Keynote, new panel announced for TechSec 2012

YARMOUTH, Maine—Edward Levy, VP and global head of security for Thomson Reuters, will kick off TechSec 2012 with a keynote address on Feb. 7, the first day of the two-day conference, TechSec organizers announced in December.

Levy is currently leading a review of security operations at Thomson Reuters, a global enterprise with $13.1 billion in 2010 revenue, 55,000 employees and 500 offices in more than 100 countries. His review is focused on identity management and will lead to an integration of physical and logical access control enterprise-wide, as well as centralizing the monitoring of all the company's security systems.

In his keynote address at TechSec, Levy will discuss the process of assessing new and emerging technologies and the challenge of assembling a security system for a global enterprise. In addition, Levy will compare and contrast his current role—and his current challenges—with his previous role as director of security at the Empire State Building in New York City, where he designed a major security technology upgrade that is being implemented today.

TechSec organizers also recently announced a new educational session at the conference, to be held Feb. 7-8 in Delray Beach, Fla., that will feature several security end users chosen by Security Director News for its “20 Under 40” list, which seeks to highlight the future leaders of the security profession.

Among the panelists will be Whit Chaiyabhat, director of emergency management and operational continuity at Georgetown University, who will discuss the application of emerging technology in securing college and university campuses. Also joining the panel will be Kevin Ach, senior director of global loss prevention at Office Depot, Chris Cromer, director of security at Alamance Regional Medical Center in Burlington, N.C., and Christopher Chapeta, a physical security specialist for Chevron Corporation, who oversees enterprise facility security systems in the Western United States and Canada, new technology research and implementation. They will discuss deploying emerging technology in the retail, healthcare, critical infrastucture and energy sectors.