In-Person

Atlanta CISO Community

Executive Summit

November 19, 2026 | Atlanta Marriott Northwest at Galleria

November 19, 2026
Atlanta Marriott Northwest at Galleria

Collaborate with your peers

Get together with Atlanta's top CISOs to tackle shared business challenges and critical priorities facing your role today. Participate in this one-day, local program with peer-driven topics and interactive discussions with your true C-level peers.

Join your peers to discuss the most critical issues impacting CISOs today:

Operationalizing trusted AI at scale through governance, accountability, and adaptive security

Elevating security leadership from risk management to enterprise strategy

Harnessing cyber resilience to sustain growth amid uncertainty

Atlanta CISO Governing Body

The Governing Body Co-Chairs shape the summit agenda, ensuring that all content is driven By CISOs, For CISOs®.

Governing Body Co-Chairs

Derek Benz

The Coca-Cola Company
SVP & CISO

John Dickson

Insight Global
CISO

John Gift

PepsiCo
SVP & Global CISO

Stacy Hughes

ABM
SVP & CISO

Kemper Seay

Carter's
VP Infrastructure & Chief Information Security Officer

What to Expect

Interactive Sessions

Hear from CISO practitioners and thought leaders on how they're solving critical challenges impacting your role today in Keynote sessions, and join smaller, interactive discussions with your peers in Breakout and Boardroom sessions.

Community Networking

Make new connections and catch up with old friends in casual conversations during dedicated time for networking designed to better acquaint you with your Atlanta CISO community.

Peer-to-Peer Meetings

Connect with like-minded peers in a private, one-on-one setting through Peer-to-Peer Meetings. You will be matched with peers in your community based on your shared interests and priorities.

Agenda

Breakout Session

AI Value in Practice — CISO Learnings from Generative and Agentic AI

The AI opportunity is real, but so are the challenges. In this candid, peer-driven discussion, share and learn how CISOs are putting generative and agentic AI to work while balancing governance, risk, adoption, and measurable business value.Join this session to:

  • Exchange practical AI use cases that are improving efficiency, strengthening security outcomes, and enabling the business
  • Discuss what is working, what is creating risk, and what organizations wish they had addressed earlier
  • Prepare your organization for the next wave of intelligent automation through stronger governance, visibility, and accountability


Gartner Keynote Session

Leveraging Outcome-Driven Metrics for Strategic Impact

Security leaders are under increasing pressure to demonstrate the business value of investments and align security priorities with organizational outcomes. Traditional security metrics—focused on uptime, budget, and project delivery—often fail to resonate with business leaders or drive informed investment decisions. Outcome-Driven Metrics (ODMs) offer a transformative approach, directly linking performance to business value.

Join this session to hear about:

  • Moving beyond operational reporting by identifying and building metrics hierarchies that connect security to business outcomes
  • Utilizing ODMs to guide executive conversations and clarify risk, value, and cost trade-off
  • Informing executive conversations about risk with an outcome-driven approach to cybersecurity investment called protection level agreements


Keynote Session

Modernizing the SOC for Machine-Speed Defense

Security operations centers (SOCs) are facing a new reality - attackers are leveraging AI to automate multi-step attacks, outpacing human-driven response and overwhelming traditional workflows. CISOs must reimagine their SOCs to operate at machine speed, integrating AI-driven detection, orchestration, and remediation. How should CISOs transform their SOCs with agentic workflows, closed-loop automation, and continuous red teaming that empowers security teams to contain threats faster and reduce business risk?

Join this session to learn:

  • Integrating AI-driven detection and automated response workflows
  • Operationalizing continuous red teaming for proactive threat hunting
  • Accelerating containment and remediation to reduce business risk


Executive Boardroom Session

Protecting Customer Trust — The CISO's Role in Fraud Risk

As fraud and cyber threats become increasingly interconnected, CISOs are partnering more closely with business leaders to protect revenue, customer trust and digital experiences. As responsibilities converge, key questions remain: who owns fraud prevention, what intelligence should be shared across teams and how can organizations strengthen protection without adding customer friction?

  • Operating models for aligning security, fraud and risk teams
  • Balancing security, fraud prevention and customer experience
  • Improving visibility and intelligence sharing across teams


We look forward to seeing you at an upcoming in-person gathering

Gartner cares about the health and safety of our community. If you are feeling unwell, please refrain from attending the conference. At this time, Gartner does not have any health-related requirements in place for attendance. Should this change, we will follow up with updated guidance.

Location

Your Community Sponsors

Global Thought Leaders

CISO Thought Leaders

Key Sponsors

Program Sponsors

Community Program Manager

For inquiries related to this community, please reach out to your dedicated contact.

Kimberly Lewis

Sr. Community Program Manager

9723450198

kimberly.lewis@gartner.com