Executive Advisory Council (EAC)

Scott Algeier

Executive Director, IT-ISAC

Scott C. Algeier is the Founder, President and CEO of cybersecurity consulting firm Conrad, Inc., Executive Director of the Information Technology – Information Sharing and Analysis Center (IT-ISAC) and Executive Director of the Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI). He has spent the past twenty years at the intersection of cybersecurity policy and operations.

Conrad, Inc. provides strategic consulting and cyber threat analysis to not for profit organizations focused on cyber security and critical infrastructure protection (CIP).  As part of this, Conrad, Inc. helps organizations build and implement strategies to reduce their cyber risks. Scott and his team also provide operational, analytic, and administrative support to information sharing communities.  Scott engages senior level policy makers in industry and government, domestically and internationally, on behalf of their clients.  This includes direct engagement in the development of the nation’s most significant domestic cybersecurity and CIP policies and operational plans

The IT-ISAC is the IT sector’s longest established industry-only information partnership, enabling companies to better manage cyber risks to their corporations and the IT infrastructure.  The IT-ISAC services three critical infrastructure sectors—IT, Food and Agriculture and Elections.  As Executive Director, Scott works with the Board to develop and implement strategies to enhance analytic capabilities, grow membership and expand partnerships.

ICASI enhances the global security landscape by driving excellence and innovation in security response practices; and by enabling its members to proactively collaborate to analyze, mitigate, and resolve multi-stakeholder, global security challenges.  As Executive Director, Scott has led the multi-party coordinated disclosure of several high profile vulnerabilities.

Scott is a member of Executive Committee of the IT Sector Coordinating Council, is Co-Chair of the CIPAC Cyber Threat Information Sharing Working Group and is active in other industry working groups.  Scott also served as Vice Chair of the National Council of ISACs and as industry Chair of the IT Sector Risk Assessment Committee, which developed the first ever public-private risk assessment of critical IT functions.

Previously, Scott was Manager for Homeland Security at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he coordinated the U.S. Chamber’s critical infrastructure protection, cybersecurity, and disaster management public policy initiatives.

Scott earned his Masters’ in International Relations and European Studies from the University of Kent (England) and is an honor’s graduate of Gettysburg College.

Arnie Bellini

Managing Partner, Bellini Capital

Arnie Bellini is the Managing Partner of Bellini Capital.  Prior to Bellini Capital, Arnie was co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of ConnectWise.

In 1982, Arnie astutely recognized the impact that microcomputers would have on business and formed the company with his brother David. Arnie's passion to continually drive operational efficiencies and deliver excellent customer service makes ConnectWise one of the most admired companies in the IT services market. In 1998, Arnie decided to capture his company's best practices in an integrated, workflow-driven business management solution that would benefit all IT services companies. That project resulted in the creation of the ConnectWise business operating system.

Arnie is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Florida and an MBA from the University of South Florida.

Esteban Blanco

Chief Geek Officer, Blanco I.T.

Esteban Blanco is a business owner and I.T. expert with almost two decades of experience in the field of Information Technology. He is a grassroots political activist and a strong advocate for small businesses in Texas. Esteban is also a professional vocalist with a passion for travel. He currently lives in Arlington Texas with his talented and beautiful wife, Heather. The couple shares their home with two beloved dogs, Gracie and Madison.

Global Outreach

Esteban’s love of music led to his immigration to the United States in 1997 when he was invited to join the internationally renowned Celebrant Singers. He had the privilege of touring extensively with the musical group over the next few years, performing in 49 states and 24 countries. Blanco credits this experience with awakening an even greater compassion for those in need and a deep appreciation for the blessings in his life.

Community Commitment

A dedicated conservative, Mr. Blanco promotes the empowerment of people through example and education. “My top priority in the political realm is encouraging everyone to engage with politics in a way that aligns with their deeply held beliefs and principles.” Blanco is well-respected in the local political scene and has met many esteemed officials including Senator Ted Cruz, Congressman Ron Wright and State of Texas Governor Greg Abbott among many others.

Serving Others

Mr. Blanco’s dedication to helping others and effecting positive change has defined his life. Today, he runs an I.T. consulting firm (Blanco I.T.) that serves the technology needs of businesses and individuals. On a personal level, one of Esteban’s greatest ambition is to eliminate domestic violence and creating a world where all families can thrive through hard work and innovation of opportunities.

Vince Crisler

CEO & Founder, Dark Cubed

Vince Crisler has more than 20 years of IT and cyber security leadership within the Department of Defense, federal civilian government, and private sector. He is the CEO and Founder of Dark Cubed, a cyber security product company focused on innovative solutions for small and midsize companies.

Prior to founding Dark Cubed, Crisler supported the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Sandia National Laboratories in the development of cyber security protection programs to defend the networks of Federal Departments and Agencies, as well as those belonging to critical infrastructure and key resources (CI/KR) owners and operators. Crisler was the primary author for the five-year technical vision for the National Cybersecurity Protection System, a $3B cyber security program within DHS.  He was also a co-author of the DHS Enhanced Cyber Services (ECS) Program, establishing a critical cyber security information-sharing program, which was formally announced in Executive Order (EO) 13636, Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.

Crisler also served as the CISO for the White House's Executive Office of the President and was responsible for the creation of the first ever cyber security operations center to protect White House networks.

Prior to the White House, Crisler served in the United States Air Force in organizations to include the White House Communications Agency, the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, and Ramstein Air Base in Germany.  Crisler earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer and Information Science from the Ohio State University and currently lives in the Washington D.C. area.

Tracy Holtz

Director of Security Solutions, Tech Data

Tracy Holtz serves as director, Security Solutions for Tech Data. She is responsible for providing the strategic vendor strategies, direction and accelerating security sales performance across our entire security solutions vendor portfolio. Leveraging vendor sales, training and enablement, Tech Data’s custom solutions and delivery services through the Tech Data partner and sales ecosystem.

Tracy joined Tech Data in 1997 beginning her career in finance prior to joining the vendor management organization in 2000. With 22+ years of experience at Tech Data, she has held multiple roles of progressive responsibility including vendor management, business development, and program management.

Prior to her service at Tech Data, Tracy began her career in the IT industry when she joined Trans World Electronics in 1993 and held positions in finance, sales and purchasing.

Tracy has received numerous awards and recognitions for her business and channel achievements and is passionate about educating children about cybersecurity education and career opportunities. Tracy is based in Clearwater, Florida.

Chris Jones

Director, Cyber Security, Dell Technologies

Chris Jones is the Global Director of Cyber Security for Dell Technologies where he oversees eDiscovery, Digital Forensics, Cyber Investigations, Digital Forensic Incident Response, and Insider Risk Operations. He has been involved in addressing risk and threat problems for over 25 years within the U.S. Intelligence Community, law enforcement, and large corporations. Chris founded the FBI’s Cyber Profiling team and developed groundbreaking behavioral profiling and psychological analysis techniques, driven by technical data analytics, for use in sensitive investigations. He is a multidiscipline security convergence expert having held leadership roles in risk management, complex investigations, cybersecurity, physical security, close protection, emergency management, and emergency medical services.

Paul Kurtz

Co-Founder and Chairman, TruSTAR

Paul Kurtz is an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity and the Co-Founder and Chairman of TruSTAR.

Paul began working on cybersecurity at the White House in the late 1990s. He served in senior positions relating to critical infrastructure and counterterrorism on the White House's National Security and Homeland Security Councils under Presidents Clinton and Bush.

After leaving government, Paul has held numerous private sector cybersecurity positions including founding the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (Acquired by Tech America), Executive Director of SAFECode, Managing Partner of Good Harbor Consulting in Abu Dhabi, and CISO of CyberPoint International.

Paul’s work in intelligence analysis, counterterrorism, and critical infrastructure protection has influenced his approach to cybersecurity.

Paul believes in intelligence-centric security integration and automation. Today he spends his time consulting security leaders about how to manage their intelligence across tools. Paul believes in using machine learning to help detect, triage, investigate, and respond to events with confidence.

Chris Loehr

Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, CFC Security/CFC Response/Solis Security

Chris Loehr has over 25 years of leadership experience in designing and delivering cybersecurity and IT operational strategies for the financial industry. He has proven repeatedly that he has the ability create strategy, lead a company to execute towards that strategy and have measurements in place to prove it. Chris has primarily focused on improving the operational capabilities of IT and cybersecurity organizations in the financial services sector. He has transformed IT organizations at multiple companies from being reactive and disgruntled to being high performing and possessing high energy. In his 19+ years in the banking industry, he has survived and thrived through the times of government regulation onslaught and the tight profit margins that threatened the sustainability of the banking industry.

Chris currently serves as Executive Vice President and CTO of CFC Security/CFC Response/Solis Security, a division of CFC Underwriting, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the firm’s Incident Response and Proactive Cybersecurity teams. Chris has spearheaded numerous improvement and optimization efforts for CFC Response. Chris is passionate about assisting small and medium-sized organizations through difficult cyber-attacks. He takes the approach that the response efforts are more than technical. They require an incident response firm that can understand the business and respond to ensure the business’s needs are met and the business is restored as quickly as possible.

Prior to his position at Solis Security, Chris previously served as an Enterprise Business Architect support the USAA’s efforts to grow and improve the USAA member experience. One of Chris’s major achievements was a solution that drastically reduced the time-to-market for large-scale business initiative through the creation of a common language model that took the business-defined requirements and translated them into IT requirements. This solution was then transformed into innovation effort to automate that translation for even quicker outcomes.

Prior to his position at USAA, Chris was the Senior Vice President of IT Operations for IBC Bank. There he was responsible for developing, implementing and overseeing all IT efforts around IT infrastructure and cybersecurity. Chris acquired much of his knowledge and experience relating to regulations such as FFIEC, Sarbanes-Oxley and FINRA compliance while at IBC Bank. He drastically improved the IT organization’s capabilities to deliver services to the business through implementation of service management capabilities and a focus on end user experience.

Chris has a wonderful wife, Nikki, of 25 years and five beautiful children. Those children completely eliminate the chance for Chris to have any opportunity to have any other outside interests.

Ben Nowacky

SVP of Product, Axcient, Inc

Currently managing Engineering and Security for Axcient, a leading provider of business continuity and cloud enablement services.

Jay Ryerse

Vice President, Cybersecurity Initiatives, ConnectWise

Jay Ryerse is the vice president of cybersecurity initiatives for ConnectWise. He brings more than 30 years of experience to ConnectWise in cybersecurity, information technology and security solutions to businesses of all sizes. Jay is responsible for driving cybersecurity initiatives throughout the organization and the MSP market as well as providing education around managing cyber risk for ConnectWise partners and their clients.

Jay manages the IT Nation Secure team dedicated to creating and writing cybersecurity content and education for our channel community. In 2020, his team created and published the MSP+ Cybersecurity Framework (MSP+ CSF) and supporting playbooks. The MSP+ CSF is an industry specific guideline of best practices and implementation guidance for driving awareness and understanding of good cybersecurity for MSPs.

He began his current role in November 2019 following ConnectWise’s acquisition of Continuum, where he served as chief technology officer of security products. In this role, Jay was responsible for driving education and awareness of cybersecurity issues and products within Continuum’s partner community.

Prior to Continuum, Jay served in a number of leadership positions, including the chief executive officer of CARVIR, a managed cybersecurity firm for MSPs that was acquired by Continuum in June 2018. He also served as vice president and general manager of IT Services at Digitel Corporation after selling his MSP (JTECH Networks) in 2014.

Jay is the author of a self-published book titled “Technology 101 for Business Owners.” He is also the 2014 recipient of MSPmentor.net Industry 250 Executives award and Top 501 MSPs recognition.

He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). 

Sagar Samtani

Assistant Professor and Grant Thornton Scholar, Indiana University Kelley School of Business

Dr. Sagar Samtani is an Assistant Professor and Grant Thornton Scholar in the Department of Operations and Decision Technologies at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University (IU). He is also a Fellow within the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at IU. Samtani graduated with his Ph.D. in May 2018 from the Artificial Intelligence Lab in University of Arizona’s Management Information Systems (MIS) department at the University of Arizona. From 2014 – 2017, Samtani served as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholarship-for-Service (SFS) Fellow. Samtani’s research centers around Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Cybersecurity and cyber threat intelligence. Selected recent topics include deep learning, network science, and text mining approaches for smart vulnerability assessment, scientific cyberinfrastructure security, and Dark Web analytics. Samtani has published over three dozen journal and conference papers on these topics in leading venues such as MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security, IEEE Intelligent Systems, Computers and Security, IEEE S&P, IEEE ICDM, and others. His research has received nearly $1.8M (in PI and Co-PI roles) from the NSF CICI, CRII, and SaTC-EDU programs. He also serves as a Program Committee member or Program Chair of leading AI for cybersecurity and CTI conferences and workshops, including IEEE S&P Deep Learning Workshop, USENIX ScAINet, ACM CCS AISec, IEEE ISI, IEEE ICDM, and others. He has also served as a Guest Editor on topics pertaining to AI for Cybersecurity at IEEE TDSC and other leading journals. Samtani has won several awards for his research and teaching efforts, including the ACM SIGMIS Doctoral Dissertation award in 2019. Samtani has received media attention from outlets such as Miami Herald, Fox, Science Magazine, AAAS, and the Penny Hoarder. He is a member of AIS, ACM, IEEE, INFORMS, and INNS.

Wayne Selk

Director, Professional Services, ConnectWise

Wayne is director of professional services for ConnectWise and leads the IT Nation Secure team.  He is co-author-contributor-facilitator for the MSP+ Framework, Playbooks and Certify Fundamentals and Advanced Courses. Wayne uses his more than 25 years of experience and leadership in planning, managing and delivering information security deployments to help ConnectWise partners secure their and their customers’ sensitive data. He joined ConnectWise in 2018 when the company acquired Sienna Group, a security solutions provider. During his five years at Sienna Group, he served as a principal consultant who focused on data classification, FISMA compliance and managed security services. Prior to that, he was a senior director of federal services for Symantec where he oversaw delivery and project management functions for the Department of Defense and other federal organizations, a network engineer for BAE Systems who identified and documents information security best practices, and a senior network management architect for Belenos Inc. where he developed a network management practice for the company’s southeast region. Wayne is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), as well as a Certified Data Protection Solutions Engineer (CDPSE) and currently lives in the Tampa Bay Area.

Marty Ward

Vice President, Product Marketing, Sophos

Marty Ward serves as vice president of product marketing for Sophos where he is responsible for worldwide go-to-market strategy, planning and marketing efforts for all business units.  He has more than 30 years of software industry experience in product management, marketing, engineering, sales and customer support.  

Prior to joining Sophos, Marty has had executive marketing and product management roles at McAfee, Symantec, Asempra, Veritas Software, and Sun Microsystems.  Marty started his career as an engineer at IBM before moving into engineering management.

Marty holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Pennsylvania State University.

Eric Weast

President, ECW Network & IT Solutions

Eric Weast has been the owner and operator of ECW Network & IT Solutions for the past 16 years. Eric began his career as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer in local government, but quickly saw a growing need in the business sector for robust infrastructure, and started building ECW Network & IT Solutions from the ground up. What started as a personal venture many years ago has turned into a thriving business. Presently, Eric and his team support thousands of employees and hundreds of businesses across the country. We began incorporating cybersecurity solutions as mandatory items in our managed services roughly five years ago, and the journey has not stopped since. We are continually working, researching, and improving the security posture of our firm and our clients and look forward to collaborating on the security solutions of the present and future.