In-Person

Atlanta CISO Community

Executive Summit

November 19, 2026 | Atlanta Marriott Northwest at Galleria

November 19, 2026
Atlanta Marriott Northwest at Galleria

Join fellow CISOs for a day of peer connections, peer perspectives and Gartner insights

The Gartner Atlanta CISO Community Executive Summit is the community’s signature event, bringing together CISOs for a full day of immersive, peer-driven discussions and curated networking. Connect with peers who share similar priorities, exchange real-world experiences and gain data-driven insights from Gartner analysts. Walk away with practical solutions, validated strategies and valuable connections, giving you greater confidence to lead through change.

Participate in discussions on the most critical issues impacting CISOs today:

Operationalizing trusted AI at scale through governance, accountability, and adaptive security

Elevating security leadership from risk management to enterprise strategy

Harnessing cyber resilience to sustain growth amid uncertainty

Atlanta CISO Governing Body

The Governing Body Co-Chairs shape the summit agenda, ensuring that all content is driven By CISOs, For CISOs®.

Governing Body Co-Chairs

Derek Benz

The Coca-Cola Company
SVP & CISO

John Dickson

Insight Global
CISO

John Gift

PepsiCo
SVP & Global CISO

Stacy Hughes

ABM
SVP & CISO

Kemper Seay

Carter's
VP Infrastructure & Chief Information Security Officer

What to Expect at an Executive Summit

Gain New Perspectives from Peers

Hear from CISO practitioners and thought leaders on how they're solving critical challenges impacting your role in Keynote sessions, and participate in smaller, interactive discussions with your peers in Breakout and Boardroom sessions.

Strengthen Your Peer Network

Catch up with familiar faces and build new relationships in your Atlanta CISO Community through dedicated networking time in an intimate environment and curated, one-on-one conversations with peers matched based on shared priorities and interests.

Leverage Gartner Insights

Gain data-driven insights and field-tested best practices from a Gartner analyst in the opening Keynote, setting the context for peer conversations throughout the day on the most critical topics affecting your role.

Agenda

November 19, 2026

8:00am - 8:30am  Registration & Breakfast

8:30am - 9:15am  Gartner Keynote

Turn Cybersecurity Spending into a Business Investment Decision

Chet Geschickter headshot

Chet Geschickter

VP Analyst

Gartner

Executives are often flying blind when it comes to cybersecurity spending. They want limited risk, but don’t know how to achieve it. Protection level agreements (PLAs) turn cybersecurity spending into a strategic business decision. CISOs can use PLAs to offer executives a continuum of risks in return for different levels of investment.  

In this session, you'll learn how to:

  • Expose gaps between security investments, business expectations, and actual protection
  • Move from reporting metrics to governing protection outcomes
  • Use Protection Level Agreements to align risk, funding, and accountability

9:15am - 9:40am  Networking Break

9:40am - 10:25am  Breakout Session

The Leadership Imperative for Security Talent and Skill Preservation

Agentic AI is rapidly reshaping security operations, automating triage, investigation, and response at scale. As routine work shifts to machines, organizations risk losing critical skills, judgment, and institutional knowledge. CISOs must decide what to automate, what to preserve, and how to evolve roles and operating models—while leveraging AI to extend security expertise beyond traditional boundaries. 

Join this session to hear about:

  • How agentic AI is reshaping SOC roles, workflows, and career paths
  • How to identify and preserve critical skills while redesigning roles for the next 1–2 years
  • Practical approaches to balancing AI automation with human judgment and leadership at scale

9:40am - 10:25am  Breakout Session

From CISO to Business Influencer

John Gift headshot

John Gift

SVP & Global CISO

PepsiCo

 In today’s dynamic world, CISOs must elevate beyond tactical experts to strategic business partners who influence true change. The time has come to redefine security leadership into business leadership by championing a responsible culture of innovation, driving organizational growth, and taking personal ownership of the company’s reputation.

Join John Gift, SVP & Global CISO at PepsiCo as he shares his perspective on:

  • Reducing risk while improving resiliency to maintain a company’s brand and customer’s trust
  • Building a responsible culture of emerging technology from AI to Quantum
  • Developing intentional relationships to navigate evolving threats, and operational challenges

9:40am - 10:25am  Executive Boardroom

Recovery as a Compensating Control — Defending the Undefendable

Mark Bentkower headshot

Mark Bentkower

Principal Technologist

Veeam

When legacy systems can’t be patched, recovery becomes a key compensating control. CISOs rely on recovery documentation as evidence to protect themselves and their organizations. This session covers how immutable backups and traceable recovery records withstand regulatory and legal scrutiny after incidents and how forensic and threat intelligence data can turn reactive recovery into a documented, risk-based decision.

Join this session to learn:

  • How recovery and immutable backups protect unpatched legacy systems
  • Building recovery records for regulatory and legal review
  • Using forensic and threat intelligence to justify response decisions

9:40am - 10:25am  Executive Boardroom

Reimagining Security Teams — Optimizing AI Agents and Cost

Chris Tignor headshot

Chris Tignor

Chief Security Advisor

Microsoft Corporation

As AI agents proliferate in security operations, CISOs must strategically manage token consumption and associated costs, while weighing those costs against the risk they mitigate. Organizational structures are evolving to support agent-centric models, and the hardest questions are as much about people as technology: how roles change, which skills matter, and what new leadership approaches and cross-functional collaboration the shift demands. This session will explore how to balance risk, cost, efficiency and resilience as the enterprise and its workforce adapts to the next wave of AI-driven security.

Join this session to discuss:

  • Managing token consumption and aligning FinOps priorities against risk-reduction value
  • Redesigning teams, roles and skills for agent-centric security models
  • Anticipating future shifts in AI-driven organizational structures and the talent implications

10:25am - 11:10am  Networking Break

10:35am - 11:00am  Peer-to-Peer Meetings

Peer-to-Peer Meetings

Connect with like-minded peers in a one-on-one setting through Peer-to-Peer Meetings. You will be matched with peers in your community based on your shared interests and priorities.

11:10am - 11:55am  Breakout Session

The Widening Gap — When Patching and Detection Both Stop Working

Bryan Willett headshot

Bryan Willett

CISO in Residence

Rubrik

In 2018 you had two years to patch. Today the exploit often exists before the CVE does. This session argues that AI didn't break enterprise security – it removed the margin hiding how broken it already was. Evidence-led, experience-driven, and culminating in four uncomfortable actions you can take back to your team.
Join this session to:

  • Assess why human-gated patch approval has become a liability rather than a control using measured exploitation timelines
  • Scope autonomous containment and reversion authority by blast radius – determining what an AI analyst should be permitted to do alone
  • Reframe recovery as a tested security control under your ownership by going beyond a checkbox

11:10am - 11:55am  Breakout Session

GenAI — A Generational Paradigm Shift

Lane Sullivan headshot

Lane Sullivan

Chief Information Security and Strategy Officer

Concentric AI

 Generative AI has rapidly evolved from a curiosity into a core driver of enterprise productivity. But as employees embrace its ability to generate content, code, and insights on demand, a new reality is emerging: data security is now the defining challenge of AI adoption. Organizations that recognize this shift early and proactively adapt their data security strategies will be best positioned to innovate with confidence. 

Join this session to discover: 

  • What makes GenAI fundamentally different and its impact on business operations and risk  

  • Where unintended data exposure and downstream consequences can arise  

  • How to adopt AI responsibly without slowing innovation 

11:10am - 11:55am  Executive Boardroom

Rethinking Security for the Age of Agents

Tafi Makamure headshot

Tafi Makamure

Data Security Evangelist

Cyera

Robert Andriulli headshot

Robert Andriulli

CISO

Mativ

Chris Mattson headshot

Chris Mattson

Senior Director, CISO

Curia

Agents are becoming the biggest opportunity in the enterprise, and the biggest adversary. They read your data and act under borrowed identities, at a speed no human review process was built to match. The old question in security was how to keep bad actors out. The new one is more complex: how do you create and manage the biggest risk in your own enterprise, the agents you deployed on purpose?
Join this boardroom to discuss:

  • Establishing a framework where data, identity, and agent security operate as one system
  • Shifting from asking whether you can trust your agents to determining what access they can be trusted with
  • Balancing innovation and risk by creating visibility needed to understand agent activity

11:10am - 11:55am  Executive Boardroom

Strengthening Global AI Security and Governance

Matt Pour headshot

Matt Pour

VP, Solutions Engineering

Island

Chris Bullock headshot

Chris Bullock

Director, Cyber Risk Management & Data Governance

Aveanna Healthcare

Joseph Hinkle headshot

Joseph Hinkle

Group CISO

Smurfit WestRock

CISOs must secure the enterprise as generative AI adoption grows, ensuring governance, compliance, and visibility. Employees using browser-based AI tools expose organizations to risks like data leakage, security breaches, and regulatory issues. Responsible AI adoption requires balancing innovation and control. Threats from “Shadow AI” and cross-border data flows highlight the need for strong policies that protect the enterprise and enable secure, productive AI use. By advancing security posture and robust policies, organizations can confidently manage AI-driven transformation.

Join this session to discover:

  • Mitigating risks from unauthorized AI tools
  • Implementing global security policies
  • Safeguarding data with secure AI adoption

11:55am - 12:30pm  Lunch Service

12:30pm - 1:05pm  Keynote

Modernizing the SOC for Machine-Speed Defense

Jay Chaudhry headshot

Jay Chaudhry

CEO, Chairman & Founder

Zscaler

Security operations centers (SOCs) are facing a new reality - attackers are leveraging AI to automate multi-step attacks, outpacing human-driven response and overwhelming traditional workflows. CISOs must reimagine their SOCs to operate at machine speed, integrating AI-driven detection, orchestration, and remediation. How should CISOs transform their SOCs with agentic workflows, closed-loop automation, and continuous red teaming that empowers security teams to contain threats faster and reduce business risk?

Join this session to learn:

  • Integrating AI-driven detection and automated response workflows
  • Operationalizing continuous red teaming for proactive threat hunting
  • Accelerating containment and remediation to reduce business risk

1:05pm - 1:30pm  Break

1:30pm - 2:15pm  Breakout Session

AI vs. AI — What Happened When Frontier Models Attacked the Defenses

Paul Lembo headshot

Paul Lembo

CTO

VMware

Before threat actors deploy next-generation AI at scale, what if you could turn the tables and use frontier models to test your assumptions and stress your defenses? Through a real-world case study of an organization that leveraged early access to advanced AI models to conduct continuous self-attacks, this session uncovers what happens when cutting-edge AI stress-tests enterprise defenses. Explore the unexpected vulnerabilities exposed, how these insights reshaped security strategy, and a practical playbook for protecting, detecting, and recovering at scale. 

Join this session to discover:

  • The fragility and flaws in our defense exposed by smart use of next-gen AI models
  • The evolution of how our architecture, process and technical defenses changed
  • Durable steps to protect, detect, and be ready to recover at scale

1:30pm - 2:15pm  Breakout Session

Trust as a Force Multiplier

Steve Hodges headshot

Steve Hodges

State CISO

State of Georgia

In a cyber incident, the biggest delays rarely stem from technology or playbooks. Organizations that respond fastest are those that have built trust across Security, IT, Legal, Communications, and the business, enabling them to move quickly from information to decision to action.

Join this session to explore:

  • How trust impacts decision velocity and incident response outcomes
  • How the Continuous Incident Response (CIR) framework supports transparent, risk-based decision-making across stakeholders
  • Practical ways to build trust, align decision-making, and accelerate response when time matters most

1:30pm - 2:15pm  Executive Boardroom

Protecting Customer Trust — The CISO's Role in Fraud Risk

Greg Dukat headshot

Greg Dukat

Chief Executive Officer

Accertify, Inc

Ganjar Imansantosa headshot

Ganjar Imansantosa

CISO & VP Technology Operations

Tropical Smoothie Cafe

Kemper Seay headshot

Kemper Seay

VP Infrastructure & Chief Information Security Officer

Carter's

As fraud and cyber threats become increasingly interconnected, CISOs are partnering more closely with business leaders to protect revenue, customer trust and digital experiences. As responsibilities converge, key questions remain: who owns fraud prevention, what intelligence should be shared across teams and how can organizations strengthen protection without adding customer friction?

  • Operating models for aligning security, fraud and risk teams
  • Balancing security, fraud prevention and customer experience
  • Improving visibility and intelligence sharing across teams

1:30pm - 2:15pm  Executive Boardroom

Executive Boardroom

Details coming soon.

2:15pm - 3:00pm  Networking Break

2:25pm - 2:50pm  Peer-to-Peer Meetings

Peer-to-Peer Meetings

Connect with like-minded peers in a one-on-one setting through Peer-to-Peer Meetings. You will be matched with peers in your community based on your shared interests and priorities.

3:00pm - 3:45pm  Breakout Session

AI Value in Practice — CISO Learnings from Generative and Agentic AI

Mike Marsilio headshot

Mike Marsilio

Information Security & Compliance Officer

Paradies Lagardere

The AI opportunity is real, but so are the challenges. In this candid, peer-driven discussion, share and learn how CISOs are putting generative and agentic AI to work while balancing governance, risk, adoption, and measurable business value.Join this session to:

  • Exchange practical AI use cases that are improving efficiency, strengthening security outcomes, and enabling the business
  • Discuss what is working, what is creating risk, and what organizations wish they had addressed earlier
  • Prepare your organization for the next wave of intelligent automation through stronger governance, visibility, and accountability

3:00pm - 3:45pm  Executive Boardroom

Executive Boardroom

Nathan Wallace headshot

Nathan Wallace

Founder & CEO

TURBOT

Details coming soon. 

3:00pm - 3:45pm  Executive Boardroom

The Future of Application Security

Anthony Barkley headshot

Anthony Barkley

Chief Strategy Officer

Veracode

Scott Stanton headshot

Scott Stanton

Sr Director, Cybersecurity (CISO)

JAS Worldwide

The threat landscape has changed. AI accelerates software development, regulators are increasing accountability, and boards expect clear answers about software risk. Organizations that succeed will be those that can demonstrate software safety, governance, and resilience at scale.

Join this session for a candid discussion on how to:

  • Get ahead of growing application risk as AI adoption, compliance demands, and attack surfaces continue to expand
  • Turn compliance into a strategic advantage with continuous, auditable evidence that stands up to regulators, boards, and insurers
  • Build trust in software at scale by proving security, strengthening governance, and enabling innovation with confidence

3:00pm - 3:45pm  Gartner Boardroom

Navigating the New Realities of Third‑ and Fourth‑Party Risk

Glenn Schoonover headshot

Glenn Schoonover

Executive Partner, Security and Risk Management

Gartner

James Azar headshot

James Azar

Interim CIO & CISO

Artera Services

As organizations accelerate their use of external partners to drive scale and innovation, security leaders are navigating increasing complexity from hidden fourth‑party exposure, AI‑driven ecosystem risks, and rising compliance expectations. Strengthening vendor resilience has become a strategic priority, not a back‑office function.

In this roundtable, leaders will explore:

  • Driving accountability through third‑ and fourth‑party networks
  • Identifying emerging risks across expanding vendor ecosystems
  • Building resilient, transparent partnerships with critical providers

3:45pm - 4:00pm  Networking Break

4:00pm - 4:35pm  Keynote

Making Security Seamless and Celebrated

Jeremy Koppen headshot

Jeremy Koppen

CISO

Equifax

When security becomes a company-wide point of pride rather than a box to check, it empowers the business to innovate with speed and confidence. Building this culture requires visible executive support, shared accountability, and a mindset that helps employees make informed decisions every day. Jeremy Koppen, CISO at Equifax, will share how transparency, positive reinforcement, and embedded safeguards drive ownership of cyber risk and help teams address threats before they become incidents.

Join this session to learn about:

  • Fostering a shared discipline where security acts as a seamless enabler rather than a roadblock
  • Inspiring engagement from the top down to help employees make risk-aware choices in their daily work
  • Creating a proactive defense with AI-driven insights and secure-by-design practices that mitigate risks


4:35pm - 4:45pm  Closing Comments and Prize Drawing

4:45pm - 6:00pm  Governing Body Reception

Governing Body Reception

Finish the day sharing lessons learned with your peers over light fare and drinks at this closing reception hosted by your governing body members.

November 19, 2026

We look forward to seeing you at an upcoming in-person gathering

Gartner cares about the health and safety of our community. If you are feeling unwell, please refrain from attending the conference. At this time, Gartner does not have any health-related requirements in place for attendance. Should this change, we will follow up with updated guidance.

Location

A block of rooms has been reserved at the Atlanta Marriott Northwest at Galleria at a reduced conference rate. Reservations should be made online or by calling 770-952-7900. Please mention Gartner CISO Executive Summit to ensure the appropriate room rate.

Deadline to book using the discounted room rate of $189 USD (plus tax) is October 26, 2026.

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Community Program Manager

For inquiries related to this community, please reach out to your dedicated contact.

Kimberly Lewis

Sr. Community Program Manager

9723450198

kimberly.lewis@gartner.com