The average attacker now moves from a first foothold to the rest of the network in about 29 minutes. North Texas runs on industries where minutes matter, airlines that move passengers across the country every hour, telecom networks millions of people count on, energy companies, banks and hospital systems. Dallas learned this firsthand in 2023, when a ransomware attack disrupted city services for weeks. Yet in many organizations the decision to isolate a system, cut a supplier connection or take a revenue platform offline still waits for a meeting and an executive who may be on a plane.

This opening keynote looks at the human side of speed. Who holds the authority to act in the first half hour, what they are allowed to break without asking, and how leading CISOs agree those decision rights with the CEO, the business and the board long before the night they are needed. The fastest response, it turns out, is the decision that was already made.

We spent twenty years learning how to trust people with access. We screen them, onboard them, give them only what they need, review their work and collect the badge on their last day. AI agents are now joining the workforce, often hired by a business unit that forgot to tell security, and most of them never go through any of those steps.

This panel borrows the employee lifecycle and applies it to digital workers, one stage at a time. Who approves the hire, how an agent gets its badge and its manager, what a performance review looks like for software, and how to retire an agent cleanly so its access does not outlive its purpose. Expect honest stories, the controls that held up, and the ones that did not.

The browser used to be a window. Now it is becoming a worker. AI browsers and assistants can read a page, fill in a form, approve a request and complete a purchase on someone's behalf, and a single hidden instruction tucked inside a web page can redirect all of it.

In fifteen focused minutes, this session explains why the browser has become one of the most important places to defend, what prompt injection looks like when it meets real credentials, and which simple policies let your people enjoy the help without handing the keys to whoever wrote the page.

Ransomware and data theft remain among the most expensive days a company can have. Beyond the ransom itself come weeks of downtime, recovery work, legal fees, customer notifications and lost trust, and in North Texas, where airlines, hospitals, banks and energy companies run around the clock, every hour offline carries a real price. Insurers have noticed. Renewal forms now ask for proof rather than promises. Is multifactor authentication on every account? Are backups tested and kept out of an attacker's reach? How quickly can you spot an intruder? And, more and more often, how many AI agents run in your environment and who approved their permissions?

This panel brings together security leaders, risk owners and the people who underwrite them for a frank conversation about coverage, exclusions and accountability. Leave knowing what your carrier will ask next, how a stronger security program can become a stronger position at the negotiating table, and how to make sure the fine print protects you rather than surprises you.

For a long time, offensive security meant the annual penetration test, a thick report and a list of findings that was already out of date by the time anyone read it. AI has changed the economics on both sides. The tools attackers use to probe your defenses around the clock are now in your hands too, and security leaders are investing in offense again with real urgency.

This session explores continuous, AI assisted red teaming. What it finds that traditional testing misses, how to run it safely against live systems, and how to turn a constant stream of findings into fixes instead of fatigue.

Third party risk used to mean vendors, contractors and the software they shipped. Today it also means the foundation models you call, the open weights your developers download, the plugins and connectors your agents rely on, and the data those models learned from. Each one is a link in a chain you did not forge yourself.

This disruptor session maps the new AI supply chain and shows how to inventory it, assess it and set sensible guardrails without bringing innovation to a halt.

Texas runs its own power grid, produces more energy than any other state and is now home to a fast growing wave of data centers that need enormous amounts of electricity. Refineries, pipelines, substations, airports and factories are joining the network faster than ever, and the machines inside them were never designed to meet an attacker. A breach here does not just leak data. It can stop production, ground flights and put physical safety on the table.

Our panel brings IT and operational security leaders together to talk about visibility, segmentation, legacy equipment and the cultural bridge between the people who run the plant and the people who protect it. It is a conversation about keeping Texas running, whatever the threat and whatever the weather.

For decades, the cost of insecure software landed on the customer. You bought it, you patched it, you lived with the consequences. That bargain is shifting, and across the United States the change is being driven by buyers as much as by rules. Large enterprises, public agencies and insurers are writing security expectations straight into their contracts, asking for software bills of materials, faster patch commitments, safer default settings and clear notice when something goes wrong. For North Texas companies that both buy and build software, the question now runs in both directions.

This session explores what secure by design means once it stops being a promise and becomes a contract term. What to demand from your vendors, what your own customers will soon demand from you, and how to use this moment to finally raise the floor for everyone.

Every CISO carries a private library of moments. The breach that taught humility, the board meeting that changed how they speak, the hire that transformed a team, the warning they ignored once and never again. These stories rarely make it onto conference slides, yet they are where real wisdom lives.

This closing fireside invites seasoned security leaders to open that library. Honest, warm and practical, it is the conversation you usually only have late at night after an event, offered here to everyone in the room, especially those still writing the first chapters of their own careers.