Tom Marsland

Former Chairman & VetSecCon speaker

Tom is the former Chairman of VetSec and the Senior Director of Security Operations at DigiCert

Tyler Hardy

Board Chairman at VetSec, Security Engineer at a Consumer Electronics company

Tyler Hardy is a highly experienced cybersecurity specialist, currently serving as a Senior Red Team Security Engineer at a consumer electronics company. With a strong background in electrical engineering and a focus on artificial intelligence, Tyler has developed a deep expertise in both offensive and defensive security strategies.

John Stoner

Speaker

John Stoner is a seasoned cybersecurity leader and Senior Technical Instructor at Mandiant (Google), bringing over 26 years of experience in national security and Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI). Over his three years at Google, including key roles as a Senior Security Consultant for Google Public Sector, John has delivered strategic CTI recommendations and specialized training to global commercial enterprises and government partners worldwide. John’s foundational expertise is deeply rooted in his ten years of active-duty military service as a United States Army SIGINT Analyst. Following his distinguished military career, he spent over 16 years specializing in CTI, serving in critical leadership positions such as Chief of Analytics and Deputy Director at the DoD Cyber Crime Center (DC3). A respected defense industry voice, John frequently speaks at BlackHat, RSAC, international conferences and leverages his extensive military intelligence and threat intelligence background to train the next generation of cyber defenders today.

Laura Khalil

Speaker

Laura Khalil is a corporate veteran and professional Dungeon Master who has seen exactly what teams need to succeed. As founder of Once Upon a Roll, she uses tabletop roleplaying games to help teams communicate, collaborate, and respond to change. She spent 13+ years consulting for companies like GE, Intel, Twitter, and Intuit, and has run games for the CDC, manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies. Laura believes the best teams, like the best adventuring parties, know how to work together when the stakes are real

Bryson Bort

Speaker

Bryson is the Founder of SCYTHE, a start-up building a next-generation attack emulation platform, and GRIMM, a boutique cybersecurity consultancy, and Co-Founder of the ICS Village, a non-profit advancing awareness of industrial control system security. He is a Senior Fellow for Cybersecurity and National Security at R Street and the National Security Institute and an Advisor to the Army Cyber Institute and DHS/CISA. Prior, Bryson led an elite offensive capabilities development group. As a U.S. Army Officer, he served as a Battle Captain and Brigade Engineering Officer in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom before leaving the Army as a Captain.

Kirsten Renner

Speaker

Kirsten Renner is the Founder of Dynamic Talent Solutions LLC and HireSummit.io, a longtime cybersecurity community leader, and the author of CLIMB. With more than 20 years in technical recruiting, she has interviewed and hired thousands of professionals and helped organizations rapidly scale their teams through growth and acquisition. Kirsten has delivered more than 50 talks at conferences including DEF CON, ShmooCon, and BSides events across the country and currently serves on the ICS Village Board leading Workforce Development. A passionate mentor and advocate for transitioning service members, veterans, and cybersecurity professionals, she regularly provides career coaching, resume reviews, interview preparation, and the occasional well-timed introduction. When she's not helping people navigate their next career move, you'll likely find her running an ultra, visiting her two adult sons and grand-fur-babies, or at a con near you—and she rarely turns down a selfie.

Joe Marshall

Speaker

Joe Marshall is a Senior IoT Security Strategist with Cisco Talos Intelligence Group, where he focuses on industrial control systems and operational technology security. Joe has travelled the world to help defend power grids, save lives, and help others fight the good fight. He co-hosts the Beers with Talos podcast, and has spoken at RSA Conference, Cisco Live, S4, and a long list of regional security events.

Shawn Fuss

Speaker

Shawn is a third-generation veteran having served in the United States Marine Corps from 1991 to 1995. He joined Fortinet in his current role of Sales Engineer in June 2024. Prior to Fortinet, Shawn worked in multiple industries such as Banking and Finance, Healthcare including medical research, Higher Education, Manufacturing, and Nanotechnology and Nanoscience Research. Holding positions of entry level technician to Sr. Engineer to Sr. Management and Leadership. Shawn has been a champion for the Fortinet Veterans Program, engaging with any interested Veteran and Spouse to grow and enable them in the world of Cybersecurity.

Gabe Jaggi

Speaker

Gabe started out his love for communications reading zines about phreaking and building red boxes. He is a veteran of 13 years in the Marine Corps doing every communication platform they have. After working with legacy systems so long he left the Marines and switched to being a GS as a Department of Army Civilian. Starting over in Germany at one of the Army’s five Regional Hub Nodes he ended that career at Fort Bragg. Having done 25 years of military communications it was time to move into sales as an engineer for Palo Alto Networks where he’s been for the last 2 years.

Drew Hjelm

Speaker

Drew Hjelm is the founder of Helm Information Security, a boutique cybersecurity consultancy based in Wisconsin, specializing in business email compromise response and fractional CISO services. He holds GSE #236, one of roughly 300 awarded worldwide, along with CISSP, GCFA, GREM, GCIH, and other GIAC certifications, and an MSISE from the SANS Technology Institute. Drew served as a Director of Information Security at a healthcare interoperability company, led a forensic team at a digital forensics and incident response firm, and worked as a designated support engineer at a cybersecurity vendor. His background spans hundreds of digital forensics and incident response cases, including ransomware, business email compromise, and network intrusions, along with earlier service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

Cody Ronk

Speaker

Cody Ronk is a Marine Corps veteran and cybersecurity sales professional focused on the public sector. After leaving the Marine Corps as a Sergeant, he worked in numerous roles including overseas contracting until he transitioned into the technology industry and built his career in cybersecurity sales supporting state and local government organizations. Cody believes veterans can be more effective in their job search by using the same skills that drive success in sales: identifying the right opportunities, reaching the right people, building relationships, and following up with purpose. Cody is passionate about helping veterans better communicate their value, build stronger professional networks, and use tools like LinkedIn strategically to create career opportunities.

Daniel Rogers

Speaker

Dan Rogers, aka sp0r!um, works as a Security Engineer. He held various IT and engineering roles before transitioning into cybersecurity. In his current position, his duties include incident response, tool deployment and tuning, and detection engineering, alongside developing a Red Team program. In his free time, he contributes to Atomic Red Team, analyzes malware, and reads up on the latest cyberattacks.

Andrew Schoka

Speaker

Andrew is the CEO & Co-Founder of Hardshell, a venture-backed AI security startup based in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a former U.S. Army Cyber Warfare Officer with assignments across U.S. Cyber Command, the Cyber National Mission Force, ARCYBER, and USSOCOM. He holds an MBA from UVA Darden, an M.S. in Cybersecurity from Georgia Tech, and an M.E. in Systems Engineering from UVA.

Vince Crissler

Keynote Speaker

Vince Crisler began his cybersecurity career in the US Air Force, commissioned on December 7, 2001, and separated as a Captain in 2008. The Air Force took him from running networks at Ramstein Air Base to the Pentagon's National Military Command Center to the White House, where he served as Chief Information Security Officer for the Executive Office of the President and built the White House's first 24x7x365 security operations center. After government service he co-founded Dark Cubed, raised more than $10M in venture funding, earned two US patents, and led the company to its acquisition by Celerium, where he serves today as Chief Strategy Officer and CISO. The Dark Cubed platform was selected by the DoD Cyber Crime Center to protect defense contractors. He is a director of SCI Engineered Materials and co-founder of Motherwell Distilling.

Steve Waterhouse

Speaker

Capt(ret) Steve Waterhouse, CD, CISSP, is a cybersecurity consultant, speaker, and one of Canada's first "cyber-soldiers." A retired captain of the Royal 22e Régiment and CIC, he built and secured some of the Canadian Armed Forces' first administrative networks before becoming the first Information Systems Security Officer at CFB Montreal and the Royal Military College Saint-Jean. He later served as Quebec's first Assistant Deputy Minister of Government Information Security and Cybersecurity. Steve advises committees of the House of Commons of Canada and the Quebec National Assembly on cybersecurity policy, lectures at Université de Sherbrooke's master's microprogram in information security, and is a regular expert commentator in Canadian media. Through his consultancy, INFOSECSW, he delivers training and keynotes on critical infrastructure protection, regulatory compliance, and building a culture of security.

Connie Hill

Speaker

Connie Hill is a US Navy Veteran and Website Developer focused on security, accessibility, and sustainability. Ian Hill is a CompTIA PenTest+ Certified and CompTIA Security+ Certified Consultant. Together they are Hitsaru, a consulting firm specializing in Information Security and Website Development + Management for small businesses and nonprofits.

Andrew Scott

Speaker

Andrew Scott is an AI security engineer, Army cyber officer, and founder of Evening Star AI with more than 15 years across cybersecurity, applied AI, autonomous systems, and mission-critical engineering. He serves with the Michigan Army National Guard’s 172nd Cyber Protection Team, where he leads defensive cyber operations, threat hunting, vulnerability management, incident-response readiness, and OT/ICS security activities. In his civilian work, Andrew supports enterprise security operations and AI/LLM assessments across sensitive and regulated environments. His research focuses on prompt injection, insecure retrieval, unsafe tool use, authorization failures, sensitive-data exposure, agentic workflow risk, and governance for autonomous AI systems. His engineering background shaped his emphasis on bounded authority, observability, fallback behavior, and accountability. Andrew holds an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, an MBA, and certifications including TAISE, GCPN, GSLC, GPEN, and GISP.

Bradley Evans

Speaker

Hi! I’m Squelch. I founded the competitive cybersecurity teams at a University of California campus, which is now in its 11th year of operation. Some competitions I’ve participated in: - Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (team captain, three times, highest score was 1st in the defense category and 3rd overall) - National Cyber League (NCL) (where I was in the top 100 nationally in preseason for a while) - picoCTF - Various DEF CON CTFs (DC Darknet Challenge, Snackey where we just got 2nd) Additionally, I have a masters in Computer Engineering and a bachelors in Electrical Engineering (minor in Computer Science). I am currently working in industry as a security researcher, software engineer, and reverse engineer, a job I got through friends made doing CTF.

Josh Mason

Speaker

Josh Mason is a Solutions Architect at Synack, founder of Noob Village, and a cybersecurity consultant. With a background as a U.S. Air Force pilot and cyber warfare officer, he has developed training programs, advised organizations on security strategies, and mentored individuals entering the field. Josh is passionate about helping newcomers in cybersecurity and regularly speaks at industry conferences while supporting education through community and non-profit initiatives.

Douglas Kaluhiokalani

Speaker

Cybersecurity executive with 17+ years building and leading security programs across finance, manufacturing, and defense sectors. Proven CISO and Director-level leader: restructured a bank's entire security environment (75% threat reduction), directed a $250M OT/SCADA program across 28 sites, and led NATO's 265-person, 40-country Blue Team as a CCDCOE Senior Advisor. Combat-decorated USAF veteran, inactive Top-Secret clearance, published nation-state threat researcher.

Lauren Howard

Speaker

Hey there! I'm L2. Really. It's what everyone calls me. Just go with it. I want you to know, more than anything, that isolation lies. That it's not just you. That we're all going through it, things are just hard, and help is available. I am a telehealth program operator, mental health advocate and women’s cheerleader who uses the LInkedIn Box every day to talk about what I know, how I’ve gotten to where I am, and how others can do things better than what I did. I'm also the CEO of elletwo, a company that is calling BS on what women have been taught about what it means to be professional. You can find out more at elletwo.com. Join us on #teamdifficult. We’re redefining professionalism for women. For information on telehealth consulting projects, email me at [email protected] or use the contact form on our website at clinopsgroup.com. It's hip to be square, kids.

Alison Baldyga

L2 EA - Director of Creative Operations

Director of Creative Operations

Ian Hill

Speaker

Ian Hill is a CompTIA PenTest+ Certified and CompTIA Security+ Certified Consultant. Connie Hill is a US Navy Veteran and Website Developer focused on security, accessibility, and sustainability. Together they are Hitsaru, a consulting firm specializing in Information Security and Website Development + Management for small businesses and nonprofits.