Speakers

Steven Hernandez is an information assurance senior executive serving the past twenty years in a variety of contexts and missions. His rich background includes law enforcement, financial, education, healthcare, credentialing, heavy manufacturing, non-profits, and governments at the federal, state, and local levels.  Steven’s experience ranges from the board room to leading tactical, day-to-day security operations as well as championing broad IT and security initiatives such as the US government's Zero Trust Architecture approach. Presently, he is the Chief Information Security Officer and Director of Information Assurance Services at the U.S. Department of Education.  Steven also serves as the co-chair of the US Government Federal CISO Council and Government Chair of the ACT-IAC Cybersecurity Community of Interest. Prior to his position at Education, he held a variety of roles at the Office of Inspector General, US Department of Health and Human Services including CTO, CIO, CISO, Senior Official for Privacy and Chief Services Engineering Officer.  He is an inaugural member of the United States Scholarship of Service Hall of Fame and an ardent supporter of the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. His passions include teaching cybersecurity as an Honorary Professor, Affiliate Faculty, and guest lecturer at over a dozen Institutions of higher education

Tom currently leads the Public Sector technical team at ExtraHop Networks as Director of Systems Engineering. He has spent most of his 20-year career looking at networks, protocols, and packets in one way or another. Tom has a passion for utilizing data-driven techniques to solve the complex problems faced by modern IT practitioners. When he's not working with ExtraHop's expansive customer base, he is deeply involved in developing and defining automated techniques for threat detection, and currently holds two patents related to passive network detection techniques. Tom was an early responder to Wannacry and wrote the award-winning Ransomware Module for ExtraHop (https://tinyurl.com/yswy24kp). Tom resides in Houston, TX along with his wife and three daughters. He remains actively involved with his alma mater Texas A&M (Electrical Engineering), and can be found most weekends cheering his Aggies on to victory.