CISO Think Tank

Recognized as one of the 2022 Top 20 Women in Canada, Octavia Howell has spent her career protecting some of the world’s largest financial institutions from cyber attacks. Today, she serves as Equifax Canada’s Chief Information Security Officer and is the Founder and CEO of Augustus Redefined, an organization focused on the advise ent of Black Women in Cyber. Octavia believes a security leader should mentor, motivate trust, and lead their teams to act with integrity and transparency. She often says, “A team is only as strong as their leaders and each leader casts a shadow that they will be held accountable for.” Octavia is motivated by the belief that we are placed on this earth to help each other achieve greatness (whatever that may be).

Ben Halpert is a man on a mission: to educate and empower today’s digital citizens. By day, he is the CSO at Castle Black providing individuals cybersecurity, online privacy, and digital hygiene services with 24/7 human support. By night, he champions cyber safety and ethics education throughout society via the 501(c)3 nonprofit Savvy Cyber Kids he founded. Ben has presented at the World Economic Forum, NACD directorship training, RSA Conference, TEDxSaintThomas, TEDxKids@Vilnius, GISEC Global, InfoSec World, SecureWorld, IEEE, ACM, CSO50, CIO/CISO Summits, and many other events. In addition to his numerous publications, Ben has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, Bloomberg, BBC, Kiplinger, Good Morning America, Good Day Atlanta, CNN HLN, Fox News, RogersTV, among others.--

A results-focused, forward-thinking, business minded Cyber Security, Security Architecture & Risk Management Leader with extensive experience and proven success at enabling business goals while invoking transformational change. Committed to strategic, risk focused innovation that aligns with the business and enables their goals while defending and supporting organizational interests. Recognized as a highly collaborative leader with a long history of managing large, globally distributed teams in high responsibility, error intolerant environments. Heavily invested in the team approach and committed to the maintenance of a positive work culture. Fluent in Spanish. Dated but revivable French. KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS VALUE CREATION: Establishment of Cyber Security as a key enabler in revenue generation, through the mapping of compliance initiatives to the many government mandated compliance frameworks that gate sales in the current risk landscape (Biden Executive Order, CMMC, FedRAMP, CanRAMP, IRAP, ISMAP) Achievement of cost leadership with dramatic efficiency and efficacy gains through next generation methodologies & process modernization that lower the friction of governance and seamlessly integrate risk into the enterprise fabric. RISK MANAGEMENT: Strategic oversight of advanced risk tactics that leverage the power of Data Analytics, Machine Learning and other associated technologies to enable adaptive, effective and innovative solutions to previously unsolvable risk and security problems. CORPORATE GOVERNANCE: 22 years of successful compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley, SOC1 / 2, OSFI and NERC regulatory governance CORE AREAS OF STRENGTH Strategic Business Vision / Advanced Technology & Tactics Corporate Governance / Risk Management / Risk Analytics Data Protection / Data Loss Prevention / AI / Machine earning PCI-DSS / SOX / SOC 1 & SOC 2 / Privacy Compliance NIST / FIPS / COBIT / PIPEDA / GDPR / NYDFS / HIPPA Application Security – CI / CD, DevOps, DevSecOps Cloud Security Architecture / Zero Trust / IoT / SCADA Project / Program Management / Governance (Agile) $MM Budget Management / Large Team Leadership Executive Presentation & Large Audience Speaking

Stephane Asselin, with his 29 years of experience in IT, is a Senior Manager for the entire CrowdStrike Canada Technical Team. He has national responsibility for Canada for a team that works with customer at planning, designing, and implementing Security solutions and all processes involved. At CrowdStrike, Mr. Asselin works with top Canadian strategic customers and partners, enabling them on all Modules of the CrowdStrike platform, developing technical expertise and helping them secure their local and remote workforce.

Ben Shelston is the Technical Director for Netskope Canada. Ben leads the Solutions Engineering team that has been architecting SASE solutions for Canadian organizations since before the acronym was coined. Ben has been at Netskope for over 6 years, and has been in a similar roles for over 15 years.

Ozan is a Director within PwC’s Cybersecurity & Privacy practice, based out of Toronto. He is leading the network security practice across all industries in Canada. He is specializing in micro-segmentation, software defined perimeter, zero trust,traditional network security and next gen firewall solutions to enable businesses with reduced attack surfaces. Prior he was in different architecture positions within Rogers Communications for a number of years. He holds MBA and CCIE (11318) Routing and Switching, CCIE Security Certifications since 2002. Ozan has delivered high profile projects, leading many POCs for technology evaluation and contributed into multiple RFPs. He is experienced in leading multi-vendor IP technologies, system integration, network and .

With almost 20 year in Canadian infosec, Mike Hortobagyi is an accomplished presales engineer and technical leader. Based in Toronto, he currently leads Okta's Commercial SE team across Canada. Mike has specific experience in emerging/disruptive security technologies including Zero Trust Security, Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) and Privileged Access Management (PAM).

Founded in 1948, Citco is an independent group of companies providing a range of financial services to clients throughout the world, including hedge funds, institutional banks, private equity firms, high net-worth individuals. and real estate firms.

Experienced Senior Strategy & Transformation Executive with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. Expert and skilled in Technology, Application Development & Infrastructure, Business Development, Design Thinking, Operational and Organizational Efficiency, Business Relationship Management, Organization Leadership and Development, Strategic Workforce Planning and Organizational Change Management.

As Computer Engineer and Electronics Engineer, Stelian constantly pushing the technology boundaries to build super fast and efficient Information Technology turn-key solutions. He was working for Fortune 100 companies and architects. He deployed their World-Wide Communication platform and worked on top security projects involving the leading security agencies at the National and International levels. He always loved AI, ML, and BI and it always came easy for him to architect and deploy system automation and intuitive reporting that generated accelerated productivity boosts.

Equitable Bank, a subsidiary of Equitable Group, is a full service commercial bank in Canada. They are headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.