Understanding Corporate Risk and the Value of Cyber Security
Roundtable Luncheon with Ahmed Etman, Vivek Khindria and Kirsten Thompson
Sponsored by:
We are living in an era when data breaches and ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly common and can lead to significant financial and reputational damage. Join us on September 19 to hear a panel of experts discuss the state of cybersecurity preparedness, including governance best practices and response planning to crisis situations.
Ahmed Etman, Managing Director, Cybersecurity, Accenture Canada
Vivek Khindria, Vice President of Cyber Security and Technology Risk, Loblaw Company Limited
Kirsten Thompson, Partner & National Lead of the Transformative Technologies & Data Strategy Group, Dentons
Panelist Biographies
Ahmed Etman, Managing Director, Cybersecurity, Accenture Canada
Ahmed Etman is a Senior Security Executive at Accenture and the Managing Director of Accenture Security in Canada. He leads a multi-disciplinary team of Security professionals spanning from Strategy, Risk Management, and Cyber Defense to Digital Identity, Application Security and Managed Security Services.
For over 18 years, Ahmed worked with key clients globally to build strong security capabilities and address the most complex security challenges. He joined Accenture from Cisco where he held various leadership roles in the Security Group and the Technology Architecture Group. Ahmed comes with extensive international experience, having built and run businesses in various geographies, in North America as well as Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
Prior to Cisco, Ahmed led the Internet Security Systems business (now part of IBM Security) in the Middle East where he started his career as a Security Engineer with the ISS X-Force Consulting Services Group.
Vivek Khindria, Vice President, Cyber Security and Technology Risk, Loblaw Company Limited
Vivek Khindria, Vice President Cyber Security & Technology Risk, Loblaw Company Limited, CISSP, CISM, BSc. At LCL Vivek leads the cyber security and technology risk program for one of the largest businesses ($50B) in Canada, largest loyalty program, and business services that span across retail, pharmacy, beauty, healthcare, banking, telecom, travel, and insurance.
Vivek experience across a number of sectors, 9 years University/Research environment, 15 years in Financial Services, 6 years in Telecommunications, and currently leading Security and Risk in one of the largest businesses in Canada LCL, which includes over 22 brands, 200K employees across retail, financial services, health and pharmacy, beauty and ecommerce.
Vivek’s experience includes development and implementation of trading floor systems, SOX and PCI-DSS compliance programs, information security benchmarking, Cyber strategies, securing software development, big data analytics for security, project and supplier assurance, web assurance and control frameworks, security standards, security testing, and securing mobile networks, infrastructure and devices.
Vivek was a significant contributor to the creation of the not-for-profit Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange (CCTX.ca) to help business in Canada more easily share information security relate threat information and best practices. Vivek is the elected representative for Canada on the Information Security Forum executive council, which is a member driven global organization comprised of Fortune 500 companies.
Kirsten Thompson, Partner and National Lead of the Transformative Technologies and Data Strategy Group, Dentons
Kirsten Thompson is a partner in our Corporate group in Toronto and is the national lead of the Transformative Technologies and Data Strategy group. She is also a key member of the Privacy and Cybersecurity group. She has
both an advisory and advocacy practice, and provides privacy, data security and data management advice to clients in a wide variety of industries.
Kirsten’s practice has a particular concentration in data-driven industries and disruptive technologies, and she is a leading practitioner in areas such as Fintech (including blockchain and "smart contracts"), digital identity, Open Data/Open Banking and PSD2 implementation, vehicle telematics and connected infrastructure, Big Data/data analytics applications and enterprise data strategy. She also helps clients prepare for and manage information crises, such as data breaches, investigations and class actions, and has advised financial institutions, insurers, health care providers and providers of critical infrastructure on cybersecurity preparedness and response planning. She has been lead Canadian counsel on some of the largest North American data breaches and has been selected as preferred cybersecurity counsel by a number of Canada’s leading financial institutions and insurance providers.
In her advisory role, Kirsten assists clients in navigating the legal and privacy requirements of new products and technologies, and provides compliance advice both within and across jurisdiction. She counsels clients on issues raised by social media, surveillance, identification and authentication (including biometrics and electronic signatures), vehicle and device telematics (including unmanned vehicles, both aerial and land-based), online behavioural advertising, big data and data analytics, data monetization, and FinTech and open banking. She advises clients on the increasingly significant informational elements of business transactions.
She has extensive knowledge in “Open Banking” and the implications of PSD2 and related regulatory initiatives (e.g. competition, privacy, etc.) affecting the aggregation and use of customer information in the context of financial
services. Kirsten has also advised on enterprise-wide “Big Data” projects, from the initial collection, use, defensible destruction, digitization and data cleaning through to the development of legal and ethical frameworks to guide the use of data analytics (including predictive analytics). She is working with her colleagues on developing a similar framework for the uses of data in artificial intelligence applications.
Kirsten was an early supporter of blockchain, and has been engaged in a number of consultations and pilot projects involving the application of blockchain to identity and authentication issues (including sovereign identity), business licencing processes, and tracking goods/food/drugs through global distribution chains. She has worked with several organizations on “smart contract” projects, and is interested in the possibilities of blockchain for payment security and commercial data security.
She has worked extensively in the “Internet of Things” area and has advised two leading automakers on the consumer-facing agreements with respect to their connected and semi-autonomous vehicles, and several companies in respect of their autonomous aerial vehicles (aka drones) and wearable devices.
to