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Cybersecurity Challenges for Manufacturers, Brought to You by AI

AI boosts efficiency and ROI in manufacturing—but also exposes critical vulnerabilities. Many OT systems weren’t designed for networked AI environments, making them prime targets for costly cyberattacks in today’s evolving threat landscape.

August 28, 2025

12:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM CT / 9:00 AM PT / 5:00 PM GMT

Duration: 60  minutes

Sponsor: Integris

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Summary

The advent of artificial intelligence in manufacturing has brought about many efficiency gains and benefits such as better ROI for manufacturers. But AI also has opened Pandora’s box of possible system vulnerabilities to costly and disruptive cyber intrusion—and often plant technology, especially OT, isn’t built to be networked, as AI requires, and run in this threat landscape.

Join Smart Industry’s Scott Achelpohl as he “opens this box” for discussion with two special and esteemed guests:

Tim Freestone, chief strategy officer and AI-first strategist with Kiteworks, vendor of a software platform designed to manage and secure sensitive and proprietary data communications.

Speaker

Tim Freestone | Chief Marketing Officer | Kiteworks

Tim joined Kiteworks in 2021 and brings over 15 years of experience in corporate strategy and marketing leadership, including demand generation, brand and market strategy, and process and organizational optimization.

Tim was previously Vice President of Marketing at Contrast Security, a scale-up application security company where he built out the marketing organization globally, modernized and mechanized the team's execution, and elevated the company into a world-class brand. Before Contrast, Tim was the Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Fortinet, a multi-billion-dollar, next-generation firewall and cloud security company. In that role, he rebranded Fortinet and built out the comprehensive go-to-market operations for eight solutions encompassing more than 30 products. Prior to Fortinet, he was Director of Americas Demand, Strategy and Operations at NetApp where he built out the programmatic demand execution for the Americas and optimized operations to ensure effective lead flow and opportunity creation through sales. Before NetApp, Tim co-founded a marketing services agency where he created and led the execution of hundreds of marketing programs for large and small technology companies.

Tim holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Communication Studies from The University of Montana.

 

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