This article was originally featured on Medium.com.

I had the honor of joining a distinguished panel of tech industry leaders to discuss topics in cybersecurity at the AlwaysOn Technology Symposium (AOTS) in Providence. This one-day event is a resource for IT professionals from across the country and is hosted by Carousel Industries, a leader in the industry located right here in Exeter.

See it for yourself. Enjoy a video recap of our third annual AlwaysOn Technology Symposium.

One of the event’s most memorable lines came from my fellow panelist, Martin Roesch of Cisco, who observed that “despite our best efforts, we’ll still fail” — a perfect summary of the symposium’s theme of resilience. The sooner businesses develop strategies for recovering from cybersecurity breaches, he and the other panelists agreed, the better off we’ll all be. Other issues I discussed with the panelists included developing a layered defense system, collaborating with the federal government, and bridging the cybersecurity workforce gap.

Click to read what speakers from Cisco, Fortinet, Cylance, Varonis, and more had to say about resilience at Carousel’s AlwaysOn Technology Symposium.

To deal with the expected shortfall in cybersecurity professionals, I emphasized that the federal government should make an effort to expand educational opportunities in technology and, especially, cybersecurity. With the state’s CS4RI initiative, which ensures computer science is taught in every high school, Rhode Island has already started on a path that will hopefully make it a model for the rest of the country.

It is my belief that whether you’re an individual, a small business, or a large corporation, you need to closely watch developments in cybersecurity. Events like AOTS are a great opportunity to better your understanding of this ever-evolving discipline.

• AlwaysOn Technology Symposium, 
• cybersecurity