T.E.N. Announces Winners at the ISE® Southeast Awards

FedEx, TSYS honored in first ever tie for Project of the Year

ATLANTA – March 15, 2013 – Tech Exec Networks, a technology and information security executive networking and relationship-marketing firm, honored finalists and winners Thursday evening at the 2013 ISE® Southeast Executive Forum and Awards Gala at the Westin Buckhead in Atlanta. For the first time in the decade-long history of the ISE® Program Series, judges declared a tie in the category for Project of the Year with FedEx and TSYS claiming the top honor.

Michael Rodriguez-Chapman, director of Information Technology, accepted on behalf of FedEx’s “Security Information Consolidation” project, which consolidated security infrastructure from a vendor-solution fragmentation to one trusted partner, providing year-over-year cost savings on maintenance and expense. Moving more than 290,000 employees worldwide from security silos to a cohesive system opened a $230 billion international market share previously out of reach for the transportation and distribution leader.

Jody Lee, senior director of Information Security, accepted on behalf of the TSYS Project, “Threat Management Center,” which merged more than 20 different technologies overseen by shift-work individual consoles into a main channel supervised by a full-time project manager with a team of 20 professionals. Creating the global “one-stop-shop” view across the electronic transactions company allowed threats to be immediately identified and critical data of approximately 9,000 users to be better protected.

“These two projects were both so innovative and comprehensive in scope that the judges felt strongly that the honor should be shared by both teams,” said Marci McCarthy, CEO and president, T.E.N.

TravelClick’s project, “Network Segmentation and InfoSec Vault,” was a finalist for the Information Security Project of the Year Award for its contribution to the field.

This year’s Executive Category Award winner was Dr. Kevin McKenzie, chief information security officer and executive director of the Office of Information Security and Privacy, Clemson University. Stacy Mill, director of Global IT Security, YUM! Brands, Inc., was honored as a finalist for the Executive of the Year category.

As part of the evening’s recognition, Ashley Ferguson, manager – IT Risk Management, Energen Corporation, was announced as the ISE® Southeast People’s Choice Award Winner. The award represents the nominee who best exemplifies information security leadership as voted on by her peers in information security.

The ISE® Southeast awards recognize both information security executives and projects for outstanding achievements in risk management, data asset protection, compliance, privacy and network security. Award winners were selected from the U.S. Southeast region, which includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

About T.E.N. 
T.E.N., a national technology and security executive networking organization, facilitates peer-to-peer relationships between top executives, industry visionaries and solutions providers. Nominated for numerous industry awards, T.E.N.’s executive leadership programs enable information exchange, collaboration and decision-making. Its flagship program, the nationally-acclaimed Information Security Executive® (ISE®) of the Year Program Series and Awards, is North America’s largest leadership recognition and networking program for security professionals. Other offerings include the T.E.N. Custom Programs and the ISE® Industry Expert Advisory Services, empowering IT solutions providers to gain access to highly credentialed IT business veterans’ expertise. For information, visit www.ten-inc.com and www.iseprograms.com.

About ISE® Award Program Series
For more than a decade, the Information Security Executive® (ISE®) of the Year Award Program Series has empowered security executives and their project teams to Connect, Collaborate and Celebrate. Recognized as the industry’s most prestigious IT Security award program, it has become the most anticipated award program for security executives and their project teams. Winners have included executives and project teams from leading organizations such as Nike, The Walt Disney Company, the United States Postal Service, Schlumberger, Texas Instruments, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Equifax, Comcast, PayPal, Northrop Grumman Corporation, and Nationwide.
Our distinguished ISE® Judges are past nominees representing a cross section of industries, including commercial, government, health care and academic sectors. For this reason, the ISE® Awards represent the best achievements of the year as evaluated by those regarded as the industry's most influential and successful thought leaders. Coupled with a one or two-day executive summit, the ISE® Awards are held across the country and Canada in major cities including Atlanta, Dallas, New York, Toronto, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The ISE® Awards Program Series has reached more than 10,000 executives across a broad range of industries and has been a major influence in executives’ careers, knowledge sharing, and the development of peer-to-peer relationships.