Michael Farnum is the CEO and co-founder of CYBR.SEC.Community and a cybersecurity leader with more than 30 years of experience in IT and information security. Since 1994, he has held senior consulting, architecture, and leadership roles across industries including healthcare, staffing, software development, application security, and cybersecurity solutions. He has helped organizations assess, build, and mature security and compliance programs through practical, risk-focused guidance.

In 2010, Michael founded HOU.SEC.CON, a Houston-based nonprofit cybersecurity conference that grew to more than 1,000 annual attendees and later evolved into CYBR.SEC.CON. He is also a frequent speaker at events including RSA, Infosecurity Europe, and BSides conferences, as well as a prolific cybersecurity podcaster.

Before entering IT and security, Michael worked as a land surveyor and served in the U.S. Army, driving an M1A1 main battle tank during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Sam Van Ryder is co-founder of CYBR.SEC.Community, Director of Strategic Accounts at Dragos, and an industrial cybersecurity and community advocate. With an engineering background and more than 20 years of experience, Sam is passionate about helping organizations secure critical infrastructure and reduce cyber risk across IT and OT environments.

He has worked with CIOs, CISOs, and CSOs at owner/operator organizations across energy, oil and gas, and other critical sectors to improve risk management outcomes through a consultative, customer-success-focused approach. His experience includes turning around at-risk projects and product implementations, selling to Fortune 1000 companies, building and managing sales teams and channel partners, developing sales processes and MSSP channel programs, launching new solutions and services, and establishing distribution in the U.S. and internationally.

Sam is fluent in German and Swiss German and has working knowledge of Spanish.