Know Your Enemy:

How Cybercriminals and Nation-State Hackers Operate

November 13, 2025
11:00am -5:00pm ET | Doors Open at 10:30am ET

Know Your Enemy: How Cybercriminals and Nation-State Hackers Operate

Every day, organizations are at risk of a cyberattack by financially motivated threat actors as well as state sponsored cyber spies. But just who are the cyber attackers behind the endless wave of attack campaigns and what are their underlying missions? What tactics and techniques do they employ and how could those be used against your organization? Which types of cyberattacks — and attackers — are most likely to target an organization, their users, and data?

During this full-day virtual event, we’ll examine the most prolific threat actors in cybercrime and cyber espionage, and how they target and infiltrate their victims. Industry experts will provide insight, advice, and best practices for securing enterprises – and ultimately, their valuable data -- from these attackers both in the cloud and in hybrid networks. Among other things, attendees will learn how to apply intel on current threats and adversaries to better secure their organization from cybercrime and cyber espionage.

Topics Include:
Provide tips on how to protect your organization from today's sophisticated cybercrime syndicates.
We will share the latest trends and operations of nation-state hacking groups and the threats they pose to businesses and organizations of all sizes.
Provide insight and guidance on how to harness threat intelligence data as well as the ATT&CK framework.
Share insights on how to execute these practices, the emerging technologies that support them, and how to apply the findings.
And More!
Agenda
Keynote
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM

Cybercrime Inc.

Sponsored by: Wiz
Moderated by: Fahmida Y Rashid, Managing Editor, Features; Dark Reading

Cybercrime has matured dramatically, with large cybercriminal groups now operating as well-organized business syndicates. Under the cover of the Dark Web marketplace they offer cybercrime-as-a-service options such as turnkey ransomware services with round-the-clock customer service lines. They sell stolen enterprise credentials, malware, and other hacking services, and not surprisingly, also scam and hack one another. In this keynote, an expert on cybercrime will explain how this dark ecosystem operates and continues to flourish — and provide tips on how to protect your organization from today’s sophisticated cybercrime syndicates.

Fireside Chat
11:45 AM– 12:00 PM

Speaker(s): Ben Read, Director of Strategic Threat Intelligence, Wiz
Keynote
12:15 PM– 1:00 PM

Nation-State Hacking Teams: Up Close

Sponsored by: Palo Alto Networks
Speaker(s): James Lewis, Senior Advisor, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Moderated by: Kelly Jackson Higgins, Editor-in-Chief, Dark Reading

China. Russia. Iran. North Korea. These four nations represent some of the most prolific and powerful nations with state-sponsored hacking teams that conduct cyber espionage of all flavors, from geopolitical and diplomatic spying to intellectual property theft. Some now even cross the line into cybercrime with ransomware, extortion, and data-wiping attacks. Other nations are ramping up their hacking teams for their national interests as well, such as India, Pakistan, and Vietnam. In this keynote, an expert on nation-state cyber operations will share the latest trends and operations of nation-state hacking groups and the threats they pose to businesses and organizations of all sizes.

Fireside Chat
1:00 PM – 1:15 PM

Speaker(s): Sama Manchanda, Consultant, Unit42, Palo Alto Networks
Spotlight Webinar
1:30 PM– 2:00 PM

How to Leverage Threat Intelligence Without Drowning: The Zero Noise Approach

Sponsored by: Wiz
Speaker(s): Yotam Meitar, Director, Cloud Response, Wiz

Cloud threat intelligence should simplify detection—but often creates noise instead. With vast TI data and automated attacks flooding alerts, many teams struggle to separate real threats from background noise. This session introduces the Zero Noise Approach—a methodology for ingesting and operationalizing Cloud TI through attacker-based baselines, continuous feedback loops, and a “no alert left behind” mindset. Learn how this approach turns TI from overwhelming to actionable, with real-world case studies showing how organizations achieved higher fidelity detections and clearer visibility into attacker TTPs.

Spotlight Webinar
1:30 PM– 2:00 PM

Unit 42 Cybercrime Casefiles: A Cloud Threat Investigation

Sponsored by: Palo Alto Networks
Speaker(s): Christopher Romano, Unit 42 Technical Director, Palo Alto Networks and Margaret Kelley, Unit 42 Senior Consultant, Palo Alto Networks

Threat actors relentlessly adapt their tactics to exploit misconfigurations in the cloud, stopping at nothing to infiltrate cloud environments and perform malicious activities. So, how can organizations stay ahead and defend themselves against these sophisticated threats?

Join our upcoming Cybercrime Casefile session to see how Unit 42® experts tackled a real cloud cryptomining incident. Learn how a threat actor infiltrated a cloud environment through misconfigured resources and exposed credentials and see how Unit 42 decisively responded to secure the compromised environment.

You’ll hear our Unit 42 experts dive into:

-A firsthand account of the investigation.
-The anatomy of the attack.
-The strategic steps Unit 42 and the client took to remediate the incident.
-Insights into cloud threat actor tactics and cutting-edge techniques.
-Powerful recommendations for cloud security best practices and defense strategies.

Panel
2:15 PM - 3:00PM

How to Use MITRE'S ATT&CK Framework and Other Threat Intel

Sponsored by: Analyst1 & CardinalOps
Panelists: Adam Pennington, James Nixon, Richard Struse, Bryan Peace
Moderated by: Tara Seals, Managing Editor, News, Dark Reading

There are various threat intelligence feeds and information about the latest threat groups, campaigns, and their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) coming from security vendors as well as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). How do you know which threat intel applies to your organization? How can you map MITRE’s ATT&CK framework to your security architecture? In this panel discussion, experts will provide insight and guidance on how to harness threat intelligence data as well as the ATT&CK framework and weave them into your existing security tools and operations.

Panel
3:15 PM - 4:00PM

Proactive Security as One of Your Best Weapons

Sponsored by: Specter Ops & KnowBe4
Panelists: Jared Atkinson, Andrew Braunberg, Fredrick Lee, Erich Kron
Moderated by: Alexander Culafi, Senior News Writer, Dark Reading

Cybercrime and nation-state hacking teams continue to mature, evolve, and pivot to evade detection by security teams. For security operations teams, that means trying to stay a step ahead of the adversaries by ensuring you have visibility into all your devices, identities, and online assets, both in the network and in the cloud. It also calls for proactive security practices such as regular vulnerability scanning and penetration testing, and threat hunting by the security team or your security service provider. In this panel discussion, red team experts share insights on how to execute these practices, the emerging technologies that support them, and how to apply the findings and discoveries to shore up your defenses.

Panel
4:15 PM - 5:00PM

SecOps for Today's Complex Cyber Threats

Sponsored by: CyberMaxx & Elasticsearch
Panelists: Lisa Jones-Huff, Zack Hoffman, Jesse Whaley, Jason Lang
Moderated by: Rob Wright, Senior News Director, Dark Reading

Security teams today juggle dozens or more security tools— many of which are not well-integrated. Often, they don’t have the resources needed to fully realize all the features of the tools, which can impede their ability to respond properly and efficiently to a security incident. How can the cloud and AI be harnessed to streamline and empower security analysis in the age of SaaS and other infrastructure security challenges? What types of processes and tools can help sift through this telemetry to ferret out actual threats or attacks? In this panel discussion, experts will discuss these issues and how SecOps teams can improve their detection and analysis of a security event before it escalates.

Know Your Enemy:

How Cybercriminals and Nation-State Hackers Operate

November 13, 2025
11:00am -5:00pm ET | Doors Open at 10:30am ET

Speakers
Ben Read
Director of Strategic Threat Intelligence, Wiz
Mr. Read holds a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he specialized in International Security Policy, and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and German Studies from Amherst College.
Jason Lang
Practice Lead, Targeted Operations, TrustedsSec
Jesse Whaley
President of Digital Cyber Force and former Amtrak CISO
Jesse is an award-winning cybersecurity and technology executive with 20+ years driving innovation, transformation, and resilience across Fortune 500, government, and critical infrastructure sectors. As the former Amtrak CISO, he built the program from the ground up, scaled a diverse team of 100+, secured an $80M budget.
 Bryan Peace
Product Marketing, CardinalOps
Bryan Peace leads product marketing at CardinalOps, an early-stage cybersecurity company that automates detection engineering workflows to continuously validate and expand threat coverage. At CardinalOps, Bryan focuses on helping SOCs bridge the gap between best practice frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK and practical, threat-informed defenses.
 Richard Struse
CTO, Tidal Cyber
Richard Struse is a globally recognized technology innovator who has led the development of new approaches and solutions in cybersecurity for over a decade. Rich was the co-founder of MITRE’s Center for Threat-Informed Defense, where he worked with many of the most sophisticated enterprise cybersecurity organizations in the world to advance.
 Adam Pennington
MITRE ATT&CK Lead
Adam Pennington leads ATT&CK at MITRE and collected much of the intelligence leveraged in creating ATT&CK’s initial techniques. When not working on ATT&CK, Adam has spent many of his 16 years with MITRE studying and preaching the use of deception for intelligence gathering.
 Lisa Jones-Huff
Senior Director, Solutions Architecture, Elastic
Lisa Jones Huff is Senior Director of Global Security Specialists at Elastic, bringing over 20 years of experience in cybersecurity. She helps organizations uncover and address evolving threats by maximizing their existing technology investments and enhancing enterprise visibility.
 Fredrick Lee
CISO, Reddit
Fredrick “Flee” Lee is Chief Information Security Officer at Reddit. Flee has more than 20 years of experience leading global information security and privacy efforts at major financial services companies and technology startups, including as Chief Security Officer at Square and most recently as Chief Security Officer and Head of IT at Gusto.
 James Nixon
Customer Success Officer, Analyst1
His professional background includes software engineering, enterprise architecture, data science, business process design and oversight, team leadership, and now in the Analyst1 platform itself. After 14 years in contracting, James joined Analyst1 as the first employee with the co-founders.
 James Lewis
Senior Advisor, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
James Lewis writes on technology and strategy. He was a diplomat and a member of the Senior Executive Service with extensive politico-military, negotiating, and regulatory experience. Lewis was an advisor to two combatant commanders.
 Jared Atkinson
Chief Technology Officer, SpecterOps
Jared is a security researcher who specializes in Digital Forensics and Incident Response. Recently, he has been building and leading private sector Hunt Operations capabilities. In his previous life, Jared lead incident response missions for the U.S. Air Force Hunt Team, detecting and removing Advanced Persistent Threats.
Sama Manchanda
Consultant, Unit42, Palo Alto Networks
Sama Manchanda is a consultant at Unit 42’s Austin office, where she applies her skills in digital forensics, incident response, and offensive security to the firm’s client engagements.
Christopher Romano
Unit 42 Technical Director, Palo Alto Networks
Christopher is a competent, skilled, technical, and results-driven professional with over 17 years of experience, and a strong record of achievement in cloud, network, and systems security, as well as incident response, digital forensics, and project management expertise to ensure streamlined operations and customer satisfaction.
Alexander Culafi
Senior News Writer, Dark Reading
Alex is a writer, journalist, and podcaster based in Boston.
 Rob Wright
Rob Wright, Senior News Director, Dark Reading
Rob Wright is the senior news director at Dark Reading. He has a 25-year career as a technology journalist. He joined TechTarget in 2014 as site editor of SearchSecurity and later served as the site's executive editor. Prior to TechTarget, he worked at CRN and Tom's Hardware Guide in various editor and report roles. He is based in the Boston area.
Erich Kron
CISO Advisor, KnowBe4
Erich Kron, CISO Advisor at KnowBe4 is an author and regular contributor to cybersecurity industry publications. He is a veteran information security professional with over 25 years of experience in the medical, aerospace, manufacturing, and defense fields.
Tara Seals
Managing Editor for News, Dark Reading
Tara Seals has 25+ years of experience as a journalist, analyst and editor in the cybersecurity, communications and technology space. Prior to Dark Reading, Tara was Editor in Chief at Threatpost, and prior to that, the North American news lead for Infosecurity Magazine.
Yotam Meitar
Director, Cloud Response, Wiz
Yotam has spent over a decade managing and responding to some of the most sophisticated global cyber operations. He’s worked with technical teams and executives to defeat attacks and leverage cyber as a competitive advantage across incident response, purple teaming, posture enhancements, and executive wargames.
Zack Hoffman
Director of Professional Security Services, CyberMaxx
With over a decade of cybersecurity experience, Zack Hoffman currently serves as Director of Professional Services, overseeing advanced security solutions and leading technical consulting teams. He has held leadership roles in cybersecurity operations, specializing in threat intelligence, detection engineering, and managing global teams.
Andrew Braunberg
Principal Analyst, Omdia
Andrew supports Omdia's Cybersecurity Operations (SecOps) Intelligence Service research practice, guiding vendor, service provider, and enterprise clients. He provides thought-leading analysis on technologies, trends, and innovations in enterprise security operations centers (SOCs), and specifically on the proactive technologies.
Fahmida Y Rashid headshot
Fahmida Y Rashid
Managing Editor, Dark Reading
Fahmida Y Rashid is Dark Reading’s managing editor, focusing on stories that provide security professionals with the information they need to do their jobs. She has spent over a decade analyzing news events and demystifying security technology for IT professionals and business managers.
Kelly Jackson Higgins
Editor-in-Chief, Dark Reading
Kelly Jackson Higgins is the Editor-in-Chief of Dark Reading. She is an award-winning veteran technology and business journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting and editing for various publications, including Network Computing, Secure Enterprise Magazine, Virginia Business magazine, and other major media properties.
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