In-Person

Chicago CISO Community

Executive Summit

December 10, 2025 | Convene at 233 South Wacker

December 10, 2025
Convene at 233 South Wacker

Collaborate with your peers

Get together with Chicago'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:

Identifying and measuring the potential risks associated with AI normalization

Demonstrating the linkage between risk reduction and business advancement

Using education to establish a security-minded culture across the organization

Chicago CISO Governing Body

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

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 Chicago 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 Sessions

The Business Has Complex Questions – Do Your Data and AI Have Trusted Answers?

AI-powered data and analytics are transforming how CISOs answer complex, business-critical questions with precision and speed. What are some of the best practices of security leaders who effectively leverage AI for continuous learning, deeper insights, and actionable decision-making?

Join this session to examine:

  • Unlocking comprehensive answers to evolving business questions
  • Enabling continuous learning for impactful AI usage
  • Harnessing new opportunities with agentic AI and preparing for the next AI leap

Over the Horizon — CISOs to Chief Cyber Resilience Officers

The CISO remit increasingly includes GenAI governance, securing cyber-physical systems, and a range of value-driving services — yet its core charge remains safeguarding operations. As breaches become inevitable and board risk appetites shift, cyber resilience will demand even greater focus. CISOs must define recovery goals, guarantee reliable backups, and restore critical services with speed — focusing on measurable resilience to earn their future role as Chief Cyber Resilience Officers.

Join this session to learn about:

  • Defining and measuring resilience for real business outcomes
  • Orchestrating reliable backup and rapid recovery strategies
  • Embedding resilience across teams as a cultural and leadership priority

Enhancing Cybersecurity Awareness at the Board Level

As cyber threats continue to grow in scale and complexity, it’s essential for boards to cultivate a unified understanding of risk and integrate cybersecurity into core governance practices. Central to this effort is your ability to clearly communicate risk and empower board members to make informed decisions that protect the organization.

Join Rizwan Mir, VP, Global CISO & IT Risk at Perrigo, for a dynamic session covering:

  • Actionable strategies for educating your board on cybersecurity
  • Aligning board-level priorities with operational resilience
  • Encouraging insightful cybersecurity dialogue—and delivering confident, informed responses

Prioritize, Analyze and Minimize - The Path to Simplified Resilience

While it's rarely easy, reaching a certain level of legitimate organizational resilience doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, the entire resilience journey could be summarized in just a few steps. Those steps might be difficult to take, but at least they're straightforward.

Join Chris Lugo, VP, CISO at Blue Cross Blue Shield Association for:

  • A guided walk through the stages of cyber resilience development
  • Practical advice for overcoming the common obstacles of each step
  • A look at process-altering industry demands and organizational needs


Executive Boardroom Session

Generative to Agentic — Is The Risk Worth The Evolution?

GenAI is changing rapidly, and the next major step is agentic AI — systems that are capable of taking actions without human oversight. This brings a new level of complexity, but there are benefits for security teams as well. Security leaders are now exploring the value and risk of agentic AI to determine how to advance safely.

Join Elastic’s security leadership to explore:

  • The use of GenAI in security and how it's advanced to meet different team needs
  • How AI adoption changes your attack surface
  • The different ways AI augments security teams and workflows


Keynote Session

It IS Possible - How We Bolstered Our Security Program with Automation & AI

When Celedonio Albarrán, VP Infrastructure & Security, Equity Residential, first considered the undertaking of full-on Automation & AI adoption, he anticipated moderate improvements to his security program. Affirming his implementation plan, his fellow business leaders also saw value in the predicted enhancements. The actualized results, however, FAR exceeded expectations.
Join Albarrán as he explains how:

  • Response times were flattened by triage-focused Automation & AI tools
  • Newly-introduced agents & automation led to a significant increase in overall quality
  • These adoptions resulted in proven ROI & efficiency gains


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

Venue & Accommodation

Convene at 233 South Wacker
More Information

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CISO Thought Leaders

Key Sponsors

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Community Program Manager

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

Nick Hall

Senior Community Program Manager

4253180488

nick.hall@gartner.com