The Mississippi College 2018 Cybersecurity Summit speakers include experts in the area of cybersecurity.
Greg Hofstrand
COO and Director SETA Operations, Independent Software
Baltimore, MD
Maeghin Alarid
Lead Policy Analyst, Toeroek Associates
Colorado Springs, CO
Maeghin Alarid holds an MA in International Security and Homeland Defense and a graduate certificate in Terrorism Analysis. She has six FEMA certifications in incident response and is a member of the Anti-Terrorism Accreditation Board as a Certified Master Anti-Terrorist Specialist. She was the lead policy analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies onsite at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, working arms control, nonproliferation and strategic stability issues for the Air Force. She has over ten years of experience working for the Department of Defense, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and every branch of the military. She was a terrorism instructor at the Defense Nuclear Weapons School where she created the school’s first course on Female Suicide Bombers. She was asked to present her research on Female Recruitment and Radicalization Online at the Women’s Peace and Security Conference in 2015. Her research was published in the book, “Impunity: Countering Illicit Power in War and Transition” by the National Defense University. She has worked in countering violent extremism and social media monitoring for the last five years. She has experience in curriculum development and instruction as well as in Homeland Security and exercise planning. She has worked with State, Federal, and Military first responders as well as international students and has traveled to various military bases throughout the United States instructing response to radiological terrorism.
Brian Walls
Territory Manager, Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd.
Tupelo, MS
Harper Maddox
Chief Technology Officer, EdgeTheory
Ridgeland, MS
Harper is the Chief Technology Officer and a Founder of EdgeTheory and co-organizer of the Jackson Tech Entrepreneurs meetup. He started coding assembler on his TI-82 calculator and has built applications for Fortune 500 companies, startups, and the department of defense. At EdgeTheory, Harper and Billy Conn built a knowledge graph that connects related topics, tags and locations. It also represents a parent/child hierarchy. They used the graph to determine appropriate social media messaging for a specific topic and we used it to build contextually relevant messages (e.g., drop in a sushi restaurant in Austin, TX).
Billy Conn
Chief Architect, EdgeTheory
Ridgeland, MS
Alina Ng
Professor of Law, Mississippi College / VP Operations, Boyte Medical Consulting
Jackson, MS
Professor Ng has been a faculty member at Mississippi College School of Law since 2007. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School, the University of Cambridge, and the University of London. Professor Ng teaches Property, Intellectual Property, International Intellectual Property, Cyberlaw, and Law and Economics. She writes and publishes in the area of property and intellectual property law. Professor Ng’s research focuses particularly on the interrelationship between private property and the public’s rights to access such property. In one of Professor Ng’s recent articles, The Conceits of Our Legal Imagination: Legal Fictions and the Concept of Deemed Authorship, 17 N.Y.U. J. Legis. & Pub. Pol'y 707 (2014), she argues that the work-for-hire doctrine in copyright law is a dangerous legal fiction because it obfuscates the concept of authorship and what it means to be an author by treating employers of creators as authors of copyrighted works. Professor Ng is currently working on projects dealing with the use of neuroscientific data, the relevance of such data for understanding creative and innovative minds, and its use in the development and implementation of legal policies.
Wesley McGrew, Ph.D.
Director of Cyber Operations, HorneCyber
Memphis, TN
Dr. McGrew serves as director of cyber operations for HORNE Cyber. Known for his work in offense-oriented network security, Wesley specializes in penetration testing, vulnerability analysis, reverse engineering of malicious software and network traffic analysis.
Wesley is the author of penetration testing and forensic tools used by many practitioners. He is a frequent presenter at DEF CON and Black Hat USA. At the National Forensics Training Center, he provided digital forensics training to law enforcement and wounded veterans. As an adjunct professor he designed a course he teaches on reverse engineering to students at Mississippi State University, using real-world, high-profile malware samples. This effort was undertaken as part of earning National Security Agency CAE Cyber Ops certification for the university. He has presented his work on critical infrastructure security to the DHS joint working group on industrial control systems.
Wesley earned his Ph.D. in computer science at Mississippi State University for his research in vulnerability analysis of SCADA HMI systems used in national critical infrastructure. He served as a research professor in MSU’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering and Distributed Analytics and Security Institute.
Mark Goldman
Senior Executive, Entrepreneur and Board Member, SCOUT
Atlanta, GA
Mark Goldman is an accomplished Senior Executive, Entrepreneur, and Board Member with more than 35 years of success in the consumer products, travel, hospitality, retail, and financial services industries. Leveraging extensive experience with brand strategy and marketing innovation, Mark is a valuable asset for startups and existing brands looking for guidance on creative marketing innovation in a digital marketplace or expanding their portfolios into new areas. His broad areas of expertise include advertising, brand strategy & development, integrated marketing strategy, corporate governance and leadership, beverage alcohol, transportation, franchise brands, restaurants, luxury brands, collectibles, B2B, online/digital/social media marketing, sales, creative direction, new business development, and corporate governance.
Mark holds an MBA in Marketing and a BA in Business/Economics, both from George Washington University, Washington, D.C. He has served on the BOD for DuckHead Apparel; the Advisory Board for Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund; the Board of Advisors/Chair, Marketing Committee for Park Pride Atlanta, and on the Board of Trustees for The Atlanta Girls’ School.
Scott Marticke
President, Breakaway Consulting
Atlanta, GA
Scott Marticke is an accomplished business leader with more than 30 years of experience across all marketing disciplines. As a business development professional, he is responsible for generating over $500 million in business for regional to global firms. He works with organizations that Omnicom, Nissan, Toyota, General Mills, CBS, Saatchi & Saatchi, Ford, Porter Novelli, Dollar/Thrifty, Central Atlanta Progress, MARTA and more, providing strategic and tactical counsel.
In 2009 he co-founded analytics firm Sentiment360, pioneering automated online sentiment analysis for businesses and organizations and political campaigns. It was his work in this field that led Scott to develop the strategic cybersecurity /reputation management service PNProtect for Omnicom’s global PR firm, Porter Novelli in 2014. Combining cybersecurity technology with brand reputation and crisis management, PNProtect was the first and only offering of its kind.
Trent Townsend
Chief Executive Officer, Next Step Group, Inc.
Clinton, MS
In his capacity as Chief Executive Officer, Trent works with a variety of customers to help them analyze their cybersecurity posture, makes recommendations regarding how to address noted security issues, and provides the tools, software, and services to enable that resolution.
After 15 years of working in the cybersecurity field, Trent understands the complexities of analyzing risks and the hurdles that all organizations face when attempting to strengthen their cybersecurity position. Prior to working with Next Step Group, Trent worked for 6 years as an Information Security Officer for the U. S. Department of Defense. With the DoD, he was primarily responsible for risk management related to DoD supercomputers and how to apply DoD security policy to supercomputing systems that are not your typical Windows workstations. After leaving the DoD, Trent served first as IT Director for Next Step Group but subsequently moved to CEO. Next Step Group provides a variety of cybersecurity services to private sector entities and also state government, higher education, K-12, and the Federal Government.
Trent is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and was selected as one of Mississippi Business Journal's Top in Tech for 2017. He holds a B. S. in Computer Science from Mississippi College and a M. S. in Computer Science from Mississippi State University. While at Mississippi State, Trent's program of study and research were in the field of computer security. Since graduating from MSU, Trent's professional focus has centered on helping organizations understand their security risks and how they can best address them.
Thomas P. Ring II
HPCMP Red Team Lead / J2 Lead, High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), USACE
Vicksburg, ms
Mr. Thomas P. Ring II has previously served as the Chief of the Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT), Chief of the CyberSecurity Division, and as the CyberTechnical Advisor for the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). In these positions, Mr. Ring was the primary architect of the USACE security models and USACE security policies and was responsible for directing the detection, response, and investigation for all intrusions across the global USACE enterprise, directing the forensic support team in the assistance with all USACE litigation efforts, user misuse investigations, and criminal support in coordination with USACE Offices of Counsel and other external governmental agencies including the EPA, DHS, DOJ, and DoD.
Mr. Ring has earned 4 Army Achievement medals, 1 Commander's Medal, numerous Commander coins and commendations, as well as the Meritorious Civilian Service medal recognizing his expertise, dedication, and superior performance in the realm of Defensive Cyber Operations (Incident Response, CCRI Support, Forensic and Litigation Support, Cyber Capability Integration and Force Multiplication). Mr. Ring received the USACE CIO IM/IT Excellence in Technical Team Support award in 2017 as well as the USACE CIO Cyber Professional of the Year award in 2015. Additionally, Mr. Ring has won the SANS Security 504 Capture the Flag contest (15 minutes) and was an active contributor to the Metasploit project with numerously published modules.
