About this Event
Breakfast, lunch and beverages will be served.
Twenty years in. You built the security program, wrote the policies, sat in the audit meetings, took the 2 a.m. calls. Then one Tuesday morning there was a calendar invite with HR on it, and by lunch your laptop was in a box.
Now you're staring at the same thought a lot of senior IT and security people are staring at this year: I know how to do this. Why would I go do it for someone else again?
You're right. You do know how to do this.
Every small and mid-sized company in the Hudson Valley and beyond needs a CISO and can't afford one full-time. That gap is your business. But knowing security and running a security practice are two different jobs, and nobody hands you the second one on your way out the door.
That's what this day is for.
Who this is for
Senior IT and security professionals who were recently let go, or can see it coming, and are seriously considering going out on their own. Existing vCISOs who are stuck at three clients and can't figure out how to get to thirty. Anyone who's done the corporate version of this job and wants to find out what the independent version looks like.
Come with questions. Leave with a plan.
Speakers
Melissa Thornton is a seasoned executive and the Founder and Fractional CISO of Cybersecurity Advisory Group, a firm built to bring enterprise-level security leadership to the underserved small and mid-size market, particularly in healthcare.
Before her career as a CISO, Melissa spent a decade as CEO of LSW Chauffeured Transportation, successfully growing the company to the Inc. 500 list by treating technology and security as critical business differentiators. Since selling the business in 2019, she has leveraged her unique "CEO turned CISO" perspective to bridge the gap between technical security controls and executive business strategy. Melissa’s approach is rooted in risk, revenue, and reality, ensuring that security scales with an organization's mission rather than impeding it.
Melissa holds rigorous CISSP and C|CISO credentials and is an active leader in the broader cybersecurity community. She serves on the Health Sector Coordinating Council's Cybersecurity Working Group—focusing on Public Policy and Post-Quantum Computing—as well as the AI Security Council and the CISO Society. She is an alumnus of Pace University and Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business Executive Program, and was previously recognized as a 40 Under 40 honoree by the Business Council of Westchester.
Alexander West runs Information Security Consulting (ITSC), an MSP and recently became a licensed insurance agent in New York State. He'll explain the exposure you take on the moment you sign your first client, what a policy covers and what it doesn't, and why "I'll get insurance once I'm bigger" is the mistake that ends practices. He'll be on site all day for questions.
Adrian Libert, CISSP is the Founder of Hudson Infosec and a cybersecurity expert focused on transforming how organizations approach cybersecurity compliance, vulnerability management, and preparedness.
Through the development of Ayewo, Hudson Infosec’s automated cybersecurity platform, Adrian has focused on making sophisticated security capabilities more accessible and cost-effective. His work applies automation to vulnerability scanning, reporting, compliance workflows, and elements of penetration testing—reducing the time, complexity, and resources traditionally required to assess and strengthen an organization’s security posture.
Adrian’s approach centers on a simple principle: effective cybersecurity should not require unnecessary complexity. By combining advanced automation with streamlined deployment and ease of use, he is working to make enterprise-level cybersecurity capabilities accessible to organizations of all sizes.
What you'll walk away with
We'll show you the thing that changes the math for a one-person practice: automation. The reason a solo vCISO used to be capped at a handful of local clients is that monitoring, testing, and reporting all took hands. They don't anymore. With platforms like Ayewo and Sentinel, you deploy a node, virtually or by dropping one in the mail, and you're serving a client in Denver as easily as one in Albany. Your catchment area stops being a drive radius and starts being the country.
Event venue & nearby stays
Creative Legion, 7 Fairview Avenue, Hudson, United States
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