Executive Summit

Today’s CISOs are not just guardians of technology and enterprise risk—they are people leaders at the heart of organizational resilience. But the unique pressures, expectations, and backgrounds associated with the CISO role often make it challenging to embrace a human leadership approach compared to other enterprise leaders.

Drawing on Gartner’s latest research and insights, this session is a call to embrace the new mandate of CISO leadership: securing the future through empowered, resilient teams.

Join this session for guidance and insights on:

• Understanding why people leadership is now just as critical for security success as any technology solution
• Expanding a technical problem-solving mindset to also prioritize authenticity and empathy
• Balancing the high-stakes nature of enterprise cybersecurity with necessary people-centric initiatives

In the high-stakes arena of billion-dollar enterprises, resilience isn't just an asset; it's a necessity. This session draws on cutting-edge neuroscience and biohacking protocols to equip CISOs with practical, brain-based tools to rewire stress responses, reclaim cognitive bandwidth, and build unbreakable mental fitness with the goal of leveraging personal resilience for strategic advantage. 

Attendees will learn strategies for:

• Biohacking Stress & Recovery: Apply targeted neuroscience tools to combat burnout and maintain sharp decision-making under pressure
• Building Daily Resilience Habits: Implement micro-biohacks and boundary strategies to counter alert fatigue, decision depletion, and chronic overload for sustained leadership
• Leading with Adaptive Brain Optimization: Use brain science to enhance focus and agility, governing emerging risks while fostering resilient teams

CISOs have known for years that the days of passwords as the cornerstone of identity and access management were numbered. Now—amid a surge in credential-based attacks, rising demands for seamless user experiences, and the looming threat of quantum computing—shifting away from password reliance has become not just a future aspiration, but an urgent strategic imperative. 

Julie Myerholtz, VP & CISO, and Anurag Parikh, Head of Cyber Resilience, saw this writing on the wall early and have spent the last two years leading Brunswick through a transformative identity journey: from virtually no MFA to being well on the way toward a fully passwordless domain. Join this session for a candid conversation as they reflect on the challenges, milestones, and lessons learned along their path to passwordless, including:

• Why passwordless authentication is not just a milestone, but the future of identity
• How to build a compelling business case and secure executive buy-in
• Strategies for navigating user adoption and integrating with legacy systems

CISOs today are pulled in multiple directions, facing a relentless onslaught of evolving threats while balancing competing priorities and limited resources. As adversaries leverage new technologies—especially AI—organizations must rethink how they utilize threat intelligence and set security priorities. Yet, with historical knowledge and ongoing engagement in adversary tracking, there is hope: we can anticipate and outmaneuver tomorrow’s threats.

Join this session to explore:

• Key findings and use cases from 2025
• Predictions for 2026’s threat landscape and adversary tactics
• Actionable strategies for prioritizing and mitigating emerging threats

In today’s high-stakes M&A environment, cybersecurity is more than a technical checkpoint—it’s a critical driver of deal success and enterprise value. As boards increasingly recognize the impact of cyber risk on M&A outcomes, the role of the CISO is evolving from operational guardian to strategic business partner. And when acquisitions cross international borders, the challenges of securing these transactions scale dramatically—introducing new complexities that CISOs must address alongside standard risks.

In this panel discussion, CISOs who have recently navigated both domestic and international M&A will share firsthand accounts of the unique challenges, surprises, and successes they encountered, and offer strategies for:

• Balancing swift deal execution with robust risk management
• Building adaptable playbooks to standardize due diligence and integration across diverse environments
• Fostering a unified security culture post-acquisition

As the digital threat landscape intensifies, CISOs are not only at the forefront of safeguarding their organization—they themselves are also on the front lines as one of the most frequently attacked users in any enterprise. And even seasoned security leaders can benefit from re-examining how they're securing their own digital footprints in this era of more sophisticated social engineering and AI-enabled attacks.

Join this session to explore and share ideas for:

• Recognizing the vulnerabilities of the CISO position as a high-value target for attackers 
• Up-leveling personal vigilance as CISOs become (more) public figures 
• Leveraging your own example to educate and empower your executives and organization

Executives and their families are now prime targets for converging physical and cyber threats, expanding risk far beyond the corporate perimeter. CISOs must address overlapping vulnerabilities and bridge security silos to protect both personal and professional spheres.

Join this boardroom to discuss:

• Conducting holistic threat assessments for executive risk
• Bridging IT and physical security teams for unified protection
• Implementing comprehensive strategies for safeguarding leaders

AI is no longer experimental. It is embedded across development pipelines, cloud services, SaaS platforms, and operational workflows. Yet most AI security conversations remain narrowly focused on model risk or prompt injection. For CISOs, the challenge is broader: how to establish control over AI across the enterprise lifecycle - from code to cloud to runtime execution - without slowing innovation. 

Join this boardroom to discuss:

• Managing non-human identities, AI agents and blast radius expansion
• Aligning DevOps, Cloud Security, AppSec and Governance under a unified AI risk framework
• Measuring and reporting AI exposure at the board level