In-Person

Toronto CISO Community

Executive Summit

June 24, 2026 | Marriott Downtown at CF Toronto Eaton Centre

June 24, 2026
Marriott Downtown at CF Toronto Eaton Centre

Collaborate with your peers

Get together with Toronto's top CISOs to tackle shared business challenges and critical priorities facing your role today. Participate in this one-day, local program with peer-driven topics and interactive discussions with your true C-level peers.

Join your peers to discuss the most critical issues impacting CISOs today:

Navigating GenAI innovation with sensible governance

Streamlining access management and controls across both traditional and non-human identities

Reframing risk reduction as minimizing business impact and improving resilience

Toronto 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

Sandra Liepkalns

Choice Properties REIT
VP, Information Security & Data Governance

Ragulan Sinnarajah

Empire Company Limited
VP, CISO

Olivera Zatezalo

Ontario Power Generation
CISO & VP, Cyber and IT Security

What to Expect

Interactive Sessions

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

Community Networking

Make new connections and catch up with old friends in casual conversations during dedicated time for networking designed to better acquaint you with your Toronto CISO community.

Peer-to-Peer Meetings

Connect with like-minded peers in a private, 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.

Agenda

Breakout Sessions

Securing the Agentic Workforce

As AI agents move from passive tools to active workforce members, CISOs face new governance and security challenges. The risks of rapid, autonomous action are real—but so are the opportunities for transformation. This session offers a practical, forward-looking approach to securely unlocking the value of agents.

Join this session to explore:

  • Reining in shadow agents
  • Protecting agents from malicious context
  • Protecting your business from rogue agents

Governance Built for Modern Threats

Good cybersecurity governance gives CISOs the structure and authority needed to align security decisions with business priorities while maintaining clear accountability across teams. With consistent policies, defined ownership, and transparent measurement, CISOs can act with confidence, manage risk proactively, and sustain resilience as threats evolve.

Join you peers to uncover:

  • Clear accountability that defines who owns decisions and outcomes
  • Standardized, repeatable processes that guide consistent security execution
  • Transparent reporting that translates risk into actionable business insight

Rethinking Security for Agentic AI — From Control to Orchestration

As AI agents start acting across business environments, data becomes the true control surface. These agents require broad access to data, identities, and business processes, creating new risk patterns as sensitive data and outbound actions converge at machine speed. This is a control shift. CISOs must modernize their data approach to adopt agentic AI confidently while maintaining oversight.

Join this session to explore how to:

  • Detect emerging risk behaviors in autonomous AI
  • Build a data-centric and intent-aware security model
  • Establish the CISO as the orchestrator of scalable AI and business growth enabler

Securing the Rise of AI Identities

According to the International Data Corporation, the number of AI identities is expected to reach 1.3 billion in just two years. Yet many organizations don’t secure AI identities effectively, granting excessive access and relying on outdated, slow processes.

Join this session to learn how to:

  • Identify gaps in agent access visibility, ownership, and governance
  • Address the unique challenges of identity security in AI environments
  • Build scalable identity foundations to enable innovation and efficiency


Keynote Sessions

Into the Breach — Lessons From the Front Lines

Breaches are inevitable, impacts are escalating, and the expectations placed on security leadership have never been higher. Strengthening resilience requires not only mastering the technical response but also shaping organizational culture, guiding cross‑functional alignment, and communicating with clarity under pressure.

Join this session for:

  • Proven strategies CISOs use to manage, contain, and communicate during major breaches
  • Leadership behaviors that strengthen organizational confidence and crisis performance
  • Practical lessons teams can apply immediately to improve resilience and reduce future risk

AI Authority Drift — Closing the Governance Gap

Artificial intelligence is entering a new phase. No longer limited to generating insights, modern AI systems are beginning to act — initiating workflows, interacting with applications, and making decisions at machine speed. As agentic AI systems become operational participants inside enterprise environments, this session explores how enterprises can safely scale AI by establishing governance across identity, authority, behavior, and data, while enabling innovation without introducing unmanaged risk.

Attendees will learn:

  • How to control the authority, behavior, and data access of autonomous systems operating across complex digital ecosystems
  • The emerging governance model, enacted through a real-time control plane, to address authority drift, misconfigured permissions, and unintended AI behavior
  • A practical framework and architecture for governing AI at enterprise scale


Executive Boardroom Sessions

Unifying Data Visibility — The AI Advantage for CISOs

CISOs are challenged by fragmented data landscapes, shadow IT, and the need for real-time visibility into sensitive information across different data estates including SaaS, cloud, and modern virtualization platforms. Manual discovery and governance processes can’t keep pace with today’s data sprawl, increasing risk and compliance exposure. Leveraging AI-driven data intelligence empowers CISOs to unify visibility, automate governance, and strengthen security posture.

Join this session to explore:

  • Automating sensitive data discovery across environments
  • Enabling continuous governance with AI insights
  • Reducing risk through unified data intelligence

Empowering Innovation While Strengthening Security and Control

As browser-based and unapproved applications reshape the future of work, CISOs face growing security and compliance risks, including data leakage and policy gaps. Proactively addressing these threats with effective safeguards protects enterprise data, supports innovation, and ensures resilience in an evolving workplace.

Join this session to discuss:

  • Risks from unmanaged and shadow tools
  • Policies to safeguard sensitive data
  • Maintaining compliance and robust security controls

The C‑Suite Translator – Turning Cyber Speak Into Boardroom Gold

How can CISOs elevate cybersecurity from a technical sidebar to a strategic powerhouse that commands executive attention? This message challenges leaders to transform complex cyber concepts into clear, compelling business value—bridging the gap between security operations and organizational growth. By reframing cybersecurity as a driver of resilience, revenue protection, and competitive advantage, CISOs can turn every boardroom conversation into an opportunity for influence.

Join your peers to discuss:

  • Translating risk into business‑aligned outcomes that resonate with executive priorities
  • Using narrative and clear decision paths to turn updates into meaningful context leadership can act on
  • Positioning cybersecurity as a strategic enabler that fuels trust, innovation, and long‑term performance


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

More Information

A block of rooms has been reserved at the Marriott Downtown at CF Toronto Eaton Centre at a reduced conference rate. Reservations should be made online or by calling 1 800 905 0667. Please mention Gartner Executive Summit to ensure the appropriate room rate.

Deadline to book using the discounted room rate of $470 CAD (plus tax) is June 1, 2026.

Your Community Sponsors

Global Thought Leaders

CISO Thought Leaders

Key Sponsors

Program Sponsors

Community Program Manager

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

Lynn Morrow

Senior Community Program Manager

503-805-5624

lynn.morrow@gartner.com