Thales Canada demonstrates its cyber security expertise at Toronto’s largest forum on security

Evanta is an organization that fosters leadership development and collaborative exchange among North America’s top executives. It brings together executives across various disciplines – from technology and finance to human resources and professional sports. This powerful network starts with face-to-face gatherings and leadership conferences. All Evanta initiatives are driven by practicing industry leaders.

Thales Canada was represented last week at the Chief Information Security Officers CISO Evanta Summit in Toronto, one of the largest community of security leaders. Dave Spagnolo, Chief Operating Officer for Thales Canada Transportation Solutions and Raheel Qureshi, Thales Canada Chief Information Security Officer were both presenters at this summit, with Dave as a keynote speaker. Raheel is also a member of the Chair committee.  His peers in the Chair are Head of Cyber Security for Government (Provincial and Federal) – as well private sector executives.

This third annual Toronto CISO Executive Summit held on December 10 was an all-day event with 250 executives attending from all sectors (Oil & Gas/Retail/Insurance/Banks/ Healthcare/Federal & Provincial Government/Chief Privacy Commissioner of Ontario).  Its aim is to protect and strengthen critical infrastructure resiliency, ensuring Canada’s future economic prosperity by creating a unified defense team, fostering security talent and mitigating risk. It delivered peer insight and unparalleled networking to information security leaders, based on expertise from the individuals who are creating new risk, talent, and information security practices. The conference featured content from practicing CISOs and current industry thought leaders.

The topic presented by Thales Canada gave a business perspective on emerging threats. Raheel presented his innovative approach to employee security awareness using a 20-minute video game cultivating a risk aware culture swathed in fun.

Dave’s keynote speech explained how cybersecurity is a key concern for a multinational company like Thales Canada. Yet from his COO perspective, cybersecurity presents not only a risk, but an opportunity to lead and steer the business. In his session, he developed the story of Thales’ expertise providing mission critical systems and why Cyber Security matters. He championed the importance of the CISO role in preparing safe systems and protecting brand reputation in the market, explaining what steps CISOs can take to partner better with COOs and the business, demonstrating speed, innovation, and competiveness along the way.

This was a great opportunity for Thales to show up on the map among all security communities and present our security capabilities in Canada.