Albany Speakers

Meet Michael Hastings

Cyber Security Advisor for Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Michael Hastings is a Department of Homeland Security Cyber Security Advisor assigned to Region II working out of Albany, NY. Michael has extensive industry experience to include roles as Vice President of IT Risk Management for a national commercial bank, and several leadership and operational positions in cyber security, IT governance and network operations in regional and national organizations. He is also an Army veteran of two middle east deployments, most recently as a Division Chief Information Officer. Michael holds an MBA in Technology and Management, and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional.

Meet Samantha Baltzersen

Supervisory Special Agent – Cyber/CART – FBI Albany

Supervisory Special Agent Samantha Baltzersen began her career with the FBI in 2004 in the New York Field Office. She worked as a certified digital  forensic examiner on the Computer Analysis Response Team for seven years in the New York, Washington, and Portland Field Offices. SSA Baltzersen has worked both criminal and national security cyber investigations since 2013. In June 2020, she became the supervisor of the Albany Field Office Cyber Squad and Computer Analysis Response Team. She holds several GIAC certifications in cyber security, digital forensics, incident response, and reverse engineering of malware including the GSEC, GCFE, GCFA, GCIA, GCIH, GCED, GCCC, GASF, GPEN, and GREM certifications.

Meet Aaron Murphy

Field Technical Evangelist – Veeam Product Strategy Team

Aaron Murphy is Field Technical Evangelist in the Product Strategy team. Aaron has more than 25 years of experience with Enterprise data management including backup, security, availability, DR and governance. Originally from the UK and now living in New Jersey he has extensive experience in the EMEA and Americas markets including global organizations concerned with data management best practices and regulatory requirements such as those in Finance, Pharmaceutical, Healthcare and Government. Aaron believes passionately about using data for business advantage and has championed solutions for new workloads such as Big Data and Kubernetes as well as intelligent data management solutions that use smart indexing, machine learning and search to assist with cloud migration, cost control, security and data governance.

Meet Mark Dellavalle​

Extreme Networks SVP of Global Systems Engineering

Meet Aaron Sawchuk

Senior Vice President of Data Center and Cloud

Aaron D. Sawchuk is the Senior Vice President of Data Center and Cloud BD at FirstLight. In this role Aaron is focused on continuing to grow FirstLight’s Data Center and Cloud business in all of the markets we operate. Prior to joining FirstLight Aaron was the co-founder and chairman of ColoSpace, a leading provider of data center and cloud services in New England. At ColoSpace Aaron set and helped implement the overall technology and product development strategy at ColoSpace, focusing on building highly-available IT services that add significant value to customer operations. Aaron brings extensive experience in the IT-services and Internet Networking space, having spent more than twenty-five years founding and leading technology firms in New England. Aaron earned a degree in Economics from Middlebury College.