Americaneagle.com's Ryan McElrath and Al Connelly Featured in AITP 2016 National Collegiate Conference and Career Fair
Americaneagle.com is happy to announce that two senior staff members recently participated in the AITP 2016 National Collegiate Conference and Career Fair held in Rosemont, Illinois. AITP is a well-respected organization that seeks to advance the IT Profession through professional development, support of IT education, and national policies on IT that improve society as a whole.
The audience was mixed with students, faculty and senior IT leaders from around the nation. Ryan McElrath, Americaneagle.com’s CTO, sat on a panel titled “Securing the Business - New Threats, New Defenses and Navigating Resource Shortages”, moderated by Cyber Security and IT Risk Strategist Laszio Gonc, along with Kevin Novak, Northern Trust Chief Information Security Officer, and Kirk Lonbom, State of Illinois Chief Information Security Officer. Ryan has been with Americaneagle.com since 1995. During that time, he has been actively involved in the development, hosting and securing of hundreds of websites, including projects for high-profile clients like the White House, Chicago Bears, New York Giants, Chicago Transit Authority and WeatherTech.com. He also spearheaded the effort to get Americaneagle.com certified for Visa/MasterCard PCI compliance in securely handling credit card data and he continues to manage those services today.
Since the Target store breach in 2012 there has been a continuous flow of high profile breaches in both the private and public sector. Protecting your business from cyber attacks from a variety of domestic and foreign sources is becoming more challenging as the attacks grow in frequency, size and skill level. This is complicated by the shortage of trained staff. Ryan discussed the current trends in types of attacks, current best practices for defense, along with how the “Internet of Things” adds complexity. In addition, he and the panel discussed various ways companies creatively address resource shortages and other issues that arise when dealing with online and network security.
Al Connelly is a Technical Director and Senior Developer at Americaneagle.com, providing direction, implementation, and support for native desktop and mobile applications and data integrations. During his tenure at Americaneagle.com, Al has worked on mobile apps and websites for the Chicago Auto Show, Green Bay Packers, APICS, Open the Books, Bill James Baseball IQ (Voted one of the best apps of 2011 by TechCrunch), WeatherTech, CitizenshipWorks, Dale Carnegie, Pro Football Hall of Fame, FenceCenter.com, RichardRoeper.com and many more.
Al sat on a panel titled “Mobility: Business and Technology Trends”, moderated by John Broshar, Director of Sales at Datametrica, along with panelists Geof Pejsa, Program Manager of the U.S. Census Bureau, Umair Lateef, Sr. Manager of Global Digital Technology at McDonald’s Corporation, and Simon Hunt, Director of Product Management at BMW of North American, LLC.
Al and his panel discussed smartphones and their impact on basic ecommerce, connectivity, monitoring, analytics, location services, photos & scanning, integrating with “Internet of Things” devices and more. In addition, Al discussed interesting uses as well as the trends in technology – development tools, security issues, and finding the necessary skills to meet the explosion of needs in a fast changing environment.
Americaneagle.com is proud to have two of the most knowledgeable and experienced professionals in the industry, respectively, for both online security and mobile applications.