Troy Schneider, executive vice president and general manager at Billington CyberSecurity, has been at the forefront of news and influence in the public sector technology space for more than three decades. Schneider served as the editor-in-chief at Federal Computer Week and Government Computer News and later as editor at large with GovExec. Now at Billington CyberSecurity, Schneider sees a common theme among the various phases of his career: connecting key players in government and industry to improve how the public sector operates.
On this episode of Gov & Beyond, Troy talks with hosts Luca Pagni and Joyson Cherian about changes he’s witnessed during his years as a leading observer in the government tech community and where he thinks things are heading in the future.
Bringing Together Leaders from Government and Industry
Throughout his career, Troy has been a fixture in the government technology community for decades and a presence at many of the events that regularly bring together leaders from government and industry to collaborate and innovate. “I’ve spent my entire career in the D.C. area working at the intersection of media technology and government in some way or another,” he told the Gov & Beyond podcast. “And now at Billington, [I’m] bringing together people for the conversations that need to happen between industry and government in the cybersecurity space focused on the public sector.”
At Billington, Troy is focused on getting the smartest people in the cybersecurity field to talk to each other about their most pressing issues and to come together to promote solutions to those challenges. That means not only having top-notch speakers presenting at the Billington summits, but also encouraging attendees to initiate their own discussions between sessions. “I was struck – being on the inside for the first time this year – at just how many one-on-one or small group conversations are happening at the summit and how people are forging the relationships they need to solve these problems,” Troy told Luca and Joyson.
You’ll also learn a bit about Troy’s interests outside the office (he’s in a band!) and some of the things he loves (bourbon) and hates (okra). Just don’t tell him you’ve never seen “Casablanca” or “This Is Spinal Tap!”
To hear more from Troy on Billington CyberSecurity’s valuable programs, listen to the full podcast below or read the transcript.
Timestamps:
0:38 – Troy’s career in the government technology space
1:59 – How the government tech space has (and hasn’t) changed
4:28 – The cybersecurity topics that are grabbing everyone’s attention
9:26 – Why the Billington CyberSecurity Summit’s popularity has exploded
14:01 – The value of the new Billington Summit for state/local governments
16:45 – How Billington’s Leadership Council is connecting government and industry
19:46 – Fly fishing, music making, Indiana basketball and bourbon
21:48 – Troy’s favorite movies
23:08 – “Those slimy foods”
24:20 – Best ways to connect with Troy for more information
Transcript
Luca Pagni (LP): Welcome to Gov & Beyond. I’m your host Luca Pagni here with my co-host, Joyson Cherian. This podcast features conversations with the newsmakers and influencers at the center of today’s public sector news cycles from our studio at W2 Communications. Let’s go Gov & Beyond. Welcome, everyone, to the inaugural episode of Gov & Beyond. I’m your host Luca Pagni here with my co-host Joyson Cherian. We’re excited to be joined today by Troy Schneider, executive vice president and general manager at Billington CyberSecurity. Welcome, Troy!
Troy Schneider (TS): Thanks, guys. Appreciate you having me.
LP: Of course, glad that you could join! Troy, you’ve been at the forefront of news and influence in the public sector space for over three decades, and most notably known for your time at 1105 Media and GovExec. Could you start off by telling us a bit more about your background, your career and now your current role at Billington CyberSecurity?
TS: Sure, sure. And Billington CyberSecurity is the newest chapter, I started there this past summer. But really, I’ve spent my entire career in the DC area working at the intersection of media, technology and government in some way or another. And that shifted from time to time. Obviously, at FCW, GCN, it was focused very much on the IT modernization side of things. But before that, I worked on the sort of digitization of media and covering politics in Congress, sort of the traditional Washington world. And now at Billington CyberSecurity, focused on bringing together people for the conversations that need to happen between industry and government in the cybersecurity space, focused on the public sector. But like a lot of places, the lines are blurry and the interactions are many between government and industry when it comes to this space. So at Billington, I work on the content. I also oversee the business side, really helping the founder Tom Billington grow and run the company.
Joyson Cherian (JC): In your time in this space, how do you think the government technology market has evolved?
TS: Oh, my goodness. In some ways, it’s the same as it’s always been. I mean, I go back, this predates my time in the federal IT space, but we used to have a picture hanging on the wall of the first edition of Federal Computer Week, which was 40 years ago. And some of those headlines could still happen today. It was still about procurement challenges, about congressional oversight, about having a properly trained workforce. But the biggest change is how technology went from being this discrete thing, you know, it was literally buying the computers and installing them, to being something that’s just woven into the overall strategy and business of an organization. I mean, technology is now like oxygen in just about every mission that government does and most business operations.
And so you see that in conversations around, can the CIO have a seat at the table and be part of the senior leadership team? Can cybersecurity be baked in at the beginning? There’s just this recognition that it can’t be the tech guys and girls off in the corner doing this. They have to be part of the overall strategy and the core business operations. We see that a lot in the cybersecurity space now, where even just 10 years ago, people were talking about the need to secure the perimeter. And it was having the best firewalls and maybe good password security, but it was really about this kind of discrete security layer. And now, with the push to zero trust, with the push to cloud computing, security has to be sort of layered into every single step in the process. You can’t think about it in isolation, or it’s just not going to work.
JC: Interesting. So it seems as though it’s moved from an asset to the integrated component that is vital to day-to-day operations.
TS: Oh, absolutely. I mean, 20 years ago, very few cabinet secretaries or CEOs were thinking much about their technology or their cybersecurity, unless they were a tech or cyber company. And now that’s a top concern for senior most business leaders. They have to think about it right up there with their human capital, with their budget strategies, with the things that are just essential to make an operation run.
LP: Definitely, and I thought it was kind of interesting that you said that we’re seeing a lot of these topics kind of, I guess, re-emerge from the woodwork almost. I’d be curious to hear, what are some of the topics or themes of cybersecurity that you and even attendees to the Billington cybersecurity conferences are paying close attention to in 2025. But then also on the other side of it, what are some topics that you think people are tired of hearing about by now?
TS: Sure, sure. Well, and for those of your listeners who aren’t familiar with Billington CyberSecurity, we do have several events throughout the year. But the big one is a summit that happens every September and really brings together leaders from federal government, international governments, and industry leaders around cybersecurity. At that summit, the topic that I think answers both your questions of what’s most important and what are people a little bit sick of, all at the same time, is the intersection of AI and cybersecurity. It feels like a game of buzzword bingo sometimes when we’re talking about it, and it’s been hard to have the substantive conversations because it’s moving so fast. And there have been so few deployments that were really far along, that organizations were willing to talk about. But it truly is a transformative issue, both in terms of the tools that it can bring to the security toolbox and to the new threats that it raises for organizations. So I don’t think we’re going to hear any less about AI and cyber over the next year.
Zero trust is still huge. There’s obviously questions about what quantum computing can do and post quantum encryption. That’s getting real fast. It’s still, for most of us, like a little bit of a science fiction conversation, because there just aren’t the real world deployments like in a production environment. And then the part that I don’t think we hear as much about, but is going to become a bigger and bigger part of the conversation, is security around operational technology. CISA, which is a huge player in the cybersecurity space, is charged with cybersecurity but also infrastructure security. And you know, we’re not just talking about securing the data and the computer networks, but really securing the technology that controls critical infrastructure – so the power grid, the water systems, transportation networks. All of this stuff has technology and technology risks deeply woven into the systems. And while people know it intellectually, it just hasn’t gotten the attention that maybe traditional IT cybersecurity has. And so we see a lot of conversation shifting from IT to OT, and I think that’s going to be a place to watch this year.
LP: Those are definitely some interesting topics to keep in mind, especially in 2025 because I was just recently reading an article that, going back to the quantum computing that you were talking about, it’s within the next…I think even it said decades so I’m sure it’s probably the next seven, eight years of seeing that quantum computing technology is
going to get to the level where it can pretty easily decrypt any modern encryption or modern technology. So that’s one that I feel like it’s going to be one of those new topics in three, four years, that it’s going to be the AI equivalent, that someone’s going to go, “Oh crap, we really need this, and we need it today.” And then that’s going to be the new buzzword.
TS: I think you’re right. And in the things that can keep you awake at night if you spend too much time thinking about them, is this risk that all of the data that is currently encrypted and relatively secure will become easily accessed when quantum decryption tech comes out. So there’s a very real concern that bad actors, whether nation states or criminal organizations, can just gather data, hoard it, and then worry about decrypting it once the technology catches up. Now, obviously that data is then two years, five years, six years old. But if you’re talking about personnel records for the entire U.S. government, financial data for a decent chunk of the populace, having that available and decrypted in X number of years is a real worry. And in some cases for some of that data, the horse is already out of the barn. But it just sort of highlights how important it is to focus on this. Find new encryption technologies and standards that will hold up to this next layer of technology.
JC: A moment ago, you mentioned the Billington CyberSecurity Summit, which has grown significantly over the years, achieving record attendance this year. What makes the event so unique, and why do you believe it has become so successful?
TS: So yeah, this was the 15th year of the Billington CyberSecurity Summit. And then we launched a state/local summit in the spring of 2024 right before I joined the organization. And in both cases, the focus has always been on the content and on the conversations. You know, when the Billington Cybersecurity Summit started, it was…I don’t even know how many people, but it may have been in the low hundreds. It may still have been a two-figure audience in year one. It was about getting the smart people in the room to talk to each other about what really matters in cybersecurity. And obviously, it’s grown dramatically. There were some 3,000 people on site this year. So it’s not just the innermost insiders talking to each other. There’s a broader audience. But the focus has always been about having those conversations that matter and giving people the space to share the important ideas and then the space to talk to each other outside of those presentations on stage and really dig into it.
I was struck, being on the inside for the first time this year, just how many one on one or small group conversations are happening at that summit and where people are really forging the relationships they need to solve these problems. And so whether that’s industry to industry, industry to government, government to government, people are sort of seizing the opportunity to have a critical mass of really skilled and focused cybersecurity leaders in one place and and focused as much on talking to each other as they are to the press, to the to the folks in the audience.
LP: I think you hit on a really important part there, because I feel like we constantly are hearing about the cross-sector collaboration that industry and government need to be working together. But there’s also that other important part, which is the interagency connection of agencies that can help one another, but also just within the organization itself or the agency itself, you need to be having those constant open lines of communication amongst one another. Ultimately, you’re working for the same mission. It’s how do you get everyone aligned and communicate to achieve said mission.
TS: Oh, that’s absolutely the case. And government does a better job than it used to but still does a terrible job of talking to itself about things, of sharing even success stories, even like, “Hey, we’ve got this great solution; let me share it so you guys can do the same thing and learn from our efforts,” let alone being willing to open the curtains on a problem and how they fixed it, or maybe the the unexpected hassle. So anytime an organization can create the safe space for those conversations, I just think it’s a huge asset to the community.
And you asked about my career before, that’s another common thread. I mean, I certainly feel that FCW, Nextgov and the other publications in our space have really worked to be a full participant and help government talk to itself about things, not just sort of parachute in and pick at what’s wrong on any given project. And I’m always amazed,because these government leaders are busy. They’ve got a lot of pressures on their time. They have a lot of disincentives to get out and talk, because of congressional oversight, traditional media will all sort of pick things apart if you’re not careful. But the appetite they have to come in and be part of these conversations when it’s really focused on getting the right people in a room and talking substantively, not just running through talking points and giving their standard issue presentation or panel participation, but the chance to really learn from each other, there’s a hunger for those opportunities. And I think that one of the secrets to Billington’s success is being that convener and that broker. But there are lots of other places that’s happening in our community as well, and I think there’s room for more of it.
LP: Definitely. So going back a second, you brought up the Billington state and local event that kicked off earlier this year. I just wanted to get a little bit of extra insight into what led Billington to create this event in the first place. But then also, what should our listeners be looking forward to at this year’s event, since it’s coming up soon, this spring in DC?
TS: Yeah, absolutely, It’s in early March, and it’ll be at the Ronald Reagan Building, just like the federal summit was this year. So we had a theory of the case of bringing together people for the same sort of conversations that we do for the federal summit, really getting the leaders in government to talk to their peers, talk to the right people in industry about the problems they have and the problems they see coming down the pike, and again, just focused on creating space for that conversation with each other. And then the larger audience can benefit from that one thing that we didn’t fully appreciate until the event happened was how important it was to bring the state and local leaders together in Washington to interact with their federal counterparts. Obviously, CISA, the Department of Energy and others do a lot of work with the state and local governments. And those lines of communication are there, but there aren’t as many opportunities as you might think to have that sort of intergovernmental collaboration. And there were a lot of people who said, “Oh, to do a state local event, they don’t want to come to Washington. You gotta go out to [insert big city elsewhere here].” And we realize that if you have the right sort of convening, they absolutely will come.
And there are great events to help the state/local community work on technology issues more broadly. You know, NASCIO does a wonderful job on this and there are others, but Billington, with its deep roots in the federal space, was able to kind of provide the connections to play matchmaker for these conversations in a way that just really, really resonated with people. And so this year, it’s bigger. It’s two full days, and we’re looking forward to getting into some of those issues I raised before: the operational technology, the role that AI can play, and then the things that come up all the time: How do you deal with the workforce challenges? How do you deal with the budget challenges and really be proactive in your cybersecurity, as opposed to trying to bolt it on late in the game?
LP: Awesome. We’ll definitely be looking forward to seeing how this year’s event turns out. And kind of continuing on the thread of creating these areas for discussion between government to government, government to industry, industry to industry, I know Billington also has its leadership councils. Could you tell us a little bit more about those, and what do you have planned for next year’s?
TS: Yeah, absolutely. So the Leadership Council, it’s an annual membership that the companies that are our bigger sponsors take part in. And what that membership gets you is the chance to be part of these small group conversations throughout the year. So about once a month, we’ll hold a breakfast event. We’ll bring in a handful of government speakers. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s two or three, and it’ll be a Chatham House rules conversation, so on the record but not for attribution. It’s not being recorded. There’s not press there, so there’s the chance to really have a candid and in-depth conversation. The government official will speak for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes about what they’re seeing, the challenges they are facing, and then it’s just a conversation kind of like we’re having, except that there’s 25 or 30 leaders from across industry in the room.
And so the value to industry is huge of getting this chance to talk to government leaders in a personal in-depth session and really dig in. But the value to the government participants is really substantial as well, because they get a chance to to hear what industry is interested in, to ask questions of them, and to do it in a way that they’re not talking to just one company, so there’s no kind of access concerns. They’re not on a stage with it being streamed and put on C-Span, where they’re worried about a single line being taken out of context. It’s a chance for a really substantive give and take. And while the summits are great and they’re obviously the cornerstones of our business, I’d say the Leadership Council is my favorite part of it, because those type of conversations just go to my happy place about how do you dig into issues and how do you get the right people together to have conversations that they might not have otherwise.
We’ve done the Federal Leadership Council for, I think, eight years now, and the state/local one is just launching; the very first one, in fact, is happening on November 19. So I think we’ll probably be just in the rear view window by the time this podcast airs. And we’ve got Katie Savage from the State of Maryland, the Secretary of IT, coming in to talk. And we’ll be doing those about once a quarter. We’re starting small on the state/local, and then the Federal Leadership Council has wrapped up for 2024, but the first one will happen for 2025 in January. And there will be nine of those running throughout the year in the run-up to next year’s summit in September.
JC: Troy, we’d love to get to know you a little bit outside the office. We understand you’re a fan of small batch bourbons and Big 10 basketball. What are some of your other interests?
TS: Yeah, well, I guess you should be careful of what you put on your old Twitter/X profile, but other interests…I try to be a fly fisherman. I’m terrible at it, but it’s a good way to get out of the house. I play in a band which I’m less terrible at, but also a good way to to shift gears and focus on something other than work and the news. And I’m an Indiana University alum, so basketball is sort of woven into the DNA. But this year, Indiana football is undefeated, as we now speak, so I’m now, I guess by default, a college football aficionado, although that still feels very, very weird for an IU alum. But those more than fill the time. A couple dogs I try and take for walks, a stack of books I haven’t read, and the usual stuff of my wife and kids, which is great.
JC: Do you have any bourbons you recommend?
TS: Oh, goodness. Bourbons have gotten expensive, and so I’ve always liked the different Knob Creeks and the Elijah Craigs. My brother actually runs a wine and spirits importer business, which is a great job for your brother to have. So I tend to get handed things that are really interesting and boutique. And I’m like, “That’s fantastic.” And then I go to the liquor store and they’re $150, and I never have them again. So, yeah.
LP: They can definitely get pricey. I have to say, personally, I’m a fan of the Knob Creek maple…
TS: There we go.
LP: …It’s been a good one. So if you haven’t tried it, definitely recommend.
TS: Yeah, and it is cliche at this point, but you know, Buffalo Trace is good, good bang for the buck.
LP: Definitely. And I know that we’re getting close to the holiday season, and your answer doesn’t have to be holiday related but is there a movie that you’ve watched numerous times and just haven’t gotten sick of yet? Or even if you would normally, back in the days of having the TV on in the background, that you would stop and watch it, no matter what you were doing in that moment?
TS: Oh, sure, sure. I mean, lots of them. Like a lot of people, I feel like my wife and I watched all of Netflix during COVID. So, we got a chance to reacquaint ourselves with a lot of them. But in the classic movie side, I could go back and watch “Casablanca” once a week, and it would be fine. And then the less classic side, on election night, when it was early, and I didn’t want to be watching the returns and sort of sitting there in limbo and seeing what happens, we turned on “Spinal Tap” for, I don’t know, it’s got to be the hundredth time, and it’s still funny about every 15 seconds through the movie.
LP: So I have to say, I personally haven’t watched either of those. But I will take your recommendation. I will make sure to add those to my watch list.
TS: Yeah, I have to say, Luca, my opinion of you just changed a little bit. We got to work on
that.
JC: Speaking of opinions, something that people have a lot of strong opinions about is food. Is there a dish or a food ingredient that you absolutely hate, not a fan of?
TS: Oh, I like most foods a little too much. And I think there are certain vegetables that I hated for a long time, and the ones you would expect people to hate as a kid – brussel sprouts and okra and things like that. And as I’ve gotten older and realized that it’s just about cooking them right. And, you know, okra is great in gumbo, and keep it away from everything else. But I think that it’s those slimy foods – the two that’s that jump to mind were okra, which is the weirdest vegetable ever, and then sea urchin, which is not really on your normal dining list but I love sushi. But that’s that’s just a bridge too far for me.
JC: We’re gonna have to introduce you to roasted okra. There we get rid of all the sliminess.
TS: That’s right, that’s the key.LP
LP: Awesome. Well, Troy, thank you so much for your time today. If any of our listeners wanted to learn more about you and the work you’re doing at Billington, what would be the best way to reach you?
TS: Oh, sure. So our website is just BillingtonCyberSecurity.com, and they can reach out to me via there or just email at Troy@BillingtonCybersecurity.com.
LP: Perfect. Well, again, thank you so much. And thank you to everyone who tuned into this episode. And once again, Troy, thank you for helping us go Gov & Beyond. Thanks.
TS: Gentlemen, it was a lot of fun.
LP: Thank you for joining us on today’s episode of Gov & Beyond. To learn more about our podcast and hear all of our episodes, please visit us at W2Comm.com/govandbeyond and make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @Gov&Beyond. You can also subscribe anywhere podcasts are found.