2010 New York CISO Executive Summit

Dennis Brixius joined The McGraw-Hill Companies as Vice President and Chief Security Officer in January 2004.  In this role, Dennis is responsible for establishing a complete information security program to limit technology-based security problems, protect the McGraw-Hill intellectual property rights, ensure business continuity and protect the privacy of our customers.  His role also accommodates information risk analysis and assessment, developing security and risk management among internal technology groups, consulting with business units regarding their changing business and technical plans to ensure that information security issues are addressed early in a project’s development and educating senior management about changes in technical, legal and regulatory arenas affecting information security and business continuity.  At the recent RSA Conference, Dennis received the SC Magazine Awards 2007 for CSO of the Year and has also been nominated for the 2007 Information Security Executive of the Year for both the TriState and National levels.

Prior to joining The McGraw-Hill Companies, Dennis had a proven track record of solving IT-related business and security problems.  Most recently he was director, Enterprise Architecture and chief information security officer at Praxair, Inc. He has occupied senior information management positions at TRW, Inc., BP and two consulting firms.  Dennis has a bachelor’s degree from Gettysburg College and an MBA from the University of Delaware.

Thomas Doughty, Vice President and Corporate Information Security Officer for Prudential Financial, Incorporated joined Prudential in 1998 as an Information Systems Auditor. From 2000 until 2005 he assumed responsibility as Business Information Security Officer for Prudential Securities, Incorporated (PSI) in New York. His efforts during this period included technical risk management and transition related to Wachovia's joint venture with PSI.

He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and holds an MBA in Finance and Information Technology from New York University's Stern School of Business. Prior to joining Prudential, Doughty served as a Military Intelligence Officer specializing in Electronic and Information Warfare along and emerging intelligence processing technology platforms.

For over thirty years, Steve has been directly involved in establishing, building and directing Information Security and Privacy functions. He is the founder and President of Security Risk Solutions, an information security company providing consulting and advisory services to major, mid-size, startup and venture capital companies. Steve is an Executive Advisor to Deloitte, is on the Board of Directors of nCircle Inc, ClearPoint Metrics and Avior Computing and is on the Advisory Boards of Voltage Security and Veracode. Steve served as a member of the (ISC)² Americas Advisory Board for Information Systems Security.

Steve organized and managed the Information Security Program at JP Morgan for ten years.  In 1995, he joined Citicorp/Citigroup after the Russian hacking incident. At Citi, Steve was the industry's first Chief Information Security Officer.  He spent the next six years directing Citigroup’s global Corporate Information Security Office.

Steve then joined Merrill Lynch as their Chief Information Security and Privacy Officer, where he organized and instituted the company-wide privacy and security program. 

Steve has testified before Congress on numerous information security issues and was appointed as the first Financial Services Sector Coordinator for Critical Infrastructure Protection by the Secretary of the Treasury.  He was also the first Chairman of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS/ISAC) and is an Advisor to the FS/ISAC Board of Directors.  Steve also serves as an advisor to the executive committee of the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FSSCC).

Nils Puhlmann is the CSO for Zynga Game Network, the largest social game provider. At Zynga, Puhlmann leads a converged security department managing all security risks for the company and chairing the Security Risk Committee. 

Puhlmann is also the co-founder and board member of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a community of over 6,000 security professionals. CSA promotes best practices for security assurance within Cloud Computing and provides education on the uses of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

Previously, Puhlmann was CSO of Qualys, responsible for security, risk management and business continuity planning. His responsibilities included the security of the cloud-based QualysGuard SaaS platform. He also led the Qualys CSO Advisory Board and evangelized at various international industry events in areas of security management and cloud security.

Prior to Qualys, Puhlmann was the CISO for Electronic Arts, with global responsibility for information security, intellectual property protection, risk management, compliance, physical security, forensics and investigations and business continuity management/disaster recovery. Puhlmann was also the CISO at Robert Half International, Director Global IT & Security and Chief Privacy Officer at Mindjet Corp. Puhlmann held senior positions at Adobe Systems, Nortel Networks and START Amadeus.

Andrew Stravitz is Director of Information Security for Banes & Noble.com and is responsible for leading all aspects of their Information Security Program including overseeing all security related audits and regulatory activity. A 15 year Information System Security Professional Stravitz brings extensive management and technical experience as an innovative leader managing and mentoring staff at all levels of the organization on a variety of information security issues. Prior to Barnes & Noble Stravitz performed security consulting services for ING Bank and FastNet and was the CTO for Bank Hapoalim in New York. Stravitz holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from State University of New York at Stony Brook and a Master of Science in Accounting from Pace University, Lubin School of Business.

Dr. Peter Tippett is VP of Technology and Innovation for Verizon Business and Chief Scientist of the security product testing and certification organization, ICSA Labs. Dr. Tippett has led the computer security industry for more than 20 years, initially as a vendor of security products, as well as a key strategist. He is widely credited with creating the first commercial anti-virus product that later became Norton AntiVirus. Dr. Tippett is best known for his creation of enterprise risk metrics and large risk intelligence and compliance management programs for enterprises.

He recently served on the President’s IT Advisory Committee (PITAC) to guide U.S. efforts in healthcare IT, information security and computational sciences research. In 2002, InfoWorld recognized Dr. Tippett as one of the 25 most influential Chief Technology Officers.

He has also won the Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” award and was the Founding Executive Publisher of Information Security magazine.