Cyber Security in the Prairies 2025

Alexander Rau is a Partner in KPMG in Canada’s Technology Risk Consulting Advisory Practice focusing on Cyber Incident Response. Alexander is responsible for leading KPMG in Canada’s Cyber Response Practice providing cyber security risk services to support and enable clients to better respond to cyber incidents before, during and after a cyber breach. With over 20+ years of experience in Cyber Security, IT and Privacy, Alexander has provided leadership to a number of multinational organizations, leading and delivering incident response and strategic cyber security engagements, practice leadership, and business development. His roles have included cyber security evangelism, conducting media interviews, keynote speaker and panellist engagements. Throughout his career Alexander has leveraged his business and cyber security background to advise public sector and private enterprise clients on next generation cyber security threat prevention technologies, methodologies and resiliency concepts. Combining his knowledge and professional experiences in IT and cyber security management, consulting and strategy, with his finance and economics background, he brings unique professional qualifications, experience, and perspectives to his clients, addressing the ever-changing security landscape and its impacts on organizations.

Owen Key is an Executive Director in KPMG’s Risk Consulting Cyber Security practice with over 34 years of experience, most recently as the Chief Security Officer and the Chief Information Security Officer with The City of Calgary. He is currently KPMG's National Lead for OT and Physical Security.  During his tenure, Owen has been delivering successful projects and programs involving Cyber Security, Physical Security, Operations, Computer Forensics and Incident Response, Corporate Investigations, Industrial Control Systems (ICS) security, Operational and IT Business Continuity, Identity and Access Management (IAM), and Project and Program Management. During his career, Owen was a Detective with the New Zealand Police and a Senior Manager with KPMG responsible for their Computer Forensic practice in Western Canada.

Owen graduated in Commerce, with Diplomas in Security & Risk management, and Policing Studies. He is A+ certified from COMPTIA and is an Associate Business Continuity Planner from the Disaster Recovery Institute. As a CSO / CISO, Owen was responsible for the protection of $65B worth of assets, information and 15,000 employees. He oversaw the security of all physical assets, information technology, operational technology and personnel operating in a large enterprise environment, including diverse business operations such as Calgary Transit, Water & Wastewater, Roads, 3500+ facilities, Parks, Emergency Management, 911, 311, Recreation and golf courses, Waste & Recycling, Calgary Fire Dept. and more.

Cliff Janzen is the CISO and a VP of Security at Arctiq.

 

He has been in IT for many years starting on the service desk supporting mainframes and the first wave of users connecting to the internet back in the day of modems. He progressed to the desktop team, then to the server team before moving fully into security. In his current role, he leads a group of exceptional people in the delivery of managed and professional security services.

 

Throughout his career, he has had the privilege of learning from and working with some of the greatest resources in security, and he continues to happily learn new things every day. He has done work for SANS, is a technical editor for NoStarch Press and is the founder and president of Security BSides Regina.

 

 

Talk track - What's the deal with vCISO?

In this talk, Cliff will give a brief history of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and the rising need for the Virtual CISO. We will look at who, what, where, why and when of the vCISO before looking into how the vCISO can provide cybersecurity strategies and risk management to improve security hygiene to meet compliance obligations.