Illumio

Join us for an insightful discussion on the evolving landscape of acquisition reform, exploring how policy adapts to meet critical operational needs. Reforming Acquisition for Strategic Advantage brings together senior leaders from across defense and industry.

Attendees will gain valuable insight into the latest compliance shifts, emerging acquisition authorities, and collaborative approaches to enhancing speed, scale, and sustainment—ensuring our teams receive the capabilities they need efficiently and effectively. Whether you're a policy maker, program manager, or industry innovator, this luncheon will deepen your understanding of how to streamline procurement in alignment with the Department of War and DHS.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Understand the Current Acquisition Landscape Identify recent and emerging policy and compliance shifts shaping Department of War and DHS procurement. Examine how these updates impact program managers, policy makers, and industry partners alike.
• Explore Emerging Authorities and Tools Assess new and existing acquisition pathways (such as OTAs and rapid prototyping) and evaluate how they can be leveraged to enable agility, scalability, and long-term sustainment.
• Navigate Challenges to Efficiency Identify common administrative challenges that slow down procurement processes. Evaluate case studies and strategic approaches where leaders have successfully balanced regulatory compliance with timely delivery.
• Analyze the Interplay of Policy and Mission Needs Discuss how evolving operational requirements drive innovation and reform. Explore best practices for fostering productive collaboration between policy makers, program managers, and private-sector innovators.
• Develop Actionable Insights for Smarter Procurement Translate lessons from defense and industry leaders into practical strategies for your own organization’s acquisition planning and execution. Identify proactive, compliant ways to modernize your procurement approaches.

The cloud, hybrid IT, and GenAI are reshaping the IT landscape, but they also are expanding attack surfaces and increasing cyber risk. Security tools already in place are falling behind, unable to keep up with new threats that have been supercharged by AI tools being used by bad actors, from criminals to hostile nation-states.

Rather than focusing solely on stopping attacks, using Zero Trust (ZT) segmentation tools provide a new line of defenses – east-west traffic visibility, microsegmentation, identity-based firewalling, and east-west traffic encryption in transit. By minimizing the impact of inevitable breaches through effective containment, agencies can maintain uptime during attacks and keep essential government services running.

Learning Objectives:

• Outline the resources you have in place to protect the most precious assets in your systems and whether they can provide visibility into traffic, encryption for lateral traffic, and use ZT policies to control access
• Evaluate the time and costs associated with existing security measures and action plans to recover from a breach to establish metrics for improvement, such as time-to-response, manpower costs, system downtime
• Delineate locations within your systems where microsegmentation and strict ZT enforcement provide the greatest protection from lateral penetration

Join us in Phoenix, Arizona. The 2026 Air National Guard Operational Alignment Communications & Cyber Symposium (OACCS) is the crucial event for ensuring the Air National Guard remains at the forefront of Information Technology and Cybersecurity. This is the premier event where we gather as the ANG Cyber Militia—a force defined by the skill of our people and our absolute commitment to mission readiness. The symposium is crucial for ensuring the Air National Guard remains at the forefront of Information Technology and Cyber Effects. OACCS will provide ANG units with the latest training, resources, and opportunities to:

• Improve Readiness
• Drive Workforce Development
• Field The Modern Militia

The Symposium will align NGB A2/6’s strategy with efforts at both the directorate and wing levels, focusing on the IT challenges of the next 3-5 years. We will also address resource utilization in a constrained budgetary environment by aligning ANG efforts with the Air Force Chief Information Officer’s strategic goals.

Registration is not yet available. Check back in the Spring of 2026.

TechNet Augusta 2026 gives participants the opportunity to examine and explore the intricacies of the cyber domain. With assistance from the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence and industry experts, the conference is designed to open the lines of communication and facilitate networking, education and problem solving. Leaders and operators also discuss procurement challenges the military, government and industry face during a time of uncertain budgets and runaway technology advances.

With assistance from the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence and industry, this three-day conference is designed to open the lines of communication between the military and commercial sector and provide a space where government and industry professionals can discuss issues and share solutions surrounding cyber electromagnetic activities and unified land operations.