This morning, Senior Director of Public Affairs for LexisNexis Risk Government Paul Eckloff, and CEO of Government at LexisNexis Risk Solutions Haywood Talcove, will deliver ISC West 2026’s opening keynote address.

Every security professional knows that protection is never about a single barrier. Doors, credentials, cameras, and controls are only effective when layered, monitored, and reinforced by human judgment. History shows that the most consequential security failures rarely begin with broken hardware; they begin when trust is misplaced, identities are exploited, and human decision-making becomes the path of least resistance. As threats evolve, protection is no longer just about securing physical space, but about understanding how people, systems, and trust can be exploited together.

In this keynote, Paul Eckloff, a 23-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service, grounds the audience in the realities of national security protection. Haywood Talcove, CEO of Government at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, applies the same national-security protection model to the growing fraud and identity exploitation crisis facing enterprises and government programs. He explores how criminals use the same attack surfaces (physical, cyber, and cognitive) to steal more than an estimated $1 trillion annually from public programs nationwide.

Their discussion examines how adversaries probe and exploit gaps across physical access points, digital systems, and human processes to undermine trust and organizational resilience. Drawing on decades of work in national security and alongside federal law enforcement, Talcove and Eckloff demonstrate how public-private partnerships and shared protection principles, paired with continuous assessment and preventive technologies, can help detect exploitation patterns before financial or physical damage is done.

The takeaway for today’s security leaders is clear: modern protection extends beyond the perimeter. Security succeeds when organizations protect not only places and systems, but the people, identities, and trust decisions at the center of every operation.

Attend the keynote today at 9 a.m. at the Main Stage (Venetian Ballroom F).