T H E A U T H O R S
Experts in IT Incident Response
Rob Schnepp
Rob's emergency response career spans 30 years in international public safety as a Special Operations Fire Chief, Incident Commander, consultant and published author. Rob commanded numerous large-scale emergencies for the Alameda County (CA) Fire Department, protecting 500 square miles and two national laboratories in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. He has responded on Unified Command/Incident Management Teams to high-profile incidents, including 9/11 World Trade Center, major oil spills, large propane gas explosions, campaign wildland fires, and numerous other large-scale incidents. Rob planned and directed Red Command at Urban Shield, the largest Homeland Security exercise in the United States, as well as full-scale exercises for the Department of Defense in 12 countries across the globe. He has developed risk assessment, incident management and incident command training for Fortune 500 companies, foreign governments, and US national laboratories. Rob Schnepp now studies the economics and organizational dynamics of incident response in modern technology systems. |
Ron Vidal
Ron’s corporate career spans 35 years as a senior executive in critical infrastructure including metro/long haul/subsea fiber optic networks, data centers, oil & gas, power systems and capital markets. Ron was a senior executive at Level 3 Communication (operates 16,000 mile international metro, long haul and transoceanic fiber optic Tier 1 backbone network), UUNet Technologies (largest Tier 1 Internet Service Provider (ISP) when acquired by MFS), MFS Communications (operated 38 metro fiber networks in U.S. and Europe, acquired by Worldcom) and Kiewit Construction (3rd largest U.S. construction contractor). He led technical and operational due diligence teams on over $19 billion of telecommunications and Internet Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) transactions. He developed and delivered key messaging during the movement of $14 billion across 10 international roadshows and 8 trading desks. He managed relationships with 21 sell-side research analysts and 25 of Level 3’s largest shareholders and bondholders. Ron has presented at conferences sponsored by Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, UBS, Oppenheimer and others, and has been quoted in Business Week, USA Today and numerous trade publications. He led Level 3 Communications in New York City after the 9/11, and served on the New York City Task Force on Network Reliability. Ron has advocated technology public policy to members of the United States Congress, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He testified before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet on E-911 and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) policy. |