The Emergence of Ransomware: Emergence and Prevention

Afzal is an accomplished senior technology security and risk leader with 20 years of success in ensuring strong and resilient security, governance, risk management and compliance in complex and agile environments. He led organizations to adapt to disruptive technologies for increased efficiency and productivity maintaining robust availability, integrity and confidentiality. He has successfully led large and critical project teams, and built powerful security and risk management teams from the ground up. Currently, Afzal oversees IT security, risk management and compliance functions at Everest.

Prior to Everest, Afzal led the IT security function at Alliance Capital (currently AllianceBernstein), a NYC based asset management firm.

Prior to Alliance, he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers. As an Accounting and CIS graduate from Baruch College of CUNY, his  career started with PwC as an IT Risk Management professional.

Christopher Frenz is the Director of IT Infrastructure at Interfaith Medical Center and is an expert on healthcare security and privacy. He the author of the books "Visual Basic and Visual Basic .NET for Scientists and Engineers" and "Pro Perl Parsing", as well as the author of numerous articles. Frenz holds many industry standard certifications, including CISSP, HCISPP, CIPP, CIPM, CIPT, and CCSK.

Dr. Chris Pierson is the EVP, Chief Security Officer & General Counsel for Viewpost - a FinTech payments company. He is a globally recognized cybersecurity expert and entrepreneur who holds several cybersecurity, anti-fraud, and technology patents. Dr. Pierson serves on the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy & Integrity Advisory Committee and Cybersecurity Subcommittee and is a Distinguished Fellow of the Ponemon Institute.

Previously, Chris was the first Chief Privacy Officer, SVP for the Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) U.S. banking operations leading its privacy and data protection program. Chris was also a corporate attorney for Lewis and Roca where he established its Cyber Security Practice representing companies on cybersecurity and data breaches.

Chris is a graduate of Boston College (B.A., M.A.) and The University of Iowa (Ph.D., J.D.), is a sought after keynote speaker on cybersecurity and privacy, board advisor for startups, and is frequently quoted by the media on these topics.