About Us

About Billington CyberSecurity

For over a dozen years, since the company’s founding in 2010, the senior most government officials and industry partners convene through Billington’s events to enhance the cybersecurity of the United States and our allied partners. International media have covered Billington’s events, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, Politico, CNN, NBC, C-SPAN, etc. The summits regularly break important news that advance the cybersecurity of our government and critical infrastructure. Exclusive stories resulting from Billington CyberSecurity’s summits include:

• The first keynote by the CEO of General Motors, together with the Secretary of Transportation, at a Billington summit that led to the announcement of the first industry-led cybersecurity standards for the auto sector and the move to autonomous vehicles the day before the Billington auto summit;
• The first full-length Q&A with the then newly named Director of the NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate;
• One of the first public explanations of the “Defend Forward” plan in a keynote by General Nakasone in cyberspace that became a major pillar of the strategy that secured the elections against foreign nation states;
• The first presentation to a US audience by the CEO of the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) who described the mission of the newly formed centralized cybersecurity organization in the United Kingdom, a model followed later by Canada and Australia and is often cited as an exemplar for the US;
• The exclusive announcement by the Secretary of DHS about new cybersecurity standards in the transportation sector;
• A major keynote by the then-President of Estonia describing the country’s efforts at repelling Russia’s cyber advances; and
• The first public address at the same summit by Jeremy Fleming, the head of GCHQ, and General Paul Nakasone, DIRNSA and Commander, CYBERCOM/Chief, CSS.

In 2020, the company successfully pivoted to a virtual event and the last two year’s virtual summits generated record attendance and over 200 speakers from around the world. The events have forged unprecedented partnerships with our allied countries with speakers like the chiefs of GCHQ, the Australian Cyber Security Centre and Signals Directorate, the Canadian Cyber Security Center, the Israel National Cyber Directorate as well as senior leaders from Singapore, Japan, Germany and Kuwait. Distinguished venues where high level networking occur have included:

• The British Parliament;
• The British Ambassador’s Residence at the British Embassy;
• The New Zealand Embassy;
• The Embassy of Canada; and
• The German Embassy.

Past speakers have included:

• The past four NSA Directors and current NSA Director;
• The current and previous Commanders of US Cyber Command;
• The CIO, CISO and Director of the Digital Innovation Directorate at the CIA;
• The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the Current and Previous Director of CISA;
• The President of Estonia; and
• CIOs and CISOs from many agencies and corporations and many more.

For more information about how to sponsor or partner, please contact [email protected] or [email protected].

 

---

Thomas K. Billington

CEO & Founder, Billington  CyberSecurity

Thomas K. Billington is the CEO and Founder of Billington CyberSecurity, a leading, independent education company founded in 2010 with an exclusive focus on cybersecurity education. His summits have featured the last five NSA directors and all the Commanders of U.S. Cyber Command. The summit is known as the world’s leading government summit on cybersecurity with the unique educational mission of convening the who’s who in cybersecurity: the senior leadership from the U.S. government, our allied partners, and their industry and academic partners.

In addition to the annual summit, Billington CyberSecurity produces monthly webinars and partner breakfasts, CyberBytes video insights, innovation roundtables and high-level networking receptions throughout the year as well as a private membership service which convenes senior public and private partners in the format of monthly leadership council breakfasts for knowledge sharing.

Billington has decades of producing cyber events serving the auto sector in Detroit and the private sector in New York. Going back to 1999, Billington launched his first cyber summit at BNA, later purchased by Bloomberg. Before launching his company in 2010, Tom spent nearly two decades producing hundreds of events, publications and articles for four of the world’s leading media companies: Reader’s Digest, Phillips Business Information, BNA and Thomson Reuters. His Billington events have been cited in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, Politico, CNN, NBC, and C-SPAN. Billington graduated with an MBA from Georgetown and a B.A. from Brown University. He is a member of the Metropolitan Club and the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.

William T. (Terry) Burruss

Director of Content, Billington CyberSecurity

William T. (Terry) Burruss As a retired cybersecurity specialist at the U.S. Federal Government Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Terry Burruss provides direction for all content for Billington CyberSecurity. His 30+ years of experience includes working as a Senior Intelligence Service (SIS) officer in CIA’s Directorate of Digital Innovation (DDI) and as Deputy Chief of the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, which is responsible for intelligence collection, analysis, and operations focused on foreign cyber threats to US interests. In these roles, Burruss worked closely with the DCIA, White House, Congress, and senior DOD, FBI, DHS and Foreign officials.

Much of Burruss’ focus at CIA was to move his organization to embrace strategic change and take advantage of future technological shifts such as the emergence of SG and next generational cloud technologies. Throughout most of his intelligence career, Burruss focused largely on challenging national security technical issues and emerging threats with a heavy focus on assessing technological risks and leveraging innovation to address them. Burruss built the Agency’s first combined mission unit focused on understanding and countering the foreign cyber threat. He led the analytic units in both CIA’s Cyber and Counterintelligence mission areas where he focused on technological impacts on strategic national security policy issues and on CIA operations.

Even earlier, Burruss served as a technology developer for the CIA. Some of his early achievements included improving the process by which the Agency disseminates the Presidential Daily Brief to the President, significantly improving the way that the National Intelligence Council drafts their National Intelligence Estimates, and modernizing the CIA’s library. These successes largely stemmed from an understanding of both the technological and organizational changes that needed to happen for impactful change. Burruss has been a recipient of the Rank Award, a National Intelligence Award for individual achievement, and multiple CIA performance awards. Burruss has an undergraduate degree from the College of William & Mary and a Masters of Arts in History from James Madison University. He also serves on cyber advisory boards for Looking Glass and Leidos.

Charles LeGette

Chief of Staff, Billington CyberSecurity

Charles LeGette serves as Billington CyberSecurity’s Chief of Staff where he manages the day-to-day operation of Billington CyberSecurity and collaborates with all executive team members to prioritize business strategies. In addition to this role, Charles manages partner breakfast programs, Leadership Council Dialogues, webinars, and specialty catered events.

Prior to joining Billington CyberSecurity, LeGette served as Assistant Director of Events for American University’s top-ranked School of Public Affairs. There he oversaw the logistics and related activities for over 250 annual events and webinars. Additionally, he produced all programs for the Sine Institute of Policy & Politics, a university initiative to engage its active student body, as well as the worldwide community, through convening high-profile top scholars and field experts for conversations on the world’s most urgent problems and discussing innovative non-partisan policy solutions.

Before his time at American University, LeGette organized events and managed communications, marketing, and program logistics for the Embassy of France’s cultural activities in Washington, D.C. With over twenty years dedicated to event planning, marketing, communication, and audience engagement, he is results driven and has a track record of demonstrating significant growth in audiences, partnerships, publicity, programs, and the development of a broad range of systems facilitating in both qualitative and quantitative advances. LeGette holds a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University and an undergraduate degree from the College of Charleston.

Kristin Ballance

Director of Meetings & Strategic Partnerships, Billington CyberSecurity

Kristin Ballance serves as the Director of Meetings & Strategic Partnerships where she provides general meetings oversight and manages the partnerships for sponsors as well as education and media partners. She has over 25 years’ experience in meeting planning, sponsorship sales and exhibit hall management. Her experience encompasses all areas of meetings management including site selection and contract negotiations, event marketing, hotel and venue logistics, audio-visual, general session production, speaker management, and sponsorship and exhibit hall management.

Prior to joining Billington CyberSecurity, she served as both sponsorship and exhibits manager and meetings manager for various tech companies and trade associations as a contractor under her company Meetings Unlimited, a full-service meeting company. In addition, she consulted and managed events for large associations and prestigious organizations such as Oliver Wyman, the Smithsonian Institution and Georgetown University.

Prior to founding Meetings Unlimited, Ballance served as Director of Meetings for two national trade associations including Health Insurance Association of America (HIA) and Airlines for America (A4A). While at HIAA, she was responsible for all marketing, expositions and meetings where she tripled revenues in a two-year period. At A4A, she oversaw both annual US-based and international events and revamped the departments resulting in an exponential increase in revenue. Ballance is a Certified Meeting Planner (CMP) and IATA Accredited Travel Agent. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a BA in Liberal Arts and Science.