithal to the table however, that can bake it directly into the service offering provide a greater opportunity to innovate. Understanding how such services can be integrated into your day to day operations, how they can spring board your innovation efforts, and how they can allow you to become truly transformational is essential to innovation success.

Takeaways:

Executive Boardroom

Increase Your Security Intelligence and Enterprise Compliance

The breadth and depth of security threats that are targeting the modern enterprise are bordering on overwhelming, but they're not alone as the breadth and depth of security solutions are also bordering on overwhelming. When security managers have to respond to alerts and warnings from dozens of security systems, and CISOs have to make strategic decisions based on fragmented data, it's hard to argue that security is improving. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms that aggregate the vast quantities of data, correlate diverse events, and filter the signal from the noise are allowing enterprises to get back ahead of the curve and make appropriate tactical and strategic decisions.

Takeaways: