The impact of global challenges on the way defence organizations approach innovation and the implications for NATO of new trends in the defence innovation landscape will be key themes of discussion on the opening day of NITEC17.
"Day One of NITEC17 will bring together distinguished government, military, and industry speakers to advance our understanding of the combined impact of emerging threats and rapid commercial technology design, and how we can continue to modernize our approach in response," said NCI Agency General Manager Koen Gijsbers.
The first keynote session on "Innovation as a Security Imperative" will be moderated by Dr Seth Jones, Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation.
"Our panel, which includes some of the world's top experts on technology and innovation, focuses on how global challenges are driving the need for better NATO-industry cooperation," Dr Jones said. "Our goal is to better understand global threats of significance to NATO members, examine why they require innovative responses, and discuss how industry and NATO can more closely cooperate on innovation efforts."
The panel will feature insights from Mr John N. Stewart, Senior Vice President and Chief Security and Trust Officer at Cisco; Mr. Dmitri Alperovitch, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Crowdstrike; Major General Greg Loos, CF J6 and Chief of Staff, Information Management Group, (COS(IM)), Canada; and Dr Hugh Thompson, Chief Technology Officer at Symantec.
The second panel on "Trends in the Defence Innovation Landscape" will consider how these trends are giving rise to new models of collaboration between defence organizations and Industry and explore the implications for NATO. Mr George Little, a Partner of the Brunswick Group, will moderate the discussion.
"Rapid technological change and the increasingly diffuse nature of the sources of innovation and technology are creating new challenges for defence organizations," Mr Little said. "The experts on our panel have addressed these trends from both the public and private sector perspective, and they will draw on this experience to explore how industry can support NATO's effort to adapt to them."
Panellists include Mr Michael Brown (U.S. Navy, Ret.), Vice President and General Manager of RSA; Captain Ed Devinney, U.S. Navy, Director, Technology Outreach and Corporate Point of Partnership for United States Cyber Command; and Dr Christoph Erdmannn, Managing Director and Founder of Secusmart.
Preview of Day 2
Preview of Day 3
The NCI Agency Annual Conference and AFCEA TechNet International (NITEC17) will take place from 24-26 April in Ottawa, Canada, with the theme of "Sharpening NATO's Technological Edge: Adaptive Partnerships and the Innovative Power of Alliance Industry."
To register and view the full agenda, please visit www.nitec.nato.int.