Ransomware Incident Response and Table Top Exercise
Jason Pufahl, Vice President Information Security Services; and Steve Maresca, Senior Security Engineer, Vancord

Participants will take part in an interactive table top simulation of a cyber attack, led by Vancord with inspiration from its extensive experience in Cyber Incident Response. Participants will act together as an incident response team to confront and overcome the attack. Vancord will share key takeaways to better protect participant organizations through discussion of team choices and outcomes.


Jason Pufahl is the Vice President of Information Security Services at Vancord and recently served at the Chief Information Security Officer of the University of Connecticut.  He has over 25 years of infrastructure and information security experience and has spent the last 15 years dedicated to information security and privacy. He has broad expertise in developing institutional information security programs that emphasize security fundamentals and sound operational practices over complexity. He believes an information security program should be integrated into the business and should support, not hinder, productivity or business goals.

Pufahl has a Master’s in Education Technology and a passion for professional development, security training, and awareness. He is a frequent conference speaker, holds a CISM certification and is a member of the Advisory Board of Zentific LLC, a cybersecurity software development company

Steven Maresca has 12+ years of information security experience, designing and developing security solutions at a large public university.  A recognized leader in the virtualization space, he founded a company, Zentific, which is a software security firm specializing in virtual machine introspection.  He was engineering lead for a DARPA Cyber Fast Track grant awarded to Zentific, resulting in pending patent applications. While attending the University of Connecticut, he participated in security research and publications. He specializes in forensics, incident response, vulnerability assessment, secure software development, identity management, and CMMC and PCI compliance