Bob Metzger

Bob Metzger is an attorney in private practice. He heads the Washington, D.C. office of Rogers Joseph O’Donnell, PC. (RJO), a law firm which specializes in government contracts matters. Bob is recognized for subject area leadership in cyber, supply chain and related security matters. As a Special Government Employee of the Department of Defense, Bob was on the Defense Science Board task force that produced the “Cyber Supply Chain Report” released in April 2017. He is a co-author the MITRE “Deliver Uncompromised” Report, released in August 2018, which has influenced a broad range of security initiatives of the Department of Defense and federal civilian agencies. Named a 2016 “Federal 100” awardee, Federal Computer Week cited his “ability to integrate policy, regulation and technology” and said of him: “In 2015, he was at the forefront of the convergence of the supply chain and cybersecurity, and his work continues to influence the strategies of federal entities and companies alike.” He represents leading technology companies in several different industry sectors in litigation as well as in regulatory matters.

Richard Wakeman

Richard Wakeman is the Senior Director of Aerospace & Defense for Azure Global Engineering, and is the commercial industry lead for Azure Government, Microsoft’s cloud solution specifically engineered to meet US government compliance and security requirements. He specializes in the Defense Industrial Base adopting cloud services from Microsoft and is the Program Manager for the Microsoft Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Acceleration Program. Richard engages with Microsoft partners and customers end-to-end from engineering to drive adoption of Azure Government, Microsoft 365 GCC High and Dynamics 365 GCC High as solutions within the Microsoft US Sovereign Cloud.

Richard joined Microsoft in 2007 as a developer, identity and messaging expert at the dawn of Microsoft Online Services. Shortly after joining, he was engaged by the Exchange Product Group to lead cloud deployments worldwide for Live@edu as part of the Exchange Labs program, the predecessor of Office 365. He led the charge for integration of MCS and Premier services with cloud offerings, becoming a Senior Architect for the Microsoft Enterprise Services Business Productivity Global Domain Solution Architecture Office. During the decade tenure in professional services, Richard had impact in deploying over 100 million seats into the Microsoft cloud. He deployed the first Microsoft cloud customers, to include the first million seat organization in the public multi-tenant cloud to the first Government Community Cloud customer.

Vijay Takanti

As SVP of Innovation and Informatics at Exostar, Vijay is responsible for the strategy and product road map, design, development, and customer delivery of Exostar solutions. Vijay has more than 20 years of experience in electronic data processing, application design and development, and information security solutions. He joined Exostar through the acquisition of Evincible® Software in 2004, where he was the founder and CEO. At Evincible®, Vijay developed solutions that bridge the integration chasm between business applications and security components, such as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).

Prior to founding Evincible® Software, Vijay served as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the Society of Worldwide Interbank Telecommunication (SWIFT), where he architected the Next Generation of the SWIFT Net architecture. SWIFT is the financial industry-owned cooperative supplying secure messaging services and interface software to 7,000 financial institutions in 197 countries, processing on average an estimated USD 6 trillion of payment messages.

Vijay is recognized as an expert on the evolving technologies related to  identity management and cybersecurity, and he has engaged with a variety of enterprises on these topics. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics and Communications from JNTU in Hyderabad, India; a Master’s Degree in Computer Sciences from the Indian Institute of Technology in Khargpur; and an MBA from George Mason University, Virginia.

Kevin Hancock

Kevin Hancock has over 20 years experience in secure collaboration with distributed teams and partners in highly regulated markets. He has led Sales Engineering, Customer Success, and Professional Services Teams across a broad technology spectrum including Agile Development and DevOps tools and practices; Zero Trust Networking; and Identity and Access Management just to name a few. Focusing on driving adoption, managing change, and helping customers learn, Kevin joined Exostar in May 2021 as Director, Sales Engineering.