CISO Dinner

Passionate and innovative Information Security leader. Continuous learner and pragmatic strategist, always seeking to balance security with practicality and business process.

Neil is a visionary technologist, with over 20 years of leadership experience in the information technology and healthcare informatics field. He is known for translating complex technologies into meaningful opportunities and executing enterprise-wide governance and management systems. Neil as the Chief of Research Informatics for Keck Medicine and the Keck School of Medicine where his leadership roles led the strategic and practical evolution of data management and informatics. In these positions, he directs information technology policies, systems, programs and platforms to bolster research, translation of research, clinical quality and operational efficiency initiatives.

Neil has also worked in both the public and private sector. He has worked on the Human Genome Project in his capacity as informatician, has worked for private R & D companies, and for large government initiatives. He graduated with Honors from the University of Toronto, completed his masters-level diploma in Informatics from University of British Columbia and has an MBA from Purdue University in Data Analytics. He has published over 20 high impact peer-reviewed papers in the fields of data science and informatics.

Ray Austad began his IT and Information Security career in Higher Education and Non-Profit, and pivoted over to financial enterprise after 18 years. Commencing his career with Zurich Farmers Insurance’s Group Information Security as a Business Information Security Officer. In 2014 he joined the Farmers Insurance Group Business Unit to lead Cloud and Application Security, Vulnerability Management, and Incident Response. In 2020 Ray took a different view of Cybersecurity and risks to business by moving over to Farmers Risk Management team. As Director Information Security and Risk Management, the next chapter started with being able to evaluate the organization with a new and intriguing lens. The first quarter was allocated to learning more about Enterprise Risk Management and adjusting to a role of business assurance, opposed to operational execution. The second quarter changed the organization and our personal lives with the pandemic, and provided new, unforeseen challenges. However this offered new opportunities to calculate organization and supplier risks, and view business resiliency differently. Heading into the third quarter, the focus will be on continued improvements with information security risk baselines, collaboration with our operational and business partners to monitor pandemic impacts, and evaluate new and emerging risks.

Passionate and innovative Information Security leader. Continuous learner and pragmatic strategist, always seeking to balance security with practicality and business process.