Sue Gordon

Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Sue Gordon is the director at CACI International, which provides unique expertise and distinctive technology that address customers’ greatest enterprise and mission challenges. 

Gordon was the fifth principal deputy director of national intelligence (PDDNI) at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) from August 2017 to August 2019. As PDDNI, she was a key advisor to the President and National Security Council and led the 17-member Intelligence Community (IC). With more than three decades of experience in the IC, Gordon has served in a variety of leadership roles spanning numerous intelligence organizations and disciplines. Prior to the DNI, she served as the deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2015 to 2017, helping the director lead the agency and manage the National System of Geospatial Intelligence. 

Before joining the NGA, Gordon served for 27 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rising to senior executive positions in each of the Agency’s four directorates: operations, analysis, science and technology, and support. In 1998, she designed and drove the formation of In-Q-Tel, a private, non-profit company whose primary purpose is to deliver innovative technology solutions for the agency and the IC.  

She is the recipient of numerous government and industry awards, including the Distinguished Intelligence Medal and the Distinguished Presidential Rank Award. A trusted authority on strategy, innovation, and leadership, Gordon is currently a consultant on global risk, technology, cyber, and space issues and a member of the Board at Pallas Advisors, a Washington D.C.-based consultancy. 

Joe Lea

Shift5

Joe Lea joined Shift5 as president to drive product, engineering, sales, marketing, and operations — and accelerate growth. Lea focuses on building a world class team and scaling Shift5 as a product company that secures and manages fleets of the world’s most critical assets. Shift 5 provides fleet cyber security and operational intelligence for both the commercial and federal markets.

Lea has held numerous technical and executive roles during his career, most recently leading product from an early stage at Armis and Tanium, both startups and Forbes Cloud 100 standouts, where he built the teams and operating models that spawned portfolios of offerings spanning the fields of security and systems management.

Alicia Lynch

Cognizant

Alicia Lynch joined the Cognizant team in July of 2021, bringing more than 30 years of intelligence, security, and cyber experience with the Department of Defense, the defense contracting community, and the private sector. Lynch retired as a Colonel from the U.S. Army in 2012, where she served as both an intelligence and cyber officer in every echelon, from Company to National, while leading units from team-sized to commanding a Brigade. Since 2012, she has leveraged her technical experience in commercial executive level positions focused on cyber and security. Lynch recently held titles including CISO at SAIC, deputy CISO at Accenture Federal Services, and VP of Enterprise Solutions at a cyber startup. She is an active member and supporter of many organizations, such as WashingtonExec CISO Council (where she served as founding chairwoman and sits on their Women’s Leadership Council), Zoom’s CISO Council, and NVTC’s Cybersecurity and Privacy Community of Interest.

Rob Spitler

Tracepoint

Rob Spitler is an originating employee of Tracepoint. Founded by incident responders, cybersecurity, and insurance leaders, Tracepoint is built on decades of experience working at the epicenter of the cybersecurity ecosystem. Spitler helped build the business into a 100+ employee and $200+ million business within 18 months. This included developing and growing the professional services practice, fostering relationships, and managing the business at a strategic level. Spitler has more than 20 years of local, state, and federal criminal and cyber investigation experience. His managerial and supervisory background includes military, law enforcement, intelligence, and corporate environments. He has been at the forefront of digital forensic analysis since 2000, helping to develop standards and processes used by examiners worldwide.

Kurtis Minder

GroupSense

Kurtis Minder is the CEO and co-founder of GroupSense, a provider in Digital Risk solutions. With more than 20 years of experience in the information security industry, Minder brings a unique blend of technical, sales, and executive acumen. He built a robust cyber reconnaissance operation, protecting some of the largest enterprises and government organizations. Minder has been the lead negotiator at GroupSense for ransomware response cases, successfully navigating and negotiating some of the largest ransomware, breach, and data extortion cases worldwide.

Tom Knox

King & Spalding

Tom Knox is a partner in King & Spalding’s Corporate, Finance and Investments practice. He serves as chair of the firm’s global Technology Corporate practice and as co-chair of the firmwide Technology Industry Group. Knox advises clients on corporate, M&A, financing, technology transactions, and outsourcing matters, serving as a strategic advisor to public, private, and emerging companies in the software, technology, life sciences, transportation, manufacturing, and government services sectors, and to investors in such companies. Since 2008, Knox has been listed as a Band 1 Leading Individual by Chambers & Partners. Knox is rated AV (Preeminent) by Martindale Hubbell, was named by the Washington Business Journal as Washington’s Top Corporate Finance Lawyer, and is consistently named to the Virginia Super Lawyers, Washington DC Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, and Legal 500 U.S. lists. He is currently a member of the board of directors of the Business Council for International Understanding.

Mark Bristow

MITRE Labs

Mark Bristow joined MITRE in March 2022 as the director of its Cyber Infrastructure Protection Innovation Center (CIPIC). CIPIC’s mission serves as a continuation of his life’s work to help protect critical and foundational infrastructure. Prior to that, Bristow spent 14 years overseeing cyber defense coordination and operations for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), including as branch chief, cyber defense coordination at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and time on the Threat Hunting (TH) team helping government and critical infrastructure defend from cyber threats. The TH is comprised of the former Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) and the United States Computer Readiness Team (US-CERT). He first joined CISA (then NPPD) as a contractor at Securicon in 2008.

Matt Saner

Amazon Web Services

Matthew “Matt” Saner is a principal security solutions architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS), focusing on helping the world’s largest manufacturing and industrial customers solve critical security challenges in the cloud. Prior to AWS, Saner spent nearly two decades working in the financial services industry, solving technology, security, risk, and compliance challenges.

Rick Tossavainen

Dark Wolf Solutions

Rick Tossavainen is the CEO of Dark Wolf Solutions, a company supporting commercial, civilian, defense, and Intelligence Community clients in the areas of cybersecurity, DevOps, and management solutions. He has developed solutions and applications from cradle to grave in classified environments, architecting, developing, and deploying mission and enterprise systems that support operational activities. Tossavainen recently worked onsite in the Intelligence Community, where he developed next-generation cyber capabilities based upon a five-year capability roadmap that Dark Wolf helped to create. He has helped to increase cybersecurity resilience at the U.S. Air Force by drafting Continuous ATO playbooks for several of the software factories and assisting with the selection of tools and technologies in CI/CD pipelines to deliver hardened and secure applications to cloud environments. Previously, Tossavainen served as VP of technical solutions at Wolf Den Associates, after working at SRA International for 16 years.

Amit Yoran

Tenable

Amit Yoran is chairman and CEO of Tenable, overseeing the company’s strategic vision and direction. As the threat landscape expands, Yoran is leading Tenable into a new era of security solutions, empowering organizations to meet the challenges of evolving threats with innovative technologies and a vision of transformative vulnerability management. Prior to joining Tenable, Yoran was president of RSA, where he led their growth and strategy. He came to RSA through the acquisition of his high-growth company, NetWitness, where he was founder and CEO for the market-leading network forensic product provider. Previously, he served as founding director of the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) program in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He also founded Riptech, one of the first managed security service providers (MSSP) and which was acquired by Symantec in 2002. Yoran currently serves as a board member and adviser to several security startups.

Paul Curylo

Inova Health System

Paul Curylo is VP and CISO at Inova Health System. Curylo is an information security professional versed in HIPAA/HITECH, especially risk analysis and working with auditors and government investigators. He works with system owners to achieve compliance on both projects and infrastructure remediation. Curylo also handles technical design and implementation reviews of full information systems. He finds creative ways to define compensating and mitigating controls that achieve tolerable risk for any one system or for an entire organization without sacrificing CIA confidentiality, integrity, and availability. His specialties include system assessment, security controls, policy and technical writing, and information assurance.

Kurt John

Expedia

Kurt John joined Expedia in June 2022 as CSO. He is responsible for IT security, physical security, and privacy across the global enterprise. Prior to joining Expedia, John was the CCO for Siemens USA for six years, where he oversaw the development, implementation, and governance of cybersecurity strategy in the U.S. He serves on the advisory board at security startup Titaniam, the innovation advisory committee at George Mason University, the board of directors of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. John was named as one of the most influential people in security in 2020 by Security Magazine, as well as appointed to the Virginia Governor’s Innovation Partnership Authority.