Information Technology Services (ITS)

Register for UnITe 2019: a partnership between Ryerson University and the University of Toronto

Published on: April 16, 2019

From May 1 – 3 the University of Toronto (U of T) will host UnITe 2019, a three-day conference for higher education information technology (IT) professionals dedicated to technology, higher learning and the collaborative exchange of ideas. UnITe features a partnership of the Ontario Higher Education Information Technology (OHEIT) conference, the University of Toronto’s TechKnowFile (TKF) conference and Ryerson University’s Cybersecurity Day (RUCD).

U of T is pleased to partner with Ryerson University to help bring cyber security to the forefront of IT discourse. For the past two years, Ryerson has dedicated a full day of their annual IT conference to cyber security. To learn more about UnITe 2019 and RUCD and to register, visit: https://oheit2019.ca/.

“We started a number of major security initiatives at Ryerson and the conference seemed like a great way to help increase awareness and to report back to the community on how we were doing,” says Ryerson’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) Brian Lesser. “At the same time, many university CIOs were wrestling with the same issues I was. So we invited to the conference fellow Ontario public sector chief information officers and chief information security officers who might be interested. To my surprise, people from outside Ryerson started registering and the event took on a life of its own.”

This year’s RUCD keynote will be delivered by the Privacy by Design Centre of Excellence’s Dr. Ann Cavoukian, who is recognized as one of the world’s leading privacy experts. Other speakers include Aruba’s Mike Hyson, Dan Ward of SecOps at Palo Alto Networks and Ryerson University’s CIO Brian Lesser. RUCD will also feature a panel with Chief Information Security Officers Isaac Straley, Colin Couchman and Kashif Parvaiz of the University of Toronto, Western University and Ryerson University respectively.

RUCD at UnITe will also give attendees the opportunity to network with over 1,000 higher education IT professionals from across the country. Social events include a welcome cocktail reception on May 1 and a celebratory gathering at Toronto’s famous Steam Whistle Brewery on May 2.