Speaker Name: Deborah Kobza
Speaker Company: IACI
Speaker Title: President/CEO
Speaker Subject: Critical Infrastructure Security Resilience for Smart Cities
Bio: As IACI’s President and Co-Founder, Mrs. Kobza serves as a strategist and ensures IACI’s vision, mission, programs and services are fulfilled by providing leadership and national/international outreach establishing strategic partnerships to enable global cybersecurity information sharing and coordinated response, and to support the formation and sustainability of Information Sharing & Analysis Organizations (ISAOs).
Deborah’s 30+ years of experience and expertise in the areas of strategic alignment of business/technology domains, governance, cybersecurity, IV&V quality assurance, technologies, workforce education and applied research and implementation of proven best practices for public- and private-sector organizations, continue to contribute to critical infrastructure protection.
Supporting implementation of Presidential Executive Order 13691 “Promoting Private Sector Cybersecurity Information Sharing”, and for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Deborah serves on the ISAO Standards Organization (SO) Leadership Committee and as Co-Chair of the ISAO Creation Working Group. She also serves as a member of the National Critical Infrastructure Protection Advisory Council (CIPAC), US DHS and Federal Sector-Specific Agency (SSA) Coordinating Councils, US DHS Threat Information Sharing Working Group, and US DHS National Infrastructure Protection Plan Working Group.
Mrs. Kobza also serves as President/CEO of The Global Institute for Cybersecurity + Research (GICSR) at NASA/Kennedy Space Center leading cyber resilience initiatives (international leading practice collaboration, research, and education), and the GICSR Global Situational Awareness Center (international cyber intelligence and coordinated response, providing management and operations support to several Information Sharing & Analysis Organization, such as the National Credit Union ISAO, Maritime & Port Security ISAO, Global Manufacturing ISAO, Aeronautics ISAO and State of Florida ISAO.
Prior, Mrs. Kobza is the Founder and served as Executive Director of the National Health Information Sharing & Analysis Center (NH-ISAC) for the nation’s healthcare and public health critical infrastructure, working directly with health sector stakeholders, the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, US HHS Office of the National Coordinator, and the FDA (including establishing a Medical Device Cybersecurity MOA between the FDA and NH-ISAC to address reporting and mitigation of medical device vulnerabilities).
Additional experience includes providing services to the private sector (financial, energy, healthcare, information technology) and the private sector (state/local governments) and supporting the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a cybersecurity consultant leading a national IT Security initiative for state governments leveraging the IT Security Essential Body of Knowledge (EBK), supporting NIST in development and adoption of the NIST Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity and the NIST National Cybersecurity Workforce Education Framework.
