Speaker Biographies
DATA BREACHES: DEFENSE AND RESPONSE – SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES – March 18, 2026
Mitch Christian, Head of Global Information Security & Infrastructure, Synergy Global Housing
I was born and raised on a small farm in Wisconsin. I owned my own business at the age of 19. In the early 90’s I went to work for Kimberly Clark as an Electrical Engineering Tech building out Diaper Machines and switched profession into IT starting out as a PC maintenance tech at Kimberly Clark working my way to overseeing the NOC for the corporation. I moved to a position with Grant Thornton starting out as a local IT manager and worked my way to National Director of IT.
In 2008 I started my own company doing Cyber Security Consulting for small businesses and landed John Deere and Jimmy Johns as major clients doing compliance work and hardening systems. In 2016 I started for American Hotel Register as Global IT Security Lead and built out a global security program from scratch. In 2019 I went to work for Kivu Consulting as Director of Cyber Investigations leading more than 100 investigations and remediations of Ransomware incidents and litigation cases.
Currently I am Global IT Security Director for Synergy Global Housing and CISO for Alpha Recon (a startup company making an app for Risk Management). I have a degree in Automated Manufacturing and one in Business Technical Management. I currently hold a CISSP and CISM. My family and I reside in Wisconsin and I am an active member of Infragard.
Tim Connolly, Senior Systems Engineer, Illumio
Tim Connolly has been working with Fortune 500 customers to help them with their security needs for 30 years. Tim helps Illumio’s customers understand how to use Segmentation to protect critical workloads and reduce the impact of a breach by restricting East-West traffic. Before he joined Illumio, Mr. Connolly was a Sr Solutions Architect with Venafi protecting Machine Identities, a Sr Systems Engineer working on Data at Rest encryption products and services at Thales, and prior to that, a Principal Systems Engineer at Ixia (now Keysight Technologies), working with Network Equipment Manufacturers and Service Providers to test the security effectiveness and performance of security infrastructure solutions.
David Fagan, Director of Cyber Security, Ferrara
David B. Fagan is a future-focused information security leader adept at giving businesses the ability to grow confidently. Dave currently leads the information and cybersecurity program for the largest sugar confection producer in the U.S. Over the last five years he has increased the operational maturity of the organization and helped to position them for multiple international expansions. Previously, Dave was the Chief Information Officer for a national financial institution and contributed to the company’s ten-fold growth in ten years.
Outside of work, Dave is an avid cyclist and enjoys camping, paddle-sports and multi-cuisine cooking. He is active in his church and community services. Dave is married with 5 children and looking forward to being an empty-nester soon.
Samuel Hill, Director Product Marketing, MIND
Samuel started his career as an ER tech, where he learned to stay calm when things get messy and move fast when it matters.
He later moved into cybersecurity, holding roles at Cisco and Aruba before leading product marketing at Medigate, Cyolo and dozens of other security companies. He is now at MIND, helping deliver Stress-Free DLP in the AI era.
A husband to one and father of four, he lives in Bozeman, Montana and would rather be outside skiing, fly fishing or grilling. Come on over.
Corey Hlavacek, Senior Director, Information Security, enVista
Corey Hlavacek is a seasoned cybersecurity leader who champions security as a strategic business enabler. With nearly two decades of experience, he has built and led information security programs that strengthen business resiliency, optimize risk, and enable organizational growth.
Corey brings deep expertise in information security best practices and regulatory compliance, with experience spanning Fortune 500 organizations across transportation and logistics, manufacturing, and high-tech industries.
He holds a Master of Science in Information Systems Security and maintains multiple professional certifications, including CISSP, CISM, CICISO, CIPP, CIA, CISA, and CEH. A frequent industry speaker, Corey has presented at leading conferences including RSA Conference 2026, CornCon 2025, and Hacker Halted 2025.
Dan Horwich, President & Executive Director, CAMP IT Conferences
In 2001, Dan Horwich earned the title of President and Executive Director of CAMP IT Conferences. Prior to joining CAMP IT, Dan held sales and sales management positions at U.S. Robotics, 3Com, Mercantec, Spring Tide Networks, and Lucent Technologies, winning several sales and professional development awards.
An active networker, focused on making a difference in the professional lives of IT practitioners, Dan has built a win-win climate for CAMP IT’s attendees, speakers, and sponsors. He’s a graduate of University of Wisconsin-Madison with a BBA in Marketing and lives in Glenview, IL with his wife and two daughters.
Victor Hsiang, CISO, GATX
Victor Hsiang is an accomplished Information Security, Risk and IT Professional with over 19 years of experience working within the Financial Services and Healthcare sectors. He has an established track record of delivering successful IT and Information Security solutions that manages risk while supporting business requirements. His experience includes implementation of technology, security audits, risk assessments, information records management, privacy concerns, compliance and legal issues related to security, forensics, security practices and policy development. He currently leads the Information Security program at GATX Corporation.
Johnny Khan, Account Executive, Exabeam
Johnny Khan is a cybersecurity sales leader with over 8 years of experience helping organizations modernize their security operations and strengthen their identity security strategies. He works closely with security leaders to address challenges around insider threats, identity compromise, and improving SOC visibility through behavioral analytics and modern SIEM technologies.
A President’s Club award winner, Johnny is known for collaborating with CISOs and security teams to align security outcomes with business priorities and drive more proactive threat detection.
Fred Kwong, Vice President & CISO, DeVry University
Dr. Fred Kwong has been in the information technology field for the past 15 years in working in education, financial, and telecommunication sectors. Fred currently works at a Farmers Insurance where he currently is the Global Head of Privileged Access Control. Fred is currently building a new program seeking to govern, control, and profile privileged identities throughout the enterprise.
Fred’s work includes the creation of security and privacy policies, standards, and procedures. He is a subject matter expert in PCI, leading organizations to pass their report on compliance. With an extensive background in IT technologies, Fred continues to challenge the status quo by providing guidance in security and network architecture creating holistic designs that align to todays’ threat vector for organizations.
Fred has a passion of combining IT skills with organization development values. His broad range of IT skills has allowed him to view IT from many different paradigms and present them to the business partners in an easy to understand language. Fred servers as an adjunct professor at Benedictine and Roosevelt University teaching courses in international business, organization behavior, project management, and information systems. He holds a Ph.D. from Benedictine University and earned his master’s degree in business administration from Roosevelt University. Fred is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP), a Certified Information Systems Manager (CISM), and a PCI Professional (PCIP).
James Mountain, CISO Palmer College of Chiropractic
James Mountain is an experienced leader with over 16 years in IT. His current role is the Director of Information Security for Palmer College of Chiropractic providing strategic leadership and direction for campus academic technology applications and initiatives. His past work experiences include private, public and government industries. He has been a CISSP since 2011 while he worked for the Department of Defense. His main areas of focus are security, risk management, and infrastructure stability.
Mike Neuman, AVP, Security & Compliance, VelocityEHS
Mike is well versed in navigating the complexities of regulated environments, improving cybersecurity operations, and continuously driving compliance. His has successfully lead onshore and offshore teams while maintaining high performance standards and focusing on business solutions and client engagement. Prior to joining VelocityEHS, Mike served as the Vice President of Information Security at Backstop Solutions Group, where he spearheaded the development of a process-driven approach towards achieving FedRAMP certification and SOC2 Type II certification. Earlier in his career, Mike drove the efforts at Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD) to achieve PCI compliance as a merchant and service provider. Mike earned his MS in Communications System Management from Northwestern University and a BA in History and Political Science from Purdue University.
John Nowotny, Principal Sales Engineer, Exabeam
Prior to joining Exabeam, John Nowotny was a Senior Security Engineer at a large oil and gas company in Houston, engineering a number of security platforms, including Exabeam. As an early customer of Exabeam, John saw the need for understanding what is normal for users and devices, especially in the digital transformation era. John has a passion for identity protection and cloud security and uses that passion to help companies execute great security wins with the least end-user impact possible.
EJ Pappas, Field CTO, PKWARE
EJ Pappas is the Field Chief Technology Officer at PKWARE, where he brings over 30 years of experience helping enterprises navigate complex data security and compliance challenges. As a field CTO, EJ still partners with our customers, including some of the largest companies in the US to help align PKWARE’s solutions with rela-world operational needs and business outcomes. As a thought leader in data-centric security, EJ challenges organizations to shift their thinking from platform-centric defenses to protecting the data itself, arguing that until security programs can answer “where is all of our sensitive data?”, every other control has a blind spot. He works closely with security leaders across multiple fortune 100 organizations and regulated industries to translate that strategy into operational reality, addressing the hard problems of data sprawl, unstructured data risk, vendor fragmentation, and the growing role of AI in both accelerating threats and amplifying existing gaps. EJ has been a featured guest on multiple podcasts and webinars such as the CISO Tradecraft podcast and speaks regularly at industry events on data-centric security strategy, sensitive data visibility, and building protection programs to prevent data breaches and or programs that hold up when a breach actually happens.
Ron Zochalski, CISO/CTO, Lake County Government, Indiana
CTO & CISO for Lake County Government – Superior Courts Juvenile Division on the zero trust journey to protect data, assets and buildings for current and emerging security threats. I have the ability to break down the financial and technical risks and issues to both technical and the non-technical professionals including the boardroom and get buy in. This is not an easy task.
Ron also has spent the last 12 years teaching at Indiana University Northwest teaching students to understand and use various technologies, Personal Finance and Business Administration.
Ron’s 20+ year journey started in Financial Services then to Automotive, Newspaper/Media, ECommerce, Supply Chain, Mobile and currently Government and Courts. It’s always the questions you don’t know to ask are the ones that give you an issue.
