Joe Topinka: I think having an enterprise risk management program is really huge, whether it's formal or not, somebody has to be responsible for risk overall, that it gets to this whole idea that it is a team sport and everyone has a role to play, especially business unit leaders that are making decisions on cloud platforms on their own. They're playing a huge role on there. The idea around cybersecurity several years ago wasn't quite where it is now, but the enterprise risk management team has done a really solid effort of elevating the dialog and giving everyone more cognitive and aware that cybersecurity is not just an IT thing, it's a company thing, and it fits into the whole cyber security framework overall.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Security Visionaries. You just heard from today's guest, Joe Topinka, CXO Advisor at Netskope. The responsibility of cybersecurity doesn't only fall on the shoulders of that team, it takes all of us working together. Getting folks on board with security begins by fostering relationships across the organization, particularly with IT and business unit leaders. This allows folks to have vulnerable conversations that ultimately help the organization grow. Before we dive into Joe's interview, here's a brief word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: The Security Visionaries podcast is powered by the team at Netskope. At Netskope, we are redefining cloud, data and network security with a platform that provides optimized access and zero trust security for people, devices, and data anywhere they go. To learn more about how Netskope helps customers be ready for anything on their sassy journey, visit N-E-T-S-K-O-P-E.com.
Speaker 2: Without further ado, please enjoy episode 18 of Security Visionaries with Joe Topinka, CXO Advisor at Netskope and your host, Mike Anderson.
Mike Anderson: Welcome to today's episode of Security Visionaries podcast. I'm your host, Mike Anderson. I'm the Chief Digital and Information Officer here at Netskope. Today I am joined by Joe Topinka. Joe, how are you doing today?
Joe Topinka: I'm doing well. Well, better, I should say, I'm on my 11th day of COVID, hopefully coming out of it, I tested positive again today, but there's always another day tomorrow, but doing well, thanks for asking. And thanks for having me on the podcast.
Mike Anderson: Absolutely, I'm glad you're getting back into it, hopefully you'll get that negative test soon so you can get out of quarantine. I know that's never fun.
Joe Topinka: Not at all. Not at all.
Mike Anderson: So one of the things, it's interesting is we... Before we get into this, Joe, you and I met several years ago. I had this habit of when I read a book I really love, I like to reach out to the author and connect, and I did that, and you and I instantly had a great... Some great conversations. I brought you in to talk to the team when I was the CIO with Schneider Electric for the North America business. And you and I have remained friends since then, and so it's just... It's real privilege to have you on here, and especially with just your insight in the industry being a super successful CIO and a mentor to CIOs around the world. So maybe just we start the conversation off me, just talk about your journey and being a CIO and how that came about, and some of the learnings along the way.
Joe Topinka: Sounds good. Well, again, thanks for having me on and it's an absolute pleasure to be with you today and also to be working with you here over the last year or so. My career started many, many years ago in the mid-19... Well, late 1980s... Not '80s. 1970s, early 1980s, there we go. See, that's what happens when you get COVID. And I started off as a software engineer. I thought I would never wanna do anything else but write code. And I did that for a large financial institution, actually it's now FIS, so I spent many years there building software. And I was really fortunate, Mike, in that, our leadership team at the time had a different vision around technology, and since they were surrounded by technologists, they really wanted us to start thinking more like business people, business technologists. And so they sent us to a tailored program, they sent us to Northwestern and we learned about product management, this is in probably 1990s or so. And I was just so fortunate to have gotten introduced to the idea of thinking about my area of business like a business person and not a technologist. And so I started thinking about markets and customers and value proposition and things that were, in my past life, pretty foreign to me, and I just really glommed on to it, and one thing led to another, and I got my first CIO opportunity with the bank in New York in Manhattan.
Joe Topinka: And it was just so game-changing for me, so much fun. And the learnings that I was able to acquire through that experience with my colleagues at Northwestern was just absolutely amazing. I still speak to some of them today. But it was a real eye-opening experience and I've never looked back.
Mike Anderson: That's amazing, the whole business relationship piece, your book around IT, business partnerships and your... How you foster that. Fits perfectly, honestly, with our theme this year around security as a team sport, is technology is a team sport. So what made you say, you know what? I'm gonna write this book and share my thoughts. Talk a little bit about that and the role you've got in the Business Relationship Management Institute, I think it'd be great just for our listeners to hear about.
Joe Topinka: Sure, one of the things that I learned early on in my career is this value of networking and interacting and learning and meeting other people and hearing their stories, finding out what their issues and challenges are. There's so many common themes out there and learning from one another there's nothing better than that. And as I started to develop some techniques around the ideas that I ultimately incorporated into the book, I had a number of people ask me to share them. And so I started doing that and doing some informal coaching kind of my side hustle in a way. And it just grew from there, and a number of people asked me to write about it, and I started doing some articles on LinkedIn early in the early days on LinkedIn. Got some good traction there, and I got this bright idea, I actually didn't get that idea from myself, I got it from other people, my wife in particular, who said you should really put a book together around this, which I thought was ludicrous, like who would ever wanna read a book that I wrote?
Joe Topinka: But that's ultimately what I ended up doing. So I wrote a book on my own experiences, largely coming from the opportunity that I was given at FIS, which was called M&I Data Services at the time. And I learned to share that knowledge about how to run IT like a business, think about it, your product area as a true product, meeting with customers. It's really around relationships and understanding those relationships, especially customer relationships, and seeing how they interact with your company, where the roadblocks are and how they're engaging or not engaging, those are all clues to how you can strengthen the relationship, knock down barriers. And I started to think about how can I, as a CIO, make that a more repeatable process within the organizations that I was leading, and that's what ultimately lead to the book and to the stories that I wrote in the book. Most of those stories are... In fact all those stories are true stories.
Joe Topinka: Many of the names were changed to protect the innocent, and not all the stories I told in the book were perfect. A lot of my learnings have come from mistakes that I've made, and I wanted to share those mistakes and how I course corrected and just share those ideas to help people avoid them, if possible. Obviously making mistakes sometimes is one of the best teachers, assuming you're willing to look at your mistakes with a good self-reflection and honesty.
Mike Anderson: No, I totally agree. You shifted now into the CIO mentors, kinda then the shift, kinda the post-CIO journey now for you. Talk a little bit about that move, and then also when you do that, that advising people, how have you taken and continued to foster that sharing and that thinking and the learnings with others?
Joe Topinka: One of the things that I was taught as a young child, my parents sort of drove into us the idea that each of us has our own value we bring. They were very good about not letting us sort of judge other people. We had seven kids in the family, a mom and dad, so there were nine of us, and dinner was always a fun experience. And four of us, we're brothers, we're all big guys, I'm 6'7" and my brothers are well over six feet tall as well, and I remember there'd be a column of bread there, and then my mom would put it down in about two seconds later, there would be no bread left, 'cause everybody would grab as much as they could. But we learned respect, we learned how to have relationships, we learned how to listen. And those life lessons carried through for me. And I think one of the challenges that I see in the marketplace today is that we're releasing people into the wild as professionals and we don't really spend a whole lot of time on how to teach people how to have good relationships and how to have good self-reflection in terms of your own performance.
Joe Topinka: And so I started thinking about how I can share those ideas and concepts with people, how to have good personal accountability, how to think about yourself and your own performance with honest vision and eyes, clear eyes. And so one thing led to another and that's... I had some good success with that and it helped some people become CIOs, had good traction with it, and I just really enjoy it. It's one of those things that just never stopped giving back, and so I'm just sort of addicted to it and in my late 60s, and I have no intention of stopping. I really love this stuff. And I love helping people. It's just a phenomenal experience. And you asked about the Business Relationship Management Institute. When I wrote my book and released it, the institute was just coming online, I didn't know anything about them, and somehow or another, they discovered my book and reached out to me, much like you did, one thing led to another, and they asked me to participate. I joined some committees, I started listening to what they were up to and one thing led another and now I've been in the board chair for the last four or five years, and I've enjoyed it.
Joe Topinka: There's probably 30,000 members worldwide now. They're looking at, I think, crossing a pretty big threshold here soon with 10,000 certified business relationship management professionals. So we're pretty excited about that. So we're watching to see who that person is, and it's a big celebration online when that happens, so it's a great organization. Had a lot of fun with it, and COVID has been a real challenge for a lot of organizations, especially not-for-profits, with the ability to actually do in-person conferences has been sort of a real challenge. But for many of us, we're still making it, still active and people are still coming to our doors and so it's been a lot of fun. And they're all about the same sorts of things: Relationships and people and driving value, and a lot of common themes. So a lot of overlap. If you're looking at a Venn diagram between my book and the institute, there's a lot of common ground there.
Mike Anderson: Well, I know I got a ton of value out. You and I have had a lot of conversations around some of the concepts and agility and how those have come forward, and we can maybe have a whole podcast on that topic on another day. So if we shift our thinking and we come over to security, I can't help but look at the relationship aspect from a security standpoint, and how security leaders need to foster those same kind of relationships, just like all IT leaders have, all technology leaders have, security needs to do the same thing. How have you translated as you... 'Cause you've been directly involved in security now for the last couple of years, how are you advising people on how you take the things from a business relationship management side and IT business partnership side into the security world?
Joe Topinka: That's a great question. And what I'm leaning on are the same principles. There is a trend that I'm seeing where really successful chief information security officers that I've interacted with are starting to think about how they can enhance their business knowledge. So they're beginning to meet more frequently with business leaders around the organization, and in some cases, I see the meeting with external customers, which to me is the holy grail. As a CIO I can't emphasize how important it is, but even as a chief information security officer or any sort of security professional, understanding your customers and how they engage, keeping in mind that you wanna keep their data private and secure, that's your personal brand, that's your company's brand. So just getting that knowledge that helps you to build more effective security programs. And I would add to that the incredibly widening fast speed that we see CORD adoption happening in organizations.
Joe Topinka: We were talking about that 10 years ago, and it was fun to sort of discuss that at every technology professional conference you'd ever go to, that was the topic to your [0:12:18.8] ____... You don't hear about it as much, but what I see now are digital natives coming into the business, and these are people that grew up with an iPad in their hand, so they're completely comfortable with technology. They may not understand all the inner workings like we do as lifetime career IT pros, but they're not afraid to leverage technology, they're not afraid to go grab salesforce.com or any other platform that they think is gonna add value and deliver the right results for them. The thing that I've been really focused in on is helping those business leaders understand that when they go out on their own, we used to talk about shadow IT, I don't hear about that so much anymore largely because the cloud has given rise to the option now. It's very viable for a business unit to go out on their own and procure a platform.
Joe Topinka: I've been working with a number of companies to expand the knowledge of that business leader, to know that they now have a new set of responsibilities that comes along with that cloud platform they just procured. They're now the business owner, they've gotta think about how to secure the data, they gotta make sure their vendors are toeing the line in terms of security protocols, and if there are cyber events they gotta be on top of those and know about them. And so there's a whole set of responsibilities that I've been talking about with those business leaders, and it's been very eye-opening. And in some ways, I think that's the true digital transformation that we're living through right now. It's more around how business leaders are starting to think about cyber security and technology, and it's becoming part of their lexicon. I think it's becoming something that is... Well, it's not optional, they have to understand it, one way or the other, security is not part of the business, and so it's no longer throw it over the wall to the technology group of data analytics now. We, as a business community, have to understand the cyber security aspects of whatever solution we're undertaking and make sure that that vendor is toeing the line, and there's an accountability framework there. So I'm seeing a lot of that, I'm having really good conversations around that in the marketplace. So those are some of the things that I'm seeing and hearing.
Mike Anderson: Yeah man, I think it's a great point. We call it shadow IT, and I've been re-framing that in a lot of our... Some of the things we're writing is really business-led IT. I was with Ryan Talbott over at BorgWarner and he was telling me his CEO told him, he said, "Stop trying to control it and start figuring out how to enable and support it." I think that's the mindset shift we have to get to is technology leaders is our job is not to control it, our job is to help it grow and flourish because in today it's the people closest to the problem are those digital natives now, and they're the best people equipped to solve it, how do we create the right framework and the right... Our own technology mesh inside of our organization so that we can do it, but do it in a safe and secure way.
Joe Topinka: Yeah, absolutely. Gartner last year had published like they do every year, so one of their top 10 or 15 cybersecurity projections or forecasted items. And one of those aspects is just the distributed decision making. And I think it goes right to the heart of this where with cloud and digital natives now running big parts of businesses, you're gonna see less central control over business applications. And so having the right cybersecurity architecture and framework in place and finding the right partners is crucial. And there's another aspect of this that I've been harping on for the last several years, and I think back to Gartner's old design, build, run model, I've kind of reinvented that. I call it the new CIO, and that stands for collaborate, integrate, and orchestrate.
Joe Topinka: So collaborate means with all these cloud platforms that are out there, it's incumbent on you as a business professional to understand those platforms, who's out in the market, who might be able to help you, who might help drive value, and as you select those platforms and you integrate them into your environment, you're not only integrating them, but you're pulling information out of them, you're making them run seamlessly. So there's the collaborate part with cloud and vendor partners, cybersecurity partners, they're integrating it into your environment, making the information available and useful. And then the third leg is orchestrate, making sure the platform runs and that there is oversight and management of that platform on an ongoing basis. So I call that collaborate, integrate, orchestrate instead of design, build, run. And that sort of embodies this whole idea of cloud and how we're doing much more collaboration. And there's a lot more vendor partners in the mix, and finding the right vendor partner is absolutely paramount in your thinking, and that's a new skillset or an enhanced skill set, I think, that has really become critically important for business leaders to know how to manage that vendor partner, select the vendor partner, and work with that vendor partner as you're looking to deliver value and keep your environments secure overall.
Mike Anderson: No, I couldn't agree more. It's unfortunate because I use my own technology, our own technology internally, but what I love is, you know what, I can pull up a dashboard and a new application comes in, and I can simply ask up the question to someone, what problem are you trying to solve? I'm not trying to stop him, I just want to know what problem they're trying to solve, because if they've got that problem, there's probably a 100 other people that have that same problem, or we may already have licenses to the tool they're looking to use, or we may already have licenses to a similar tool. And we can have a conversation about that and see if they looked at it, do they not know about it, because I think we always assume, as IT practitioners, that we publish a catalog and voila, everyone knows all the apps we've got available, but unfortunately, the world doesn't work that way.
Joe Topinka: That's right. Yeah, there's a term I've created too to help IT organizations talk about the platforms that they actually manage and own and operate, and oftentimes I find a business unit leader who's procured that cloud platform, gets themselves into trouble and they ask IT for help. So I created this notion of advocated systems, so those are sanctioned platforms that are owned by the IT organization website, and the company has approved those platforms and asked IT to provide those services on an ongoing basis.
Joe Topinka: So when a business unit leader does something out on their own, that's not necessarily an advocated platform. It could become one, especially if you look at all aspects of managing it, and oftentimes, business unit leaders don't really wanna, ultimately, at the end of the day, manage the vendor or experts at that in IT, and I see that transition happening in some instances now where a business unit leader went out on their own, procured a platform and now is asking IT to pick up at least some aspects of it from a cybersecurity operating platform perspective as well as just managing the vendor relationship. So that advocated system language has become useful because it's given IT a way to describe and talk about what platforms they're actually sanctioned to support, and it gives them an opportunity to talk about taking new things on in addition to what they've been asked to do in a business-oriented way versus just feeling like the business units are just dumping new things on top of them, and every time you turn around.
Mike Anderson: Yeah, that's a great one. Often times it happens where the person that actually was managing that platform, that business unit, leaves and goes somewhere else, and then they're like, "I don't know how to operate this thing. Who's gonna take over it now?" Unfortunately, that's a lot for... That's been a lot of my experience in, is that that's when that conversation tends to happen. But I've always said, "Hey, I'd be happy to support it as long as the budget to support it comes with it." Because [chuckle] we don't have endless resources on either side of the house.
Joe Topinka: No, and that's precisely it, I think. That's part of the transformation that happens, sometimes in real time, when you run into those situations where someone's kind of at their wit's end with a vendor partner that either they're having trouble with, or there was a cyber incident or something along those lines where they're just over their skis, don't really know what to do and they come back to IT. And that's when you reach out and grab their hand and say, "All right, let's figure this out together." That's part of working in a cross-team, cross-collaborative way.
Mike Anderson: Totally agree. I think back about something you said earlier in talking about the understanding of the business. And I think as CIOs, we've been orienting ourself for that way. Now it's really become like, if you're not doing that, you're probably not gonna be in the seat very long, 'cause you gotta know the business you're in in order to know how to directly align what you need to be doing. And not just align, but integrate into it and be that advocate.
Joe Topinka: That's right. Yeah, at the end of the day, the company's goals and objectives are everyone's goals and objectives. And so to the extent you can help contribute to achieving them while doing it with operating efficiency and security, then all the better. And that's the thing I think some business leaders are beginning to see, is that IT isn't necessarily a bad thing. [chuckle] We actually do add a lot of value. There's still a fair amount of ground to cover before I'd say we're to a point where that's universally true, but I think just the nature of the world and the cloud environments that we have, I think that's accelerating. And I think it's a good thing overall.
Mike Anderson: For me, it's always been you spend the first 90 days not just learning your team, but more importantly, learning the business you're in. Because I think one of the traps that all technology leaders fall into CIOs, CISOs, you name it is, "I did this here, so it must work there too." And so you go to your new organization, you take whatever blueprint you had at the previous organization, you bring it to the next one, but every business... Each business is different and they've got different business models, different go-to markets. And if you don't understand that business, you could very easily break things that are working instead of helping generate revenue and reduce risk and reduce cost, for the organization, you do all the opposite things, which is definitely a bad recipe.
Joe Topinka: Yeah, that's a really good point, Mike. And I've been encouraging cyber security professionals to spend more time in business units. One of the things I like to ask them is, "When was the last time you had a conversation with someone outside of the security team or with the IT leader or with the CIO?" And I'm starting to see more affirmative answers where, "Yeah, I'm actually meeting now on a regular basis." It's not informal meeting, or it's a formal meeting once a month, or once every other month. But I'm meeting with the head of marketing and I'm... This division or that division. I think that's crucially important to build those relationships. So they... It sort of demystifies who you are and what role you play, and you have an opportunity to have a one-on-one with someone where they can ask questions where they may not wanna ask them in a crowded conference room and expose their lack of knowledge.
Joe Topinka: I think that's a really safe way to build those relationships. And I... When I'm coaching, that's one of the things that I really zero in on, and to make sure that there's a regular routine interaction with people outside of IT, and more specifically, within business units and even the board. Meeting with board members to whatever. Sometimes the CEO or President doesn't really like IT, just randomly calling board members, so you certainly wanna clear that with your leadership, but you can actually have conversations with those folks outside the quarterly board meeting. And I think it's really healthy to do that now and then.
Mike Anderson: I can't agree more. And I was in a conversation this week, and it's like a lot of times you get people that wanna go build an app for the sake of building an app. I would have app development leaders go, "I've got this great idea, I wanna go build an app." And it's like, "Okay well, what problems is it gonna solve, and what value are we creating for the organization if we do it? And who from the business unit is working with you on that? And what's the... How's this gonna impact the ongoing profitability? What's the... " So we start having these kind of dialog conversations and understanding that business and the risk. When I think about security, it's really about, "What's my appetite for risk?"
Mike Anderson: Sometimes you got... You have a set of risks where those conversations can be harder conversations because maybe there's not an aligned appetite for risk. 'Cause definitely at a functional level, there may be one appetite, but at the CEO and board level, there's a different one. Because today, if I'm a board member, I don't wanna get myself personally in trouble because we don't have the right security governance in the organization. So it's a... I totally agree with you. Having it in a group session is like shaming the person for not knowing. Having it one on one fosters... Gives the ability to have a very vulnerable conversation with someone, but it all comes around like, "Hey, let's make sure we align to what our agreed level of risk is, and if there's an exception to that, let's make sure that we're all locking hands around that and everyone knows it. So if it comes back in the future that the risk bites in the future, that we didn't consciously, not unconsciously."
Joe Topinka: Yeah, and what you're describing to me is a technique that I've recommended and use personally, where if you're looking to make an investment in cyber security or IT in general, I like to shop that idea around to individuals on the executive team, ahead of having the big meeting. So that that gives them an opportunity to ask questions, probe, challenge you, it might even have you go back and rethink what you're asking for. But that's... Someone called it pre-selling, well, I guess it is technically. That doesn't sound as much... Like much fun. But it's just getting people one-on-one where you're sharing why you think the investment makes sense and why you think it's critically important now, and letting them have that opportunity to interact and dialog with you and ask questions. And I'm glad you brought it up, 'cause that's just an incredibly powerful way to make progress and make investments where maybe in the past you struggled and you bring the big requests to the meeting and usually there's push back 'cause they're all hearing about it, even though they may have gotten the materials ahead of time, often times they're busy and they don't read the stuff. And that's just a better way to do it, I think.
Mike Anderson: No, I can't agree more. And it's interesting when you look at the technology community at large from the vendor side, 'cause this is obviously not the first time in my career I've... People have said, "Oh, you've gone to the other side." I'm like, "Well, everyone's selling something to somebody." But first, I'm working for a technology company. The interesting piece is I've seen the other side. Vendors come in and they talk about their features or their product and the road maps and where they're going. And when often gets lost in that is, "What business outcomes is this driving for me that's gonna help my business be better or reduce risk in my business?" The new concept in security is, it's revenue protection, 'cause if I damage my brand because I have a data breach, that's gonna impact my revenue 'cause I'm gonna lose... I'm gonna churn customers. People are not gonna do business with me unless they feel confident that their data is secure with them. And so that revenue protection is a way to think about security. How do you protect your existing revenue streams?
Joe Topinka: Yeah, absolutely. And there is... Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, there are plenty of very public incidents that you can look at in the marketplace and talk about openly about where companies didn't make investments, like Southwest Airline had a huge outage recently, and it turned out there were some investments that had been made over many years, and so it ultimately led to their system shutting down. And I'm not quite certain what happened with the FAA the other day, but now they're talking about some contract employee who did something to a file, and one thing led to another, and I'm sure we'll hear more about that. But yeah, those sorts of things can... While they're timely in the marketplace, you can certainly, as a cyber-security professional, leverage those real-time, real-world experiences as a way to have a discussion, especially when one-on-one. "Did you hear about that? Did you see what happened?" And draw some parallels in your own organization and talk about what you're doing and what needs be done. It's a perfect opportunity to do that.
Mike Anderson: Yeah, I remember when all the ransomware first started hitting the scene, I would get text messages or emails from CEOs saying, "Hey, are we you okay?" [chuckle] That would be the... I get a forward of the press announcement of something happening, "Are we okay?" No, it's interesting when you think about this, 'cause it's a... A lot of times in security you've got... And you've got varying degrees of accountability and budget responsibility between security, and I really look at it as more like the infrastructure side of the house inside companies. And there's been this natural friction there because a lot of the budget, when the investment started happening in security, the team that got most of the budget cut was the infrastructure team because they had to provide the budget for security, the carve out. And it's... That friction still lives. I think I saw a stat yesterday that 49% of security professionals have a good relationship with their infrastructure peers.
Joe Topinka: Sim, vejo o mesmo fenômeno. Está tentando... Se eu pudesse lembrar dessa frase, verei se consigo inventá-la. Porém, um grupo é responsável por mover pacotes, o outro é responsável por interrompê-los. [risos] Espere um minuto, algo está errado com essa definição. Mas ouvi um profissional de segurança cibernética dar essa definição, e é daí que talvez venha o conflito na infraestrutura, quem sabe.
Mike Anderson: Sim, para aquela equipe de rede, é sempre o momento certo para a inocência, porque todo mundo sempre culpa a rede, tem que ser a rede, algo está errado com a rede. E “Com que rapidez posso provar que não é a rede?” E a primeira ligação do cara da rede é sempre para a equipe de segurança: "Ei, o que você... Você colocou alguma coisa na rede? Você implantou algum tipo de novo agente nas máquinas das pessoas que está causando problemas?"
Joe Topinka: Exatamente, tenho certeza de que ouvi isso mais de uma vez, em particular no ano passado.
Mike Anderson: Sim, é um... E eu acho que é esse trabalho multifuncional. Isso é... Acho que, como CIOs, ainda 80% dos CISOs ainda se reportam aos CIOs, acredito, se você olhar para muitas empresas. E eu acho que está ligado... Isso é algo que, como CIOs, como líderes, eles precisam promover essa interconectividade entre essas duas equipes e esses relacionamentos, e você tem que fazer isso até o fim. Porque muitas vezes o relacionamento pode funcionar bem no líder de operações de infraestrutura e no líder de segurança, que se reportam ao CIO. O desafio é que você precisa traduzir isso até a linha de frente de suas equipes e garantir que todos estejam trabalhando bem juntos. E acho que é aí que temos muito trabalho a fazer como CIOs.
Joe Topinka: Sim, concordo plenamente. E isso me lembra um desafio com o qual vejo muitas organizações lutando, e não existem programas realmente sólidos de gerenciamento de riscos corporativos em vigor, em muitas das organizações com as quais interagi e trabalhei, com uma ou duas exceções . E, nesses casos, é mais difícil ter essa discussão a um nível mais amplo só porque não existe uma função reconhecida. Eu sei que a PwC fez um estudo anual, não verifiquei se eles fizeram isso nos últimos dois anos. Mas penso que cerca de 20% ou 30% das organizações têm programas formais de correspondência de riscos empresariais, e tendem a ser grandes empresas porque têm de os ter. Mas as pequenas e médias organizações não têm realmente um programa formal. E acho que isso é um verdadeiro desafio porque é mais difícil chegar a esse conceito de esporte coletivo quando você não tem uma ofuscação que realmente se concentre no risco e na privacidade de uma forma que realmente melhore isso como conceito dentro das empresas.
Joe Topinka: Mas acho que isso está mudando. E parte do que vejo também, Mike, é que várias seguradoras estão agora fazendo mais perguntas sobre isso. Eles querem saber: "Quão sofisticado é o seu programa?" E: "Você tem um programa e ele reside fora da TI? Você corre riscos corporativos? E quais medidas e métricas você está usando, quais metodologias você está usando e você as testou?" Eles estão apenas começando a ser mais realistas sobre isso, acho que em parte porque vão pagar pelos incidentes e estão ficando mais espertos sobre o que esperam de seus clientes em geral. Mas acho que não... Eu acho que ter um programa de gerenciamento de riscos corporativos é realmente enorme, seja ele formal ou não, alguém tem que ser responsável pelo risco em geral, porque ele... Isso leva a toda essa ideia de que é... É um esporte de equipe e todos têm um papel a desempenhar, especialmente os líderes de unidades de negócios que tomam decisões sobre plataformas de nuvem por conta própria.
Joe Topinka: Eles estão desempenhando um papel importante nisso, onde estou trabalhando com um cliente para ajudar a estruturar um modelo de tomada de decisão distribuída que abrange requisitos relacionados a risco corporativo, jurídico, privacidade e segurança cibernética. Tentando pensar sobre como é essa estrutura, de modo que, se as unidades de negócios estiverem sozinhas, elas usem uma estrutura sancionada de gerenciamento de riscos corporativos para tomar boas decisões. E então há uma metodologia de auditoria confiável, mas verificada para garantir que... Não para fazer o seu trabalho, mas apenas para ter certeza de que as pessoas estão realmente seguindo as regras e as coisas estão acontecendo da maneira que deveriam, e procurando maneiras de melhorar todo o processo. Mas vejo que isso está acontecendo cada vez mais. Uma empresa em particular fez um trabalho muito bom, eu diria o nome dela, mas não acho que eles iriam querer que eu fizesse isso. Mas é realmente legal ver que é uma organização onde a ideia em torno da segurança cibernética há vários anos não estava exatamente onde está agora, mas a equipe de gerenciamento de riscos corporativos fez um esforço realmente sólido para elevar o diálogo e tornar todos mais cognitivos e ciente de que a segurança cibernética não é apenas uma coisa de TI, é uma coisa da empresa. E se enquadra em toda a estrutura geral de segurança cibernética.
Mike Anderson: Aprendemos na escola de negócios. Com o que nos importamos? Preocupamo-nos com o aumento das receitas, preocupamo-nos com a redução dos nossos custos para que possamos reinvestir e tornarmo-nos mais eficientes, preocupamo-nos com a redução dos riscos nos nossos negócios e preocupamo-nos com a permanência estratégica à frente da concorrência. E agora você traz isso para ESG e como podemos tornar uma organização mais sustentável? Muitas vezes é um tema chave no lado ambiental. Eu penso no risco e, se você o enquadrar dessa forma, temos um planejamento de cenários nos negócios por um motivo. Porque se certas coisas... Se os preços das minhas matérias-primas subirem, qual é o risco que isso criará para o negócio?
Joe Topinka: Sim, exatamente. É uma conversa saudável, e os exercícios de mesa, se você conseguir que as organizações os pratiquem, são realmente impactantes. Analisar esses cenários e pedir aos executivos que pensem sobre o que eles fazem em uma situação de resposta real é realmente bastante revelador. Então, tenho visto algumas organizações fazerem isso de forma realmente eficaz, e essa é uma maneira pela qual vi a educação e as lâmpadas começarem a acender. Quando você está vivendo uma experiência simulada e começa a pensar em mercados, clientes, problemas e impactos, as pessoas começam a levar a sério a compreensão da situação na organização e como reagiríamos. Então, eu vi isso como uma forma saudável de promover a ideia de que é realmente um esporte coletivo.
Mike Anderson: Sim, concordo plenamente e você me lembrou disso quando penso que a segurança como um esporte coletivo vai além das pessoas dentro da minha empresa, vai para o ecossistema em que estou, meus fornecedores com quem trabalho. Se eu sou um fabricante e tenho um fornecedor, se eu tenho um fornecedor único, porque estou tentando conseguir um preço muito bom nas matérias-primas, mas esse fornecedor não tem um bom programa de segurança e fica comprometido , isso poderia paralisar minha cadeia de suprimentos. E, portanto, trazer esse risco cibernético para a conversa em torno de sua estratégia de compras é outra parte da segurança como um esporte de equipe. Como podemos ajudar o ecossistema e a comunidade em geral a melhorar?
Joe Topinka: Há alguns anos, fui CIO de uma organização de manufatura de médio porte em Charlotte. É uma empresa que produz e fabrica equipamentos de entretenimento doméstico. Coisas como alto-falantes, amplificadores, TVs, roteadores e switches, pontos de acesso, qualquer coisa que você precise para uma rede doméstica. E construí lá uma plataforma em nuvem que permitiu ao instalador profissional configurar e gerenciar todos esses dispositivos a partir de um smartphone. Então, um dos produtos é um protetor contra surtos, e demos a eles a capacidade, por meio de firmware, de acessar todas as tomadas desse protetor contra surtos. Então, se um cliente ligasse e dissesse: “Ei, meu Roku está congelado”. Ou “Minha Apple TV está congelada”. O instalador, ou a empresa que instalou o produto, pode realmente ir até aquele local, chegar ao protetor contra surtos e desligar e ligar a tomada para colocá-los novamente em funcionamento. E toda aquela experiência em que estávamos construindo firmware incorporado em todas essas plataformas de hardware realmente me deixou nervoso, então contratei uma empresa inovadora de segurança cibernética para vir e levar nossos 10 principais produtos, e pedi a eles que fizessem o que queriam. com eles, para ver que buracos eles poderiam fazer neles.
Joe Topinka: E foi a primeira vez nesta organização que realmente dedicamos algum tipo de esforço conjunto ou concentramos tempo pensando em como protegeríamos essas plataformas. Porque a última coisa que eu queria era que uma dessas plataformas sofresse uma violação e depois fizesse com que a reputação da empresa fosse por água abaixo. Então é realmente uma experiência reveladora, e nós... Eles encontraram problemas e lançaram todo um conjunto de iniciativas de segurança cibernética nas quais tivemos que renovar nossa arquitetura de firmware para que fosse reforçada e, portanto, os kernels não pudessem ser tocados. E inventamos uma forma de fazer atualizações de firmware através da plataforma. E então foi realmente uma mudança de jogo para a organização. Considerando que, no passado, eles não tinham pensado sobre esse firmware e seus aspectos de segurança cibernética e quais eram os riscos potenciais. Então foi uma experiência muito divertida para mim. Eu me senti como um pioneiro na floresta na época em que estávamos fazendo isso, há apenas alguns anos. Foi muito divertido. E eu mantenho contato com eles e eles ainda estão muito, muito focados na segurança cibernética, porque as desvantagens óbvias de não classificar isso têm muitas consequências, então eles fizeram um ótimo trabalho.
Mike Anderson: Absolutamente. Por que não mudo um pouco aqui, quero que você seja um futurista para mim aqui. Então, quando pensamos sobre o rumo que a indústria está tomando como CIOs, talvez esta seja uma questão de duas partes. À medida que avançamos de 5 a 10 anos no futuro, onde você acha que os CIOs gostariam de ter investido? Talvez primeiro, se você pensar particularmente na área de segurança cibernética, onde você acha que eles deveriam ter investido? E do outro lado, a tecnologia em geral?
Joe Topinka: Segurança cibernética em primeiro lugar, eu diria que confiança zero é... Odeio usar essa frase porque às vezes faz com que os olhos das pessoas fiquem vidrados. Mas penso como uma arquitetura de filosofia como organização, se você começar a pensar em confiança zero e como pode implementá-la de maneira eficaz em suas plataformas, sejam elas na nuvem ou não, ou no local. Todo o conceito de fosso do castelo desaparece e você está realmente buscando autenticar usuários em dispositivos e locais. Essa mentalidade, esse conceito e isso... Acredito que a capacidade de uma organização de adaptar esses princípios é uma das maneiras mais robustas e fortes de proteger os dados do cliente e da organização. Então, acho que, como CIO, imagino que se pudesse ver o futuro, provavelmente desejaria ter gasto mais dinheiro e investido mais tempo para levar essa plataforma a um estado de realidade na empresa com a qual trabalho. Porque em termos de tecnologia em geral, acho que haverá uma aceleração contínua da nuvem, da IoT, da inteligência artificial e do aprendizado de máquina. Todas essas serão realidades vívidas para nós, e acho que investir na compreensão de seus dados e saber como protegê-los se tornará uma área na qual, no futuro, espero que os CIOs estejam investindo agora.
Joe Topinka: Em 5 ou 10 anos, não tenho certeza se ainda estarei trabalhando, mas se estiver, será divertido olhar para trás, para o que conversamos hoje e ver como a realidade se desenrolou. nos próximos anos.
Mike Anderson: Eu concordo. E há uma coisa que você disse quando falou sobre confiança zero, acho que é muito importante que os CIOs e CISOs pensem: a NIS publicou um documento sobre a arquitetura de confiança zero e quando você o lê, as próprias imagens se inclinam para um ambiente local. aplicação ou uma aplicação privada. E alguns deles podem viver na nuvem, obviamente, porque quando eu construo em nuvem pública, esses ainda são aplicativos privados. Mas acho que realmente precisamos pensar em todas as aplicações. Portanto, mesmo nesse aplicativo SaaS, preciso aplicar os mesmos princípios de uma arquitetura de confiança zero aos aplicativos SaaS, assim como faço com meus aplicativos de nuvem pública. Porque, na verdade, o console que uso para construir aplicativos em nuvem e hiperescaladores é um aplicativo SaaS. E é preciso ter governança em torno disso, para que você não tenha uma unidade de negócios, voltando ao seu mandato anterior, plataformas defendidas, eu poderia ter uma instância defendida dentro da AWS. Bem, eu quero que as pessoas construam lá, não em suas próprias instâncias desonestas, porque, A, isso não conta para o meu contrato que assinei com a AWS no meu... Não recebo descontos e, a propósito, nenhum dos meus ladrilhos de segurança está lá. Acredito que os profissionais, CIOS e CISOs precisam pensar em todos os aplicativos, não apenas naqueles que residem em seus data centers ou ambientes de nuvem pública.
Joe Topinka: Sim, com certeza. E no final das contas, qualquer aplicativo, onde quer que esteja, ainda faz parte da marca da empresa, e se... Se algo acontecer, ninguém vai se importar se está no local ou não, eles só vão se importar se houve um incidente e talvez os dados tenham sido exfiltrados ou pior. E então eu acho que esse é um ponto muito bom que você está defendendo. E não acho que esse problema esteja ficando mais fácil porque pelo que vejo, há... Todos os dias há outra solução em nuvem e ela está surgindo com mais recursos dos quais as empresas poderão aproveitar.
Mike Anderson: Tudo bem, estamos chegando ao final do nosso episódio e sempre terminamos nossos episódios com alguns sucessos rápidos. Outra pergunta que tenho para você hoje, já que estamos falando de livros. Qual é o livro favorito que você leu este ano e por quê?
Joe Topinka: Acabei de terminar No Ego, de Cy Wakeman. Sou um grande fã de Cy Wakeman há anos, consegui conhecê-la um pouco. Mas o livro dela é realmente sobre responsabilidade pessoal, autorreflexão, é apenas... Isso realmente me diz como treinador e líder, que tudo começa com você como indivíduo. E assim suas histórias são cruas e reais, e as lições que ela ensina em seu livro são lições para todos nós. Então, eu realmente encorajo as pessoas a pegá-lo e dar uma olhada, tem sido uma grande vantagem para mim. Eu realmente acho que a simplicidade de suas mensagens, sua linguagem e seus ensinamentos são muito poderosos. A autorreflexão é um dos aspectos-chave do meu desempenho como líder, pois penso sobre o meu próprio desempenho. Se você conseguir ser bom em auto-reflexão e avaliar honestamente seu próprio desempenho sem julgar, é simplesmente notável o que isso pode fazer por você.
Mike Anderson: Bem, talvez eu precise adicionar esse à minha lista de leitura, parece ótimo. A única outra pergunta que farei hoje é: porque você tem tantas informações e sabedoria nisso, qual foi o melhor conselho de liderança que você já recebeu?
Joe Topinka: Bem, acho que além da autorreflexão, é apenas a ideia de que a liderança começa com você mesmo, começa com você. E há uma definição de responsabilidade pessoal pela qual eu vivo, e ela começa com o comprometimento 100% com tudo o que você faz. E quando você faz isso, isso significa que é provável que você tenha resiliência, e então você assumirá algo, você sabe que encontrará obstáculos, mas encontrará uma maneira de ter sucesso, apesar das circunstâncias. Então, comprometimento e resiliência fazem parte disso, então o próximo pilar é a apropriação, devido aos resultados, sejam eles bons ou ruins. E então o quarto pilar é aprender com isso, tudo isso, então propriedade, resiliência, comprometimento, aprendizado, todas essas coisas, na verdade. Se você vem ao escritório ou virtualmente, seja como for, comece o dia pensando nesses quatro pilares, é notável o que isso pode fazer para mudar a maneira como você aborda os relacionamentos e o trabalho, até mesmo a vida em casa.
Mike Anderson: Esta foi uma conversa incrível. E Joe, toda vez que você e eu nos reunimos, não consigo dizer o quanto aprecio apenas o diálogo. Acho que aprendo algo novo para você cada vez que conversamos, e é isso que aprecio em nossa amizade e no relacionamento que formamos ao longo dos anos. Muito obrigado por ser um convidado hoje. O... Procuro sempre resumir a conversa, é difícil escolher três coisas, mas vou tentar escolher três coisas que ficaram na minha cabeça. Em primeiro lugar, adoro o novo acrónimo, colaborar, integrar, orquestrar, porque mostra que a segurança é um desporto de equipa, e temos de fomentar relações, temos de conseguir essas relações individuais para que possamos ter essa conversa vulnerável para que possamos crescer juntos. Esse seria o primeiro. Em segundo lugar, adoro o conceito de plataformas defendidas. Isso realmente nos ajuda a reformular o pensamento em torno... Da TI paralela à TI liderada pelos negócios, e como fazemos parceria com as pessoas para que não apenas retomemos o assunto mais tarde, quando alguém sair da organização, mas sejamos parceiros do começo. E então o terceiro que realmente escolhi está além da autorreflexão, porque esse apenas... Podemos ter um podcast totalmente diferente apenas sobre esse conceito.
Mike Anderson: Os objetivos da empresa são os objetivos de todos e, ao pensarmos na segurança cibernética, precisamos ter certeza de que a segurança cibernética está integrada aos objetivos da organização como um todo, e entendemos qual é o apetite pelo risco, e estamos ter essa conversa com nossos líderes empresariais para que estejamos todos integrados e trabalhando juntos em direção ao mesmo objetivo unificado. Foi ótimo, Joe, ter você aqui hoje. Muito obrigado por tomar o tempo.
Joe Topinka: Bem, só quero agradecer por me receber, é sempre um prazer e adoro nossas discussões e interações e sempre aprendo algo com você também. Então, obrigado por me receber, eu realmente aprecio isso.
Mike Anderson: Absolutamente. Muito obrigado, Joe. Quero agradecer a todos os nossos ouvintes hoje que estão ouvindo este episódio do podcast Security Visionaries. Sou seu anfitrião, Mike Anderson, CIO e Diretor Digital aqui na Netskope. Tenha um ótimo dia.
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Palestrante 2: O podcast Security Visionaries é desenvolvido pela equipe da Netskope. Rápida e fácil de usar, a plataforma Netskope oferece acesso otimizado e segurança de confiança zero para pessoas, dispositivos e dados onde quer que estejam. Ajudar os clientes a reduzir riscos, acelerar o desempenho e obter visibilidade incomparável de qualquer atividade na nuvem, na Web ou em aplicativos privados. Para saber mais sobre como a Netskope ajuda os clientes a estarem prontos para qualquer coisa em sua jornada atrevida, visite netskope.com.
Palestrante 2: Obrigado por ouvir os Visionários de Segurança. Reserve um momento para avaliar e comentar o programa e compartilhe-o com alguém que você conhece e que possa gostar. Fique ligado nos episódios que serão lançados a cada duas semanas e nos vemos no próximo.
Por que Netskope 
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