15 must-attend security sessions at Next '24

Google Cloud Next, our global exhibition of inspiration, innovation, and education, is coming to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas starting Tuesday, April 9. We’re featuring a packed Security Professionals track, including more than 40 breakout sessions, demos, and lightning talks where you can discover new ways to secure your cloud workloads, get the latest in threat intelligence, and learn how AI is evolving security practices.

Learn from an exciting lineup of speakers, including experts from Google Cloud and leaders from Charles Schwab, L’Oreal, Snap, Fiserv, Spotify, and Electronic Arts. Register here and get ready to defend your business with the latest in frontline intelligence, intel-driven SecOps, and cloud innovation. 

Here are some must-attend session for security professionals:

Security keynote

What’s next for security professionals

Organizations need powerful security solutions to protect their most sensitive assets, but the familiar approach of bolting on more security products is unsustainable. Instead, the convergence of key capabilities can reduce complexity, increase productivity, and deliver stronger security outcomes. In this spotlight, leaders from Google and Mandiant will share our insight into the threat landscape and our latest innovations that make Google part of your security team. 

Featured speakers:

Sunil Potti, vice president and general manager, Cloud Security, Google Cloud
Kevin Mandia, CEO Mandiant, Google Cloud
Parisa Tabriz, vice president, Chrome Browser, Google
Steph Hay, director of User Experience, Cloud Security, Google Cloud

Security breakout sessions

How AI can transform your approach to security

Generative AI from Google Cloud can help seasoned security professionals quickly discover, investigate, and respond to threats, and help newcomers boost their skills to get more things done, faster. Join this session to learn about new features, hear from customers, and gain insights on how to address common security challenges with AI.

Featured speakers:

Anton Chuvakin, senior staff security consultant, Google Cloud
Bashar Abouseido, senior vice president and CISO, Charles Schwab
Steph Hay, director of User Experience, Cloud Security, Google Cloud

Simplified Google Cloud network security: Zero Trust and beyond

This demo-packed session on how to proactively defend your cloud network with Google Cloud's machine learning-powered Zero Trust architecture reveals the latest Cloud next-generation firewall (NGFW), Secure Web Proxy and Cloud Armor enhancements, partner integrations, and real-world use cases. Learn to neutralize unauthorized access, sensitive data loss, and other cloud attack vectors across public and hybrid cloud environments.

Featured speakers:

Ashok Narayanan, principal engineer, Google Cloud
Tobias Pischl, director of product management, Broadcom, Inc.
Olivier Richaud, vice president, Platforms, Symphony
Sid Shibiraj, group product manager, Google Cloud

Start secure, stay secure: Build a strong security foundation for your cloud

In this session, you’ll learn how to start secure and stay secure in the cloud using the Security Foundation, which provides recommended controls to common cloud adoption use cases, including infrastructure modernization, AI workloads, data analytics, and application modernization.

Featured speakers:

William Bear, cloud architect, Mayo Clinic
Dhananjay Dalave, strategic cloud engineer, Google Cloud
Marcus Hartwig, product marketing lead, Google Cloud
Stacy Moening, director of product management - IT, Mayo Clinic
Anil Nandigam, product marketing lead, Google Cloud

Practical use cases for AI in security operations

AI isn’t a future concept: It’s here and available, with early user feedback showing that AI can reduce the time required for common analyst tasks such as triaging complex cases by seven times. In this session, we’ll dive into the real-world applications of AI in security operations with hands-on demonstrations and case studies.

Featured speakers:

Payal Chakravarty, product manager, Google Cloud
Mark Ruiz, head of Cybersecurity Analytics, Pfizer

A cybersecurity expert's guide to securing AI products with Google SAIF

AI is rapidly advancing, and it’s important that effective security and privacy strategies evolve along with it. To support this evolution, Google Cloud introduced the Secure AI Framework (SAIF). Join us to learn why SAIF offers a practical approach to addressing the concerns that are top of mind for security and privacy professionals like you, and how to implement it.

Featured speakers:

Anton Chuvakin, senior staff security consultant, Google Cloud
Shan Rao, group product manager, Google Cloud

Preventing data exfiltration with Google Cloud’s built-in controls

Join us to hear from Charles Schwab and Commerzbank on their security journey to mitigate data exfiltration risks and reduce the rising cost of a breach. You’ll also learn more about the Google Cloud platform security technologies, including VPC Service Controls and Organization Restrictions, and how they can be deployed to effectively address different threat vectors. 

Featured speakers:

Sri B, product manager, Google Cloud
Steffen Kreis, senior cloud architect, Commerzbank AG
Florin Stingaciu, product manager, Google Cloud
Jonathan Wentz, cloud architect, Charles Schwab

Go beyond multi-cloud CNAPP security with Security Command Center Enterprise

Learn how to implement a full life cycle approach to reduce cloud risks with the industry’s first solution that converges best-in-class cloud security and enterprise security operations capabilities. Hear how Verizon security teams assess and mitigate cloud risks, and how your organization can proactively manage threats, posture, data, and identities, and respond to security events across clouds with a single, converged solution operating at Google Cloud scale.

Featured speakers:

Arshad Aziz, director, Cloud Security, Verizon
Connor Hammersmith, Security Command Center GTM, Google Cloud
Jess Leroy, director, product management, Google Cloud

Cloud compromises: Lessons learned from Mandiant investigations in 2023

This session will draw from real-world experiences and highlight the top threats that emerged in 2023 in relation to cloud security. Participants will gain valuable insights through case studies derived from Mandiant's incident response engagements in 2023, covering numerous threat actors such as Scattered Spider aka UNC3944. 

Featured speakers:

Omar ElAhdan, principal consultant, Mandiant, Google Cloud
Will Silverstone, senior consultant, Google Cloud

Learn to love IAM: The most important step in securing your cloud infrastructure

Join this session to learn all things to get started with IAM, including how to structure and set up identities, and access resources with minimal risk to your cloud environment.

Featured speakers:

Elliott Abraham, cloud security architect, Google Cloud
Michele Chubirka, cloud security advocate, Google Cloud

Your model. Your data. Your business: A privacy-first approach to generative AI

Want to learn how to quickly and easily train and fine-tune production AI models? Use your data and own your model? Train in the cloud or on-premises, pain-free? Then this is the session for you!

Featured speakers:

Todd Moore, vice president, Encryption Solutions, Thales
Amit Patil, director, Cloud Security Platform and Products, Google Cloud
Nelly Porter, director, product management, Google Cloud

Secure enterprise browsing: New ways to strengthen endpoint security

Discover how to leverage Chrome Enterprise to apply built-in security measures, including data-loss prevention and context-aware access controls, plus the latest product announcements. You’ll leave with actionable best practices, and tips to safeguard your corporate data and empower your team.

Featured speakers:

Mark Berschadski, director, product management, Chrome Browser Enterprise, Google Cloud
Tanisha Rai, Google Cloud Security product manager, Google

Using Security Command Center for multi-cloud threat detection and response

Learn how Google detects threats against Google Cloud to protect multicloud environments and find out how industry-leading Mandiant Threat Intelligence combines with planet-scale data analytics to detect new and persistent threats to cloud environments, cloud identities, and cloud workloads. 

Featured speakers:

Ken Duffy, staff cloud architect, Telus Corporation
Timothy Peacock, senior product manager, Google Cloud
Jason Sloderbeck, group product manager, Security Command Center, Google Cloud

TD shows Google Cloud’s shared fate model in action

Discover how expecting more from Google Cloud’s shared fate model has helped TD accelerate its transformation with peace of mind. Join this session to learn how TD is building out a generative AI platform designed to expand its business, create a next generation user experience, and enhance the bank’s security posture.

Featured speakers:

Dan Bosman, senior vice president and CIO, TD Securities and TBSM, TD Securities
Andy Chang, group product manager, Google Cloud
Sean Leighton, principal architect, Google Cloud

Address retail security challenges with AI

Retail organizations are battling some challenging, financially motivated threat actors. To keep pace and stay within your resources budget, AI may provide some answers. In this session, we’ll discuss the evolving retail cyber-threat landscape and explore how AI can help organizations improve their security.

Featured speakers:

Brian Klenke, CISO, Bath & Body Works
Luke McNamara, Deputy Chief Analyst, Mandiant Intelligence
Harpreet Sidhu, North American Cybersecurity Lead, Accenture

To explore the full catalog of breakout sessions and labs designed for security professionals, check out the security track in the Next ‘24 catalog.