Panel discussion: Achieving data integrity and security
Moderator Dr Homaira Akbari, Board member, Gemalto and President of AKnowledge Partners is joined by John Allen, Sr. Solution Architect – Service Provider Business Development, F5 Networks; Brent Messer, CIO, Chattanooga.Gov, Jim Allison, Manager of Planning, Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority and Robert Martin, Mitre, Sr. Principal Eng. at The Mitre Corp., Industrial Internet Consortium, to kick off a panel discussion on data integrity and security at the Enterprise IoT Summit in Austin, Texas.
Dr. Homaira Akbari is currently President and CEO of AKnowledge Partners, LLC, a global strategy advisory firm providing services to leading private equity funds and large corporations in the sectors of Internet of Things, Cyber Security, Big Data and Analytics, and Supply Chain Visibility. A thought leader in the mobile, software and security sectors, she brings extensive operating experience and deep domain knowledge to a broad range of high-tech industries. She draws on her international track-record including nine years of professional experience in Paris, London, Beijing and Cape-Town. Dr. Akbari serves on the Board of Directors of several Fortune 500 companies including Banco Santander S.A. (NYSE: SAN), Landstar System, Inc. (NASDAQ: LSTR), Gemalto N.V. (Euronext: GTO), and Veolia (Euronext: VIE). Dr. Akbari has held senior management roles in Fortune 1000 companies including: Microsoft, Thales, SA, and Liberty Media subsidiary, Trueposition. Dr. Akbari has served as the President and CEO of SkyBitz, Inc., a leading provider of remote asset tracking and security solutions. Under her leadership, the company had record performance. She successfully sold SkyBitz to Telular Corporation (NASDAQ: WRLS). Dr. Akbari holds a Ph.D. with honors in particle physics from Tufts University and an MBA with distinction from Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business. She is the author of numerous scientific and industry articles, two patent-pending inventions, and a frequent speaker at industry conferences. She is fluent in several languages including English, French, Farsi, and Spanish (conversational). Dr. Akbari’s many accolades include being named by Washington Business Journal as among its list of “Women Who Mean Business.” Additionally, she was the recipient of several awards including: “SmartCEO Brava! Award”, the “Business Leader of the Year Award”, and the “NOVAEXEC Top 10 Business Women”. In 2012, she was awarded the Women in Technology “Global Impact Award.” Throughout her life, Dr. Akbari has been active in and a contributor to many non-profit organizations. She currently serves as the Chair of Johns Hopkins University Physics and Astronomy Advisory Council. Together with her husband, they have established Akbari-Mack Postdoctoral Fellow Endowment in Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University.
John D. Allen has been working in the Service Provider industry for the last 18 years; both on the vendor side as well as the operator side of the table. John is a Senior Solution Architect at F5 Networks, where he helps to design Service Provider solutions in conjunction with F5’s partners, like Ericsson, Nokia, Intel, RedHat and others, that involve technologies like Cloud and IoT. When he worked at AT&T Mobility, he was a lead implementation engineer for messaging, bringing the first Picture Messaging solution for iPhones and the first Over-The-Air activation systems online. John has worked in systems engineering roles for companies like Nokia and Openwave Systems in the past.
Since October 2000, Jim Allison has been with the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority (CCJPA) management entity for the Intercity Passenger Rail service operating in Northern California.
In that capacity, Mr. Allison is the Manager of Planning for new capital/service projects and planning studies along the route. In addition to traditional railway project planning, Mr. Allison leads CCJPA’s technology projects including the wireless/wired network. He has been on the forefront of evaluating technologies and business models for wireless networks for passenger train service since 2004 and works in partnership with Amtrak to take advantage of these and other communication, network, and application improvements. He has spoken at several international conferences about these topics and maintains close contact with rail operators worldwide who are implementing wireless networks.
Prior to joining the CCJPA, for ten years Mr. Allison worked for the Bi-State Tahoe Regional Planning Agency in current planning, and later
in transportation and air quality. Mr. Allison graduated from the University of California Davis with B.S. Degree in Environmental Planning and Management.
Bob Martin is a Senior Principal Engineer in Cyber Security Partnerships at MITRE. He has dedicated his career to solving some of the world’s most difficult problems in systems and software engineering-including cybersecurity, application security and assurance, and establishing appropriate standards in these areas. He is actively contributing to or authoring 30 different standards within the ITU-T, ETSI, OMG, Open Group, and ISO on various aspects of cybersecurity and assurance. Bob’s sponsor work spans across the seven Federal Funded Research and Development Centers that MITRE operates. Over the past 25 years Bob has utilized his expertise and experience in software quality and cybersecurity to help sponsors as well as to create and promote public international community initiatives such asSACM, SQAE, CVE, CAPEC, and CWE, which include large active vendor and research communities. Bob is a frequently requested speaker on security and quality issues pertaining to software-based technology systems and has published numerous articles and presentations in this area. Prior to joining MITRE, Bob started his career designing and installing manufacturing control systems in Area 2 of Kodak Park and performing software integration and porting projects for both RPI and General Electric. Bob holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in electrical engineering from RPI and an MBA from Babson College.
