Privately held dedicated web hosting company, The Planet, recently hosted the Techxans quarterly CIO speakers forum, at its international headquarters, in Houston.

''IT Compliance and Risk Management: Bridging the Gap on Governance, Risk and Compliance'' - featured leaders who provided advice and counsel from their own experiences in developing compliance frameworks for their organizations.

The event's featured speakers included Craig Mullins, corporate technologist for Neon Enterprise Software, and Nick Ignatiev, systems engineer for Alert Logic. A panel presentation on CIO strategies for IT compliance followed, with panelists from IBM, BJ Services, Access Sciences and Texas Children’s Hospital.

Steve Kahan, Vice President of Marketing and Product Management with The Planet noted, ''Compliance continues to frame discussions inside every organization, whether publicly traded or privately held. We use our facilities to host educational forums that benefit our community and the businesses that operate here. We welcome the Techxans organization as they work to provide thought leadership and information topical to the challenges faced today by technology companies.''

The Techxans is the largest technology executives network in the state, with more than 13,000 members and chapters in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.

Recently, The Planet upgraded and expanded in its Network Operations Center (NOC), through a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) designation requirement. All employees who work in the company's NOC are required to hold the CCNA, and the staff is now 100 percent certified. Every NOC technician has earned this complex designation, which tests the skills required to install, configure, operate and troubleshoot routed and switched networks. Many on the team have earned even more senior Cisco certifications.

Created by Cisco Systems Inc., CCNA is the industry-recognized standard of expertise for IT network professionals. The rigorous certification requires knowledge of core network functions, including the verification of remote sites in a Wide Area Network (WAN), knowledge of various network types and the basic mitigation of security threats. Additional skills tested include the implementation of Local Area Networks (LAN) and an understanding of wireless networking concepts.