Brigadier
General Bernard K. Skoch, USAF (Ret.)
CyberPatriot
Commissioner |
Brigadier General Bernie Skoch (USAF, Ret.) was
named the Commissioner of CyberPatriot, the Air Force
Association’s national high school cyber defense
competition, in 2010. Skoch graduated from the
University of Arkansas in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree
in industrial engineering and upon graduation was
commissioned a second lieutenant in the Air Force. His
29-year Air Force career took him throughout the United
States and on permanent and temporary duty in Europe,
Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East, retiring at the
rank of brigadier general. Skoch has more than 20 years of experience in
leadership positions developing, managing, and
implementing communications and information systems for
the United States Air Force and the Defense Information
Systems Agency (DISA). He has served as the Principal
Director for Customer Advocacy at DISA, as well as the
Principal Director for Network Services. Within the USAF
he served as Director of Mission Systems, Director of
Communications Operations, and Director of Chief
Information Officer Support where he was responsible for
aligning information technology systems with business
process improvements. He has developed policies for
global telephone, video, radio, voice, data, and
satellite systems. Before joining CyberPatriot,
Skoch was a consultant in the cyber and IT industry. As Commissioner, Skoch oversees the planning
and implementation of CyberPatriot and provides
leadership and support for the program’s development. In
this role, Skoch is able to further student interests in
science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)
education and increase their awareness of cybersecurity
threats. Bernie and Debbie, his wife of 40 years, have
six children and fourteen grandchildren, all residing in
Northwest Arkansas. Additionally, Bernie is an
Instrument-rated Private Pilot. |
 Rose L. Romero Partner at Thompson & Knight's White Collar Crime practice |
Rose Romero, a former Executive Assistant United States
Attorney in the Northern District of Texas and Regional
Director in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s
Fort Worth Office, is a partner in the White Collar
practice in Thompson & Knight's Dallas office. She
concentrates her practice on government investigations,
white-collar grand jury investigations, SEC examinations
and investigations, and cybersecurity issues.
Rose leads Thompson & Knight’s cross-practice Data
Privacy and CyberSecurity team, and counsels clients on
data privacy solutions, cybersecurity regulatory
developments, the development of effective cybersecurity
compliance programs and incident response plans. She
conducts internal investigations of cyber incidents and
helps companies prosecute offenders. She is a
frequent contributor to panels and publications
concerning new developments in the cybersecurity area. Prior to joining Thompson & Knight, Rose served as the Regional Director for the Fort Worth office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where she led the Enforcement and Examination Programs for the Southwestern Region and served on the Enforcement Division's National Leadership Team. Rose directed regulatory examinations of investment advisers and broker-dealers and managed enforcement actions involving violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, insider trading, accounting and corporate reporting violations, and fraud involving investment advisers, hedge funds, and broker-dealers.
Before her service with the SEC, Rose spent sixteen
years prosecuting cases involving all levels of
corporate fraud, including financial, healthcare, and
mortgage. As the Executive Assistant U.S.
Attorney, she oversaw a number of cyber intrusion
investigations and prosecutions. She personally tried
more than 60 federal criminal cases to favorable jury
verdicts and conducted numerous grand jury
investigations and prosecutions in conjunction with the
Department of Justice's Criminal Division.
Rose has served on special assignments for the
Department of Justice, including serving as an advisor
and instructor for the Overseas Prosecution Development
and Assistance Program in Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina,
Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Honduras, and Mexico. She
investigated terrorism cases and frequently appeared
before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. |
Major General
James L. Williams, USMC (Ret.) Former Commanding General
of the 4th Marine Division |
Major General Williams recently
retired as the Commanding General of the 4th Marine
Division, the largest infantry division in the U.S.
military, consisting of nearly 22,000 Marines, Sailors,
and civilians. Previously, he was Assistant Division
Commander, 2nd Marine Division (2006-2007), and Deputy
Commanding General (Mobilization), Marine Corps Combat
Development Command (2005-2006). As the Assistant
Division Commander, 2d Marine Division at Camp Blue
Diamond, Ar-Ramadi, Iraq, Major General Williams
directed combat operations and was directly responsible
for the sensitive negotiations with insurgents and
terrorist groups to get them to stop fighting and
cooperate with the building of Iraq. |
John South
Chief Security
Officer, Heartland Payment Systems |
As the Chief Security Officer of
Heartland Payment Systems, John South leads the
company’s security and IT compliance programs which
encompass the protection of sensitive data through risk
and threat modeling and compliance with internal as well
as industry and regulatory obligations.
Recently chosen the 2013
CSO of the Year by SC Magazine and the recipient of a
Peer Recognition Award at the annual CISO Summit, South
currently serves on the Board of Directors of the
Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis
Center (FS-ISAC), the only industry forum for
collaboration on critical security threats facing the
financial services sector. He recently served on the
Board of Advisors of the Payment Card Industry Security
Standards Council (PCI SSC) to help strengthen security
standards and protect cardholder data against threats
worldwide.
Prior to joining Heartland
in September 2009, South held information security
leadership roles for a variety of companies including
Convergys (Intervoice) and Alcatel-Lucent, where he
spent several years in Antwerp and Paris leading
Alcatel’s European information security operations.
Outside of the corporate
world, South is an adjunct professor at the University
of Dallas where he teaches a course on the legal and
compliance implications of security. He co-founded,
with Dr. John Nugent, the university’s Information
Assurance Program, which focuses on corporate security
and risk management. The program has been designated a
National Security Agency Center of Excellence since its
inception.
Additionally, South has
been an active participant with the United States Secret
Service North Texas Electronic Crimes Task Force since
its inception in 2003. He is also the founding president
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s North Texas
InfraGard Program, and is a member of the
Information Systems
Security Association and the
Information Systems Audit and
Control Association. |
 Ram Dantu Computer Science Professor University of North Texas |
"Dr. Ram Dantu has 15 years of industrial experience
in the networking industry, where he worked for Cisco,
Nortel, Alcatel, and Fujitsu and was responsible for
advanced technology products from concept to delivery.
He is a full professor in the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering, University of North Texas
(UNT). During 2011, he was a visiting professor at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the
School of Engineering. He is the founding director of
the Network Security Laboratory (NSL) at UNT, the
objective of which is to study the problems and issues
related to next-generation networks. He is also the
director of the Center for Information and Computer
Security at UNT. He has received several NSF awards in
collaboration (lead PI) with Columbia University, Purdue
University, University of California at Davis, Texas A&M
University and MIT. During the last 6 years he received
10 research awards from the National Science Foundation
(NSF) for a total of $5M. He was selected as a member of
Innovation Corps of NSF in 2011.
Dr. Ram Dantu's research includes security and safety in mobile applications in health care and transportation sectors. In addition, he has been researching on the prevention of DoS and spam attacks in the VoIP networks. Prior to UNT, he was a technology director at Netrake (a startup acquired by Audio Codes), where he was the architect of the redundancy mechanism for VoIP firewalls. His additional experience includes being a technical director at IPMobile (a startup acquired by Cisco), where he was instrumental in the wireless/IP product concept, architecture, design, and delivery. In addition to more than 150 research papers, he has authored several Requests For Comments (RFCs) related to MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS), SS7 over IP, and routing. Due to his innovative work, Cisco and Alcatel were granted a total of 25 patents, and another 10 are pending. He has co-chaired three workshops on VoIP security. For the last two years he has been organizing the workshop SOMIC (Security on the Move and In the Clouds) at UNT. |
 Suku Nair Computer Science Chair & Professor Southern Methodist University |
Suku Nair received his Bachelors degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the University of Kerala. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1988 and 1990, respectively. Currently, he is the Chair and Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the Southern Methodist University at Dallas where he held a J. Lindsay Embrey Trustee Professorship in Engineering. His research interests include Network Security, Network Restoration, and Fault-Tolerant Computing. He is the director of HACNet (High Assurance Computing and Networking) Labs. He is a member of the IEEE and Upsilon Pi Epsilon. |
 Kamil Sarac Director of Education, CSI and Computer science Associate Professor |
"Dr. Kamil Sarac is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas. He is also serving as the director of the information assurance education program at the university. His research interests include computer networks and protocols, network security, network and service monitoring and Internet measurements, overlay networks and their use in network security. He obtained his PhD degree in computer science at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2002. |
Zoltan Szabo
Director of Digital Forensics
and Information Assurance Programs, Richland College |
Mr. Zoltan Szabo is a faculty member of the School of Engineering, Business & Technology division at Richland College. He is also the director of Digital Forensics and Information Assurance programs at Richland College. He has developed the courses and the degree plan to aim toward an applied research model in 2-year colleges that is a unique model at that level. He has worked on articulation agreements with universities across the country to help students transfer their courses and skills to Universities. He led the development of the first ever skill standard for digital forensics technicians in The State of Texas. He has built a state-of-the-art lab environment and led the program to be the first in The State of Texas to receive the National Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance 2-Year Education ( CAE2Y ) designation. He received his Bachelor of Science program in Computer Science from UTD and his Master's Degree in Computer Science (MSCS) from University of Tulsa. |
 Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham Director of the Cyber Security Research and Education Institute (CSI), The University of Texas at Dallas |
Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham is a Louis A. Beecherl, Jr.
Distinguished Professor and Director of the Cyber
Security Research and Education Institute (CSI) at The
University of Texas at Dallas. She is an elected Fellow
of IEEE, the AAAS, the British Computer Society, the
SPDS (Society for Design and Process Science) and the
Society of Information Reuse and Integration
(subcommittee of IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics
Society). She has unique experience working in
commercial industry, research laboratory, US government
and academia and her 30+ year career includes research
and development, technology transfer, product
development, program management, and consulting for the
federal government.
Her work has resulted in 100+ journal articles,
200+ conference papers, three US patents, twelve books
and numerous awards.
Under her leadership, CSI has generated over $25
million in research and education funding from AFOSR,
NSF, IARPA, NGA, NASA, ONR, NIH, DARPA, ARO Raytheon,
Tektronix and others. |
 Jay Johnson Of Counsel for Jones Day |
Jay Johnson is the Of Counsel for Jones Day. His practice focuses on patent and trade secret litigation as well as intellectual property crime, cyber crime, and economic espionage.Prior to joining Jones Day in 2013, Jay was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Texas. As the Eastern District's coordinator for computer hacking, intellectual property, and electronic evidence issues and as a member of its national security team, Jay guided the Eastern District's preparation for and response to intellectual property crime and cyber crime, conducted industry outreach and law enforcement training regarding such crime, and counseled prosecutors on collecting electronic evidence.Jay also handled cases and investigations involving white-collar fraud, identity theft, and other civil and criminal matters. He represented the United States in grand jury investigations, jury trials, and appeals. In 2012, Jay received a Director's Award for Superior Performance from the U.S. Department of Justice for his role in the prosecution of a large-scale mortgage fraud scheme, and he previously was nominated for the Attorney General's Award for Outstanding Contributions by a New Employee. |
 David Keathly Principal Lecturer, Computer Science and Engineering, University of North Texas |
David Keathly received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical from Oklahoma State University and is a PhD Candidate at the University of North Texas. After 20 years of experience in developing military and commercial products, including a patent in image processing, as well as adjunct faculty assignments at Collin County Community College and UT Dallas, he joined the faculty in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of North Texas as a Lecturer and Undergraduate Advisor in the Fall of 2004. He is now a Principal Lecturer in the same department. He was an SGA Honors Professor in 2005 and has received the Outstanding Student Advisor award from the Student Life Office, and a Meritorious Service Award from the College of Engineering Industrial Advisory Council. David is a Senior Member of the IEEE and is the faculty advisor for the IEEE Computer Society Student Chapter, the UNT Robotics Society and the UNT Programming Teams, in addition to his involvement with various recruiting and retention programs. David is also Co-Director of the RoboCamp summer program for middle and high school students, and is a Co-PI for the National Convergence Technology Center, an NSF program headquartered at Collin College in Frisco, TX. |
 Brian Engle Chief Information Security Officer, State of Texas |
As the State of Texas, CISO, Brian Engle
advises the executive leadership of nearly 200
independent state agencies and higher education
organizations on protecting information resources for
the State of Texas, with more than 300,000 employees and
26 million citizens. Engle serves as a policy-making
official responsible for statewide cyber security
strategies, as well as the oversight of the delivery of
the enterprise security program, operations and
services. Prior to serving as the State CISO, Engle was
the CISO for the State of Texas Health and Human
Services Commission. Previous information security roles
include CISO for Temple-Inland, manager of information
security analyst for Silicon Laboratories. He is a past
president and lifetime member of the board of directors
of the Information Systems Security Association Capitol
of Texas Chapter, is a member of the Information Systems
Audit and Control Association, and has been recognized
as a CISSP and CISA. |
 Michael Morris Manager, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Advisory Services |
Mr. Morris joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2013, after
24 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a
Special Agent, Supervisory Special Agent and Laboratory
Director of the first accredited Federal Digital
Evidence Laboratory. Mr. Morris has significant
experience as a white collar crime, cyber crime and
computer forensic investigator and has been featured on
page one of the Wall Street Journal for one of his
multi-national cyber crime investigations. Mr. Morris' areas of focus include digital forensics, incident response, investigations, data analysis, electronic discovery and litigation support on federal and state criminal trials. He has worked on hundreds of forensic investigations related to cyber crime, data theft, fraud, espionage, terrorism, and murder. He also has worked on investigations across numerous industries including energy,retail, banking and capital markets, healthcare, telecommunications, and federal/state governments. Mr. Morris has testified as an Expert Witness in computer forensics in both Texas and Federal courts, telecommunications, and federal/state governments. |
 Brett J.L. Landry Associate Professor and Director, Center for Cybersecurity Education, University of Dallas College of Business |
Dr. Brett J.L. Landry has worked in IT and Cybersecurity for more than twenty years in both in the private and public sectors and joined the University of Dallas in the Fall of 2006 following six years of teaching at the University of New Orleans. He is an Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Cybersecurity Education. Landry earned his Ph.D. from Mississippi State University and has published and presented over 40 papers on Cybersecurity, Legal, Ethics, Technology Trends and Higher Education. Before leaving industry, Landry ran the Research and Development Labs at Hibernia National Bank (now Capital One Bank) that were responsible for integrating and securing technologies across the enterprise. Dr. Landry has consulted and taught in the US, South America, and Europe. |
 Dr. Ivor Page Professor, Department of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Dallas |
Dr. Page joined the faculty of the Computer Science
Department at UT Dallas in 1981.
His research interests are in Distributed Algorithms. He
teaches courses in Computer Architecture, Digital
Arithmetic, and Data Structures and Algorithms.
In the past five years Dr. Page has designed and run major programming contests at the university in the spring and the fall for local high school students. These contests attract sixty to eighty teams (of three) students who compete for three-hours. Dr. Page also runs an Advanced Problem Solving Course for high school teachers and students in June each year. Up to fifty participants attend two mornings each week for four weeks to learn problem solving techniques and their algorithms and data structures. At the university, Dr. Page coaches the UTD Competitive Programming Teams. They compete in the ACM ICPC Regional Contests. A victory in the local 3-state contest each November results in a trip to the World Finals the following spring. In 2006 we won the Regional Contest and we competed in the World finals in Tokyo in 2007, coming 14th in the world. Other faculty members at UT Dallas put on a wide array of short programming courses during every holiday, short or long, for highschool students, their teachers, UT Dallas students, and the general public, ranging in level from CMU's Alice, to C, Java Script and Java. The Computer Science Department at UT Dallas is dedicated to increasing the level of Computer Science Education in the region. |
|
Sean T. Ryan Supervisory Special Agent FBI Dallas Cyber Task Force |
Prior to joining the FBI, SSA Ryan worked in the banking industry for eight years in Tampa, Florida. SSA Ryan began his FBI career in the Washington DC Field Office in 2004 where he was assigned to work counterterrorism and counterintelligence matters. While assigned to the Washington Field Office, SSA Ryan was a member of the Evidence Response Team. As a member of this team, SSA Ryan was deployed to Pakistan on two separate occasions. In 2006, SSA Ryan was deployed to Karachi, Pakistan, to process the suicide bombing at the United States Consulate that killed a US diplomat and his driver, among others. In 2008, SSA Ryan was deployed to Islamabad, Pakistan, to process the bombing at the Luna Caprese restaurant that killed a Turkish woman and injured FBI personnel. At the Washington Field Office, SSA Ryan transitioned from working counterterrorism and counterintelligence matters to working on a DC Public Corruption and Government Fraud squad. In 2010, SSA Ryan completed an 18-month temporary duty assignment at FBI Headquarters in the International Terrorism Operations Section. In September 2012, SSA Ryan reported to the Dallas Division, Fort Worth Resident Agency, after being selected as the White Collar Crime Supervisor. In September 2013, SSA Ryan became the Cyber Task Force Supervisor in the Dallas Division, where he now oversees criminal and national security cyber intrusion investigations. |