December 31, 9999
Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center
Aurora, CO

The National Cybersecurity Center has made the decision that due to the continued spread of COVID-19, and the questions still surrounding it, we have made the hard decision to cancel Cyber Symposium 2020. We are looking at alternatives to the symposium which will allow our community to continue networking, collaborating, and learning from each other. Thank you for your support and understanding.



Keynote Speakers
With a career spanning more than 30 years across high-tech industries, Bill Conner is a corporate turnaround expert and global leader in security, data and infrastructure. Today, Conner is President and CEO of SonicWall, one of the world's most trusted network security companies. SonicWall next-generation firewalls and network security solutions protect more than 1 million networks worldwide, for more than 500,000 organizations in more than 150 countries. Conner was selected as CEO to launch SonicWall as an independent company from Dell, by Francisco Partners and Elliott Management in November 2016. In less than one year under Conner's leadership, SonicWall has surpassed financial and operational goals, delivering:

•Record partner registrations of more than 18,000 global channel partners with 5,000 net new partners
•Strong pipeline growth with over $330M in new partner deal registrations
•Key service improvements with 80% reduction in wait times
•Launching a new global marketing campaign
•Record new product releases

In October 2017, Francisco Partners acquired Comodo Certification Authority (Comodo CA) and named Conner Chairman of the Board. The investment by Francisco Partners marks a transition in ownership from the Comodo organization. Comodo, founded in 1998, grew as Comodo CA became an industry leader in SSL security with more than 200,000 customers across 150 countries. Conner's appointment by Francisco Partners will help support the company's accelerated growth as it focuses attention on the CA business, and its significant market opportunity associated with SSL certificates and the massive growth in online and IoT traffic.

Conner has been the vanguard of transformational technology shifts, from leading key divisions of AT&T, to taking Nortel into data with a $9 billion acquisition of Bay Networks, to his work securing digital identities with Entrust, to bringing secure communications and privacy from the consumer to the enterprise through mobile and cloud with Silent Circle. He has re-engineered product lines, built world-class service organizations, re-aligned global sales organizations, and created industry-leading marketing campaigns.

As President and CEO of Silent Circle, Conner quickly re-positioned the consumer privacy company into a mobile Enterprise Privacy Platform (EPP) focused business. This included creating the category, re-engineering products and the global cloud delivery, and re-building sales, service and marketing functions. As President and CEO of Entrust, Conner re-engineered the technology-led company to be customer and market driven. Upon taking Entrust private in 2009 with the private equity firm Thoma Bravo, he reset corporate priorities to take advantage of SaaS and mobility. He successfully steered Entrust toward nearly a 100% subscription-based revenue model, while delivering organic growth rates in excess of two times the market rate. Contributing to the strong growth were record customer renewal rates exceeding 98%. In 2013, Entrust was purchased for 6.5 times the 2009 investment.

A staunch supporter of public-private cybersecurity partnerships, Conner regularly shares expertise with global leaders at major financial institutions, enterprises and governments. He also created and hosted "Hacked" for SiriusXM business radio. Conner has been recognized as:

•SC Media's 2017 Reboot Leadership Award Winner
•One of the top 25 Most Influential Executives for 2017
•Top Midmarket IT Vendor Executives for 2017
•Marketing Computers Marketer of the Year
•Tech Titans Corporate CEO of the Year
•Federal Computer's Top 100 Award
•National Youth Science Camp Alumnus of the Year

Conner graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, and earned a master's degree in business administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.


Bill Conner will be in the following session(s):

Plenary Session - Morning Keynote
06/15/20: 9:15 AM - 10:00 AM

View the Agenda
Speakers & Panelists
Vance has over 20 years' experience as a high-tech CEO. Currently Vance is the CEO of the National Cybersecurity Center and Chairman/Co-founder at Cherwell Software. Vance also is a mentor to entrepreneurial CEO's, utilizing the Thrivers.com holistic framework.

Previously, Vance was CEO of Cherwell from its inception until 2016. In 2014 Cherwell was recognized as one of the 101 fastest growing companies in North America by Deloitte's Fast 500 and in 2015 was Colorado's software company of the year. Cherwell has customers in 40 countries and offices around the world.

Formerly, Vance was CEO of GoldMine Software, which was rated as one of the top 100 software companies in the US. Vance is Co-Founder of The Classical Academy, the largest K-12th charter school in Colorado, and he is founder of a technology accelerator called Exponential Impact.

Through the years, Vance has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from firms such as Insight Venture Partners and KKR. Most recently in 2018 Vance raised $222 million for Cherwell from KKR.

In 2009 Vance was given the Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award by Wake Forest University. Additionally, Vance was named EY Entrepreneur Of The YearT 2014 Award Winner and then served as EY national judge. Vance recently was named one of the "100 most intriguing entrepreneurs" by Goldman Sachs.

Vance graduated summa cum laude from Wake Forest, majoring in Economics with a minor in Computer Science, and then from the University of North Carolina School of Law. He finished on Law Review and Order of the Coif and practiced in the area of intellectual property law.

Vance serves on the board for charitable organizations such as Parents Challenge, Foundation of the Heart, and the Legacy Institute. He also is an Honorary Commander for the US Air Force Academy. In 2018, Vance was named the "Business Citizen of the Year" in Colorado Springs.

In 2018 Vance published a book called "Thrivers."

Vance has been married to Betsy for 31 years.

Dale Hetke is the Chief Operations Officer (COO) at the National Cybersecurity Center (NCC), and is responsible for all daily operations including marketing, communications, finance, HR, fundraising, events, and membership support, to ensure mission success.

Prior to joining the NCC, Dale spent over 28 years in the US Air Force where he was an instructor pilot in fighter and trainer aircraft and has more than 250 hours of combat experience. Dale led several different organizations including the team responsible for authoring the strategic plan and programming budget encompassing nearly all USAF fighter aircraft and associated weapons worth $20B annually. Most recently, he commanded all operations for the Air Force Academy airfield and the AF Initial Flight Training programs; leading a 900-person team, training 4,000 students per year, with an annual budget of $45M.

Thomas Russell is the National Cybersecurity Center's Career and Technical Student Organization Program Manager. Prior to coming to the NCC, Thomas, who is a retired military veteran, worked in the Signal Corps for the United States Army Communications Electronic Engineering Installation Agency (USACEEIA CONUS) at Raven Rock, Pennsylvania. He was stationed in various places overseas such as Korea and Germany, as an electronic communications supervisor. While in the Army, Thomas helped engineer the installation of communications equipment at various military sites across the United States and wrote the Army's first disaster recovery plan for telephone exchanges.

After retiring from the Army, Thomas worked as a Network Analyst for Time Warner Telecom, in Littleton, Colorado. His duties consisted of operating and maintaining a nationwide information system network by using a broad range of technology concepts, tools and applications. He was then promoted to Network Contingency Planning Manager, responsible for ensuring network viability by writing plans and coordinating disaster recovery exercises for Time Warner's National Operations Center (NOC). While at Time Warner, he earned degrees in Network Security and Information Systems Management.

Thomas resigned from Time Warner Telecom to pursue his dream of teaching. He received his master's in education for Applied Technology from the College of Saint Rose, in New York. As a teacher at Falcon High School, Thomas taught many classes such as Cybersecurity, Computer Applications, Networking, Technology Literacy, Health and Information Technology, Information Security and Computer Forensics. He started the CyberPatriot Program his first year there. Falcon High School has become one of the top high schools for cybersecurity and was recognized as one of the best schools in Colorado by the Air Forces Association (AFA) during the District 49 award ceremony. For the Cyber Maryland 2018 Competition, Falcon High School was one of the 8 high schools chosen to compete in the national finals held in Baltimore. For CyberPatriot competition, Falcon High School has qualified for the national semifinals each year.
While at Falcon High school, Thomas has won the Boettcher Foundation Teacher Recognition Award, The Falcon Educational Foundation's Outstanding Teacher Award, The District 49 Teacher of the Year Award, and has been nominated for Colorado Teacher of the Year Award.

Forrest Senti is the Director of Business and Government Initiatives for the National Cybersecurity Center. He currently runs a program that brings together the intersection of technology, talent, and partnerships around use cases and best practices for Cybersecurity as a means for trust and transparency in business, government and society. Forrest currently serves and chairs on several government and civic working committees: the working group for the government use of blockchain underneath The Colorado Council for the Advancement of Blockchain Technology, he chairs the committee on Raising Cyber Awareness for the Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC as well serving on the government affairs council for the Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC. Additionally, he volunteers his time with organizations like Exponential Impact, Peak Startup and is an active instructor with the Colorado Institute for Social Impact.
Bryan Sparling, Colonel US Army Retired, is an entrepreneurial-minded senior leader with a consistent record of success in building high functioning teams, scaling effective programs, developing powerful strategies and large-scale operational plans that achieve results. A deeply experienced technology, information warfare and cyber operations expert adept at identifying promising technologies and creatively applying them to address our nation's most sensitive mission requirements.

- Proven leadership. Over 30 years of demonstrated, documented and decorated success leading teams and organizations of wide-ranging size and complexity to performance excellence.
- Information Warfare and cyber operations expert. Multiple successes applying graduate level telecom expertise to develop first ever procedures addressing complex operational problems.
- Innovative thought leader. Repeatedly called upon by chief executives to develop fresh approaches to strategic challenges.
- Effective program and resource manager. Adept at efficiently and effectively managing time, money and talent to simultaneously achieve results across numerous multi-million dollar programs.
- Unprecedented planning and strategy experience. Expert operational planner and strategist formally trained in the two most prestigious strategic planning schools in the U.S. military. Honed analytic, presentation and collaboration skills by leading countless multinational planning teams in the production of campaign plans under the most demanding conditions including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.