IT Connect 2019 “Cybersecurity” (June 7th) has wrapped up for another year and garnered the presence of 260 attendees who enjoyed a wide range of presentations, workshops and panels presented by a stellar roster of 24 special guest speakers.
This included representatives from Gartner Inc’s top four 2018 leaders of the magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls: Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Cisco and Check Point Software Technologies. Our keynote speaker was Oliver Wloch, Global Chief Information Security Officer, IT Synapse – who flew in from Bonn Germany to lead off the days events. Oliver, a former German military officer who worked in the elite Cyber Attack Unit, and now has his own consultancy firm – also moderated a well-attended, lunch-time panel on the future of Blockchain.
Our generous partners included our title sponsor Cisco, as well as, CBCI Telecom, BDH Collective, Devolutions and Checkpoint Software Technologies. We also received great support from the local media including: the Suburban Newspaper, Le Courrier du Sud, CJAD 800 AM, the Montreal Times Newspaper, and Mike FM.
Our attendees came from a broad range of industry and academia, with visitors from IT companies, law firms, transportation businesses, mining corporations, a plethora of high school, college and university students and teachers, Canadian government representatives and instructors from 19 Cisco networking academies from across the province of Quebec. IT Connect partnered with two other conferences this year: Hackfest and IoT613.
Since its inception in 2017, Tetyana Tsomko, pedagogical advisor for Champlain’s Continuing Education Department and conference organizer, wanted to create an exciting, ongoing, educational and information-sharing event that would not only bring academia and industry together but also be inclusive to the general public and serve the community.
This annual conference is an opportunity to hear from and connect with tech experts to learn more about new industry developments, evolving cyber-threats, and trending IT solutions. As well, the conference allows industry pacesetters and other important businesses to meet and connect with our young and mature CEGEP students, who in their own right, are future industry builders, innovators and leaders.
The day’s events were capped off with a unique networking cocktail sponsored by Quebec’s very own Ungava Spirits Co. featuring talented mixologist and Ungava Ambassador – Gizmo Sirois. The door-prizes were donated from the Montreal Alouettes, the borough of Park Extension, Cisco, Genetec and Nauth Industries.
