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Dr. Dan Ragsdale (left) moderates a panel featuring (from left to right) Palo Alto Networks Chief Security Officer Rick Howard, Defense Security Service Senior Cyber Advisor and Deputy Director of CounterIntelligence Richard Naylor and BLACKOPS Partners Corporation Chairman and CEO Casey Fleming.
Texas A&M Cybersecurity Director Dr. Dan Ragsdale (left) moderates a panel featuring (from left to right) Palo Alto Networks Chief Security Officer Rick Howard, Defense Security Service Senior Cyber Advisor and Deputy Director of CounterIntelligence Richard Naylor and BLACKOPS Partners Corporation Chairman and CEO Casey Fleming | Image: Texas A&M Engineering

The Cybersecurity of Critical Infrastructure Summit had a successful inaugural event last week on the Texas A&M University campus. The summit brought together experts from government, private industry and academia to debate and share ideas about protecting the United States from growing cybersecurity threats around the world.

Overall, the three-day event had a theme of optimism. Keynote speaker Dr. John Launchbury, director of the Information Innovation Office at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said he believes it’s a battle that can be won despite what people may read in the news. Other keynote speakers included:

  • Ray Rothrock, chairman and CEO of RedSeal, and former general partner at Venrock, the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family.
  • Dan Ennis, former director of the Threat Operations Center at the National Security Agency (NSA).
  • Rhonda MacLean, CEO, MacLean Risk Partners, and former chief information security officer (CISO) for the Boeing Corporation, Bank of America and Barclays, PLC, Global Retail and Commercial Bank in London.

For more about the issues discussed, the Bryan-College Station Eagle was on hand for the event, and covered both the keynote from Launchbury and the keynotes and panel discussions.

The event was sponsored by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and hosted by the Texas A&M College of Engineering and the Bush School of Government and Public Service. The event organizers were the Texas A&M Institute for Advanced Study and the Texas A&M Cybersecurity Center, a join partnership between Texas A&M and the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station.

The second Cybersecurity of Critical Infrastructure Summit is currently scheduled for April 2018.