Brian Isle named Private Sector Visionary Leader of the Year by Cyber Security Summit 2016
Minneapolis (PRWEB) October 03, 2016 -- Brian Isle, senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Technological Leadership Institute and co-founder and former CEO of Adventium Labs, has been named this year’s Private Sector Visionary Leader of the Year by Cyber Security Summit 2016.
Mr. Isle was selected for mentoring numerous technology leaders, contributing to the development of safety and security technologies, and advancing regional and national security strategies. He will be presented with his award at 8:30 a.m. on Day 2 of the Summit, Oct. 12, at the JW Marriott Mall of America. To learn more about the Summit and to register to attend, go to cybersecuritysummit.org.
After earning an electrical engineering degree at the University of Minnesota, Mr. Isle began his career in the world-renowned research lab at Honeywell, where he worked on projects in diverse fields including space, industrial controls and voice recognition. After a short time, he was moved into management because, as Mr. Isle notes, “I was good at technical, but I was really good at people.”
Mr. Isle spent two decades at Honeywell working on advanced technologies including optical communications and high-speed networks for both federal and commercial clients. During that time, he worked on safety-critical systems, which led to his interest in developing methodologies to reduce the complexity of very complex systems to decrease fatalities and other accidents.
During the 1990s, his focus on safety led naturally to an interest in security with the awareness that critical systems are vulnerable not only to accidental misuse but to intentional attacks as well. He and his team began working on safety and security strategies before many customers even understood the importance of having a security plan.
“Engineers were focused on accidents at the oil refineries,” Mr. Isle said, “but it didn’t occur to them that anyone would ever try to purposely blow up a refinery.”
In 2002, Mr. Isle continued that work when he co-founded Adventium Labs, which went on to develop next generation distributed firewall technology and push technology forward in cyber security, system engineering and automated reasoning.
In addition to his business career, Mr. Isle has volunteered a huge amount of his time leading vulnerability assessments and other projects that have improved security at both the state and local levels. He has been involved at the board level in numerous security organizations, including many years supporting the InfraGard organization dedicated to improving critical infrastructure security. He has also taught at the University of Minnesota since 2010, where he has helped develop the Technological Leadership Institute’s security technologies curriculum.
“Brian Isle is universally respected in the security community both in Minnesota and nationally,” said Eileen Manning, Executive Producer of the Cyber Security Summit. “He’s a tireless advocate for improving cyber security, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to present him with this award to acknowledge what he’s done.”
In his “retirement” Mr. Isle continues to coach several security companies, consult with Adventium, hold roles on numerous boards, and maintain a busy teaching schedule.
The other award given by the Summit, the 2016 Public Sector Visionary Leader of the Year, went to Chris Buse, Chief Information Security Officer for the State of Minnesota.
Mike Davin, The Event Group Incorporated, +1 (763) 548-1305, [email protected]
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