Data & Cyber Security: Threats and Opportunities in Careers & Business

Date: Tuesday June 27
Wine Reception: 6:30PM
Panel: 7:00PM
Cost: Free for members; $15 for guests

Data and online security breaches affect millions of consumers as well as small and big business, and government agencies, including sensitive areas of national defense. What can consumers, businesses and governments do to protect themselves? In addition to providing protection, what are the new opportunities for careers and businesses across all industries? Moderator Daniel Goroff of the Sloan Foundation, Colonel Pat Mahaney of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group, and Aleksandr Yampolskiy, CEO of SecurityScorecard will discuss these issues.

Colonel Patrick J. Mahaney, Jr. is Director of the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group. Previously, he served as a Military Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He commanded the Asymmetric Warfare Group, a Special Forces battalion and a Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan. Mahaney served in the 7th Special Forces Group, Joint Special Operations Command, the Special Warfare Center and School, the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan, and in a range of combat and operational assignments. He got a BA from New York University, and Master’s degrees from Columbia University and the University of Perugia (Italy). He is a graduate of the Army War College’s Fellowship program and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Aleksandr Yampolskiy is the co-founder and CEO of SecurityScorecard. The company, with venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital and others, provides a security rating and monitors the cyber-security of companies and organizations. Clients include Netflix, Etsy, McDonald’s, Hilton, Stony Brook University, Harrys and Symantec. Yampolskiy had previously served as the chief technology officer of BlogTalkRadio, the largest online radio network averaging over 40 million listeners a month. He also worked at Gilt, Goldman Sachs, Oracle and Microsoft. He has a BA in Mathematics/Computer Science from New York University and a Ph.D. in Cryptography from Yale University.

Daniel Goroff is the program director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The foundation makes millions of dollars in annual grants for original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics. Goroff earned his BA and MA degrees in mathematics from Harvard, an M.Phil. in economics from Cambridge, a MS from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton. He taught at Harvard and is a Visiting Professor of Mathematics at Columbia University’s Teachers College.