Register Now!

What the July talk will cover:

Working frame is the shifting cybersecurity posture for local government and public institutions in Minnesota, and where ISC2 practitioners can play. Threads I’d pull on:

• Federal funding is receding. CISA has pulled back, and the hardest-hit are the least-resourced: counties, tribal nations, K-12 districts. We’re already seeing the impact (Winona County ransomware, St. Paul hit twice, Colonel Morgan’s Minnesota Cyber Guard deployed twice for incidents).
• Minnesota is standing up new capacity. MnCITLA is launching MnCRT, a cyber response team, to help counties during the foothold window before full IR kicks in. Matt Peabody and Nathan Zacarias are pushing this forward.
• A civilian cyber corps. Wisconsin already has 300-500 vetted practitioners supporting state-level incident response. I’m part of conversations at MN IT Services about building something similar. Relevance to your members: a future path where ISC2 practitioners can directly help local government during incidents.
• Agentic AI as a new governance gap. Existing controls weren’t built for Model Context Protocol (MCP), non-human agent identities, or semantic privilege escalation. Ties to the AI governance work I covered at MnTech Connect. I have attached my talk if you’d like to see that from early this month at the Minnesota Technology Association Tech Connect conference.

Quick bio:

I’m COO at Clockwork, a Twin Cities digital product agency. We build custom software, websites, and mobile apps for Fortune 500s and mid-market enterprises. I lead delivery, operations, IT, and information security. Background in software development.

I chair the State of Minnesota Technology Advisory Council, which advises the Governor, Legislature, and state agencies on modernizing digital services. TAC covers four areas: cybersecurity, AI, project-to-product, and customer experience. I co-chair the TAC Cybersecurity Subcommittee and work alongside State CISO John Israel’s team and the Minnesota Cybersecurity Task Force.

Pre-pandemic, I started the Twin Cities chapter of EvolveSecurity. That local one went away during COVID but the relationships are still alive.