Editor’s note: This is the first article in a series of interviews with the session leaders of the upcoming GSO 2025 event being held Nov. 2-3, 2022 at VariSpace Las Colinas, in Irving, Texas. Registration is open now.
As people largely resume their pre-coronavirus lives amid waning incidents of severe illness and death associated with Covid-19, with it has come a much-welcomed return to in-person events. This year will also mark the return of the GSO series of summits, which are designed to provide security practitioners with an opportunity to learn from their peers through in-depth sessions covering a wide range of risk mitigation challenges.
With GSO 2025 set to take place Nov. 2-3 in Dallas, Texas, SecurityInfoWatch.com Editor-in-Chief Joel Griffin recently sat down with Ray Bernard, the event’s co-founder, to discuss what sets the event apart.
SIW: Why is the event named GSO 2025 when it’s being held in 2022?
Bernard: The event is named for a future date, because we take a three- to five-year look ahead at where security leadership and security technology are going. Day 1 is about the direction of security leadership, and Day 2 is about the exponential advancement of technology and the trends to account for in strategic security technology planning.
Another unusual aspect of the event is that attendance is limited to 50 senior security practitioners, the folks who are involved in high-level security management. It is specifically planned around them and tailored to their interests. We talk to each attendee on the phone before or after registration, and also get feedback from them about their interests, current challenges, and questions. Attendees can submit questions in advance for each session, as well as engage in live Q&A throughout the sessions.
That level of discussion is only feasible with a smaller audience. We also facilitate attendee networking, by enabling attendees to connect with each other based on common challenges and areas of interest. It’s a closely-knit gathering of people with similar responsibilities and common purposes. The leadership sessions are prepared with each event’s specific attendees in mind. It is its own special category of event.
SIW: How did you choose the session leaders?
Bernard: As with our past events, we selected session leaders who are highly accomplished because they focus and work beyond the limits of traditional thinking. Our attendees are already successful practitioners who have a sense that they could accomplish more, but exactly how to do that is not currently in sight. Many are constrained by time and resource limitations, and traditional thinking doesn’t present effective enough solutions – especially given the rate of change to business and risk landscapes.
Each session leader’s focus is to help the attendees envision and understand how to advance from their existing situations to a future state where they have greater influence and can implement more impactful risk management strategies with visibly improved business outcomes. This goes beyond where traditional security leadership and technology thinking are focused.
What attendees will take away from the GSO 2025 event is a combination of immediately actionable insights and long-term perspectives, as well as tools, that will enable then to make orderly progress at a faster rate and with better outcomes than were feasible before.
SIW: Can you tell us something about the session leaders?
Bernard: I’ll tell you a little about each Day 1 session leader.
Derric Wright is the recent Senior Director – EHS, Security, & DEA Compliance for Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA, and currently heads up the newly created U.S. corporate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) business function as his new sole responsibility. His 30-year career in the pharmaceutical industry began as a security officer, and he has progressively advanced to greater and greater levels of contribution to Hikma both in the U.S. and globally.
Derric’s session is about the importance of leadership at all levels of the business and across all business functions, how to go about it – not just about leading others, but also how to lead yourself. This session will enable you to lead more effectively from where you are right now, as well as where you may find yourself going forward.
Grace Crickette is the highly renowned former Chief Risk Officer of the University of California (UC) – the second largest employer in the State of California, and currently is the Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She is a leading expert on business cyber liability risk insurance, which has both IT security and physical security elements.
Her specialty is relating risk to business value, and she will explain how to help management stakeholders understand risk in terms of business value, so that they are enabled to make sensible decisions about security investments.
Maria Sumnicht is the recent Urban Technology Architect for the New York City Cyber Command. Maria will discuss some effective non-traditional approaches for creating, deploying, and enforcing IoT security governance policies (i.e., including for electronic physical security systems) at large enterprise scale.
Dr. Park Dietz is one of this country’s most prominent and accomplished forensic psychiatrists and criminologists. He pioneered and continues to lead the specialty of workplace violence prevention. Dr. Dietz will discuss the current state of workplace violence prevention in large enterprises, including:
- Corporate liabilities that still exist and what to do about them
- The important role of psychological safety
- How the right prevention approach can help take the lid off employee productivity and satisfaction
As preparation for the event, attendees will review an insightful talk that Dr. Dietz gave at UCLA, which is available for anyone to view here, and is viewable in several segments of about 15 minutes or less, for those who have small windows of time in which to watch it.
Sulev Suvari is the recent Global Head of Safety, Security and Resiliency – HP (leading HP’s global Business Continuity, Crisis Management, Safety [EHS], Physical Security, Federal Security and Executive Protection). Prior to his work at HP, for several decades Suvari worked overseas to plan and implement measures for cross-organizational cyber and physical asset protection on behalf of the Department of the Army, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the United Nations.
His session, titled "Security Program Fundamentals and Non-Negotiables," discusses how to achieve cross-functional stakeholder understanding and support for security strategies and security program elements.
SIW: When does registration open?
Bernard: Registration is open now at www.gsoevents.com, and an early registration discount applies.
