Speakers

Katie Arrington is a nationally recognized leader in cybersecurity, supply chain risk management, and national security technology, with experience spanning senior roles in government, industry, and public service. She currently serves as Chief Information Officer at IonQ, where she oversees the protection and modernization of global enterprise systems, safeguards digital assets and supply chains, and strengthens operational and cyber resilience across the company’s expanding international footprint. Her work continues a long-standing mission to ensure U.S. warfighters, government agencies, and industry have access to the world’s most advanced and secure technologies.

Prior to joining IonQ, Arrington served in senior federal leadership roles including Chief Information Officer within the United States Department of Defense, where she helped drive enterprise cyber modernization and technology security initiatives supporting national defense priorities.

Arrington previously served as Senior Vice President of External Affairs at Exiger, leading strategic engagement around supply chain visibility, artificial intelligence, and national security collaboration across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Earlier in her federal service, she was the first Chief Information Security Officer for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, where she led the team that developed the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program and supported White House efforts on COVID-19 supply chain acceleration.

Her private-sector career includes senior leadership roles at Booz Allen Hamilton, Centuria Corporation, and Dispersive Networks, focused on cyber strategy, secure infrastructure, and mission-critical technology solutions.

Arrington also served two terms as a South Carolina State Representative, where she built a reputation for bipartisan coalition-building and technology-focused policy leadership.

She is widely regarded as a leading voice at the intersection of cybersecurity, defense acquisition, supply chain security, and emerging technologies.

Mike Snyder leads strategic initiatives to strengthen relationships between ecosystem stakeholders. He is responsible for the education, marketing, and
communications for the Practitioner Program, ensuring DIB companies have the proper resources for implementing and maintaining cybersecurity program
requirements.

Mike is a dedicated information security professional with over 25 years of experience in implementations, assessments, and training within both the
government and private sectors. Mike has been a Lead Assessor and Instructor for multiple government information security programs and frameworks. Mike has
developed, implemented, and managed information security strategies and programs within both the private and government sectors, ranging in size from
small to corporate organizations. Mike is known for his work and commitment to the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program, as well as his vast experience assessing Defense Industrial Base (DIB) contractors to ensure compliance with DFARS 252.204-7012 contract requirements while a member of
the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity Assessment Center (DIBCAC).

Mike holds a Master’s Degree in Information Security Management from Trident University. He holds numerous cybersecurity and IT certifications, including
Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), CMMC-LCCA, CMMC-PI, multiple Microsoft technical certifications, and the prestigious Bronze Oder of Mercury.

Eric Crusius is a partner at Hunton Andres Kurth LLP. Eric provides strategic and practical advice with matters connected to cybersecurity and privacy in the government contracting space. Among other things, Eric counsels clients on obligations in the FAR (such as FAR 52.204-21) and on agency-specific requirements from the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and others, including the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). Eric also guides companies through cybersecurity incident responses and litigation, including potential ramifications under the False Claims Act (FCA).

George focuses on assessing and mitigating risk to Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), Covered Defense Information (CDI), and Federal Contract Information (FCI) through the design, implementation, and validation of secure, resilient control environments. He leads CMMC readiness and formal assessment initiatives, including oversight of a C3PAO (Candidate) practice supporting organizations pursuing CMMC Level 2 certification. His work spans NIST SP 800-171, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CMMC, and FedRAMP-aligned environments.

George has more than twenty years of cybersecurity experience building, managing, and sustaining cyber risk and compliance programs, performing enterprise risk assessments, and developing defensible risk treatment strategies. He is a results-driven IT Risk and Compliance professional focused on implementing practical, assessment-ready solutions to complex regulatory and operational challenges.

He is a United States Air Force veteran and former GS-2210 federal civilian with experience supporting the intelligence community, continuity of government operations, and nuclear command and control mission environments. His background includes operational support within the National Military Command Center and mission support to the Joint Chiefs of Staff through a prime contractor role.

George has also led NIST SP 800-171 implementation within Fortune 500 defense contractor environments and directed one of the early contractor programs to successfully pass a DIBCAC High Assessment. He holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in information technology and cybersecurity and maintains multiple industry certifications, including CISA, CRISC, CCA, and CCP.

Mark Berman is the CEO and Founder of FutureFeed, a modern compliance platform focused on NIST and other compliance standards. The product is part of the Continuous Compliance family where Mark builds products and services that translate from the server room to the board room. Design thinking, innovation and noise-free decision-making are principles driving impact in each organization where Mark has been able to have influence.

Mark served as a founding director of the CMMC Accreditation Body (CyberAB).

When not focused on FutureFeed and challenges facing the DoD supply chain, Mark supports the Baltimore community in which he lives and supports education initiatives when and where possible. Recently, appointed to chair the board at the nationally acclaimed Greenspring Montessori School. As in his business ventures, Mark strives to inject innovation in education in way to ignite creativity in every child.

Mark graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in Computer Science where he completed graduate work at NASA’s Langley Research Center. He later completed an MBA at Loyola College of Maryland.

Mark lives with his wife Tania and dog Millie in the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore, MD. They proudly cherish Tania’s daughter, Sasha, who lives and works as a reporter in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Dan Ciarlette is the CEO for CiaberTech LLC. Dan was one of the founding CMMC provisional assessors and has CMMC CCA, CCP, and Provision Instructor credentials as well as PMP, PMI-ACP, and ISC2 CISSP certifications. Additionally, Dan managed the project to create one of the first authorized C3PAOs in the CMMC ecosystem. For his foundational work with CMMC, he was awarded the President’s Volunteer Service Award, “For strengthening our nation and communities through volunteer time for the Department of Defense Cyber Security Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Standards Working Group.” Dan currently provides CMMC, NIST SP 800-171, 172, 53, 82, and RMF assessment and consulting efforts.

He is an active member of the CMMC Industry Standards Council, CMMC Stakeholder’s Forum, and the CMMC Coalition. Dan brings distinguished experience and operational excellence in providing cybersecurity, IT, organizational and cyber digital transformation, and industrial controls systems expertise, while ensuring cybersecurity compliance across the government and defense industrial base organizations in complex environments. Dan has 35 years of experience in cybersecurity, R&D, IT, computer science, operations, systems engineering, industrial control systems, and project management. Dan served in various roles at multibillion-dollar US government national laboratory facilities while architecting and building secure ICS, IT, and high-performance computing systems.

Dan has a master’s in computer science from the Illinois Institute of Technology and a master’s in project management from Penn State.

Regan Edens serves as the Chief Transformation & Compliance Officer and Co-Founder of DTC Global. Mr. Edens served as a founding Director on the CMMC-Accreditation Body, Board of Directors, as Chairman of the Standards Management Committee and Vice-Chairman of the Training Committee. He represented the CMMC-AB in the Federal CUI Stakeholder’s Working Group and led the CMMC Industry Working Group in collaboration with the DoD. He was one of four acting CMMC Certified Master Instructors.

Mr. Edens has served across various public and private capacities leading highly technical, complex, and extremely demanding DoD technology-driven transformation, operations, security, and intelligence activities. Mr. Edens has led the rapid implementation of over $4.5B integrated platforms systems. Mr. Edens is a plank holder member of the National Cyber Moonshot.

Mr. Edens led high performing organizations within the Special Operations and Intelligence Communities during multiple global deployments including Afghanistan and Iraq as a Senior DoD Intelligence Civilian, DoD contractor, and a US Army, active duty, Commissioned Officer. Under his leadership, activities were awarded 4 Defense Superior Civilian Service Awards (3rd highest award to a DoD Intel Civilian), 14 Bronze Stars, 12 Army Commendation Medals, and 6 Army Achievement Medals.

Stuart Itkin brings a unique perspective to Federal cybersecurity regulations and the challenges organizations face in satisfying those regulations and operating their businesses. As Chief Revenue Office at FutureFeed, the leading Cyber-GRC platform for the Defense Industrial Base, Stuart works with a team committed to securing our nation’s supply chain from our adversaries by creating an affordable, collaborative IT management platform.

Formerly Senior Vice President of NeoSystems, a Managed Service Provider, Stuart helped small and medium sized businesses address their compliance, cybersecurity, and back-office needs. Stuart earlier served as Vice President of CMMC and FedRAMP Assurance at Coalfire Federal, where he established the company as one of the first authorized C3PAOs. Stuart also served as Vice President of Product Management and Marketing at Exostar where he was responsible for the company’s compliance management, supply chain risk management, and secure collaboration platforms, and for establishing its CMMC practice area. Stuart earned a BA and an MA and is an ABD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Owner PEAK Complyance CyberAB RPO
A CMMC Coaching Company
Inventors of IMPLEMENT CMMC

Nancy Laney is President and Owner of PEAK Complyance in southern Oregon, a division of Laney ITC a CyberAB RPO. With over 30 years of expertise in compliance design and implementation, Nancy’s passion is bringing compliance realization within reach of the small to medium sized businesses in the defense industrial base. She is a CMMC Registered Professional-Advanced (RPA) and has professional certifications in Project Management (PMP), Healthcare Information and Management Systems (CPHIMS), and has implemented many certification standards including ITIL, HIPAA, CIS and NIST 800-53 & 800-171.

Nancy's mission is to make the complex understandable and distill experience based, best practice possibilities to precisely what is needed for small to medium sized businesses. To this end, she has invented the first CMMC Coaching program consisting of guided learning and active engagements aimed at both medium and small independent businesses seeking certification in the CMMC framework. Through her instructional videos, personal coaching, group coaching sessions, and with a proven suite of tools, compliance teams can get on the path to audit readiness immediately.

Prior to launching both her MSP, PEAK IT Security & Solutions, and PEAK Complyance, Nancy served as an IT vCIO Consultant, Corporate Regional IT Director, Program Manager, as well as New Construction IT Project Manager in healthcare related fields for national healthcare companies. Her experience includes serving county government as the IT Director with a focus on implementing NIST 800-53 compliance and PCI DSS.