Overview

March 4

State and local governments face a growing onslaught of cyber threats targeting critical infrastructure, sensitive citizen data, and essential public services. From ransomware attacks to sophisticated espionage campaigns, the stakes have never been higher.

Join Government Technology and Google Cloud Security and Mandiant for an on-demand webinar where technology experts will introduce the "Defender's Advantage" framework – the concept that governments are defending against attacks in their own environment. This provides a fundamental advantage arising from the fact that they have control over the landscape where they will meet their adversaries.

We'll discuss the 6 critical functions of cyber defense – intelligence, detection, response, validation, hunting, and mission control – and explore how they can be applied to real-world scenarios.

In this webinar, you'll learn how to:

Implement a proactive and intelligence-led approach to cyber defense
Leverage the six key functions of cyber defense
Apply these principles to real-world scenarios faced by state and local governments
Harness the power of AI for automation

Don't miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights and practical strategies for fortifying your state and local government's cyber defense.

Speakers

Soledad Antelada Toledano

Security Advisor, Office of the CISO, Google Cloud

Soledad Antelada Toledano is a Security Advisor within the Google Cloud Office of the CISO, Public Sector, where she provides expert advisory and advocacy to public sector customers on critical security matters through leadership engagement, executive sponsorship, thought leadership, and customer advocacy. Her extensive cybersecurity background includes serving as Deputy CISO for the Harris for President campaign, where she provided national-level security leadership. Prior to joining Google, Soledad spent several years at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, a prestigious scientific institution, where she made history as the first woman in the Cybersecurity department in a Security Engineering role. Notably, she served as Head of Security for the ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference, overseeing the security and network architecture (SCinet) of the world's fastest network for research purposes. Soledad is the founder of GirlsCanHack, an organization dedicated to empowering women in cybersecurity, and was recognized as one of the 20 Most Influential Latinos in Technology in America in 2016. She enjoys discussing the evolution of cybersecurity and the future of AI within security, and brings unique experience from working with the world's fastest networks and large-scale event security, as well as a deep understanding of research and SecOps needs from her time at Berkeley Lab. Soledad is also a published author, with her book, Critical Infrastructure Security: Cybersecurity lessons learned from real-world breaches, released in 2024.

Daniel Nutting

Manager, Mandiant, a Google Cloud Company

Dan Nutting is a Cyber Defense Consulting Manager with 15+ years of experience assisting public and private sector organizations build cyber resiliency and optimize their cyber defenses. At Mandiant, he specializes in building and maturing cybersecurity programs for clients, with a particular focus on detection engineering. Prior to Mandiant he honed his expertise from a diverse career including roles as a military officer in the US Coast Guard, a principal security analyst, and a SOC manager at Publix Super Markets. While at Mandiant, he has developed security operations models for multiple multi-national conglomerates, led SOC Operations for the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremonies, and supported the Defenders Advantage as a contributing author.

Deborah A. Snyder — Moderator

Senior Fellow, Center for Digital Government

Deborah is an accomplished C-level influencer, with a broad range of experience in government, policy, cybersecurity, privacy and information technology. An experienced and highly respected thought leader who has held executive roles for over two decades. She recently retired from her position as New York state’s chief information security officer (CISO) after over 35 years of public service. In that role, as part of New York state’s information technology transformation and consolidation initiative, she helped redesign how the state protects its data. As state CISO, she directed the state’s comprehensive cybersecurity governance, risk management and compliance program, providing strategic leadership and vision, and assuring business-aligned, risk-based investments that maximized business opportunity and minimized cybersecurity risk. She also directed the NYS Cyber Command Center, hotline, procedures for reporting and response to cyberthreats, and digital forensics. She holds multiple industry certifications including Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP); Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC); SANS Strategic Planning, Policy, and Leadership (GSTRT) Global Information Assurance Certification; and Project Management Institute certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

Webinar

The Defender's Advantage: Empowering State and Local Governments to Take Control of Their Cyber Defense