Setting the Stage for the Security Transformation Playbook with Erick Rudiak

[00:00:00] Erick Rudiak: I think what I'd love for people to think about this series is the spirit of camaraderie and the spirit of community that has always been there and information security. And I think one of the really cool things about this series is that it creates a concentrated digestible version of that really enriching, magical experiences, where people who are passionate about their topic. Just to kind of get together and talk. And it's not about getting the predictions right so much as it is about having the conversation.

[00:00:34] Producer: Hello and welcome to security visionaries hosted by Jason Clark, chief security officer and chief strategy officer at Netskope. You just heard from our first guest, Erick Rudiak, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Northwestern mutual.On this show, you'll hear from world-class practitioners and thought leaders like Erick on how they stay on top of the game and networking and cloud security to kick things off. You're about to listen to the first half of a two part discussion on the principles of security transfer. This discussion and the security visionaries podcast are part of a security transformation playbook, a set of new resources from Netskope and some of the industry's most forward-thinking leaders examining the most important issues in security today, before we dive in, here's a quick. From our sponsor,

[00:01:24] Sponsor: The security visionaries podcast is powered by the team at Netskope. Netskope is the SASE leader. Offering everything you need to provide a fast data centric and cloud smart user experience at the speed of business today. Learn more at netskope.com.

[00:01:42] Producer: Without further ado, let's get into episode one of security visionaries with your host Jason Clark.

[00:01:49] Jason Clark: Welcome to Security Visionaries. I'm your host, Jason Clark, CSO at Netskope today. I'm joined by my very special guest, Erick Rudiak air. Okay, how are you?

[00:01:57] Erick Rudiak: I'm great. It's good to see you again. Good to hear you again, get to talk security. Uh, I'm loving it. Thanks so much for the opportunity.

[00:02:06] Jason Clark: Yeah, what we've been, um, we've been talking about this for quite a while, which we'll we'll get into. Right. And so it's nice to, uh, it's, it's nice to seeing this all come to fruition. So we'll talk about that with, uh, with the listeners, but they get started. What, um, do you remember how we first met.

[00:02:21] Erick Rudiak: I think we first met the way that most CSOs are introduced to you, which is they move to a new town. They get a new CSO job and Jason Clark calls him and says, welcome to St. Louis. Um, let's go have dinner. Like let's just talk shop and no, I distinctly remember. I think you were literally the first person who hadn't interviewed me for the Express Scripts. To welcome me to town. Uh, and then like, I'll always be grateful for that. And you were very welcoming,

[00:02:50] Jason Clark: I think, uh, we grabbed sushi. It was sushi, wasn't it?

[00:02:52] Erick Rudiak: You probably offered steak and I redirected, I countered with sushi. Um, and that I can, that that began a long tradition of you and me disagreeing.

[00:03:03] Jason Clark: Agreeing to disagree on lots of topics. Um, and that was probably, what year was that

[00:03:09] Erick Rudiak: That would have been early in 2011 that we met.

[00:03:11] Jason Clark: Wow. That's crazy.

[00:03:14] So tell me, you know, tell us a little bit about, about your journey, right? What got you to the CTO role that you're in now and just, you know, a little bit about that.

[00:03:24] Erick Rudiak: I mean when I think about my, uh, certainly my paths into information risk, I had a number of times in my career where I was fortunate to be both at the right place at the right time and to make the right friends. And so my journey into information risk kind of started in the summer of 1997. I was working at Hewitt Associates, uh, and we had decided that we were not going to be outpaced by our competition to put 401k self-service onto the internet. And this was the time when we were building internet technologies from whole cloth. So, you know, Java middleware was still a nascent and emerging technology. Uh, I remember. Doing performance testing and realizing the day of launch that we needed, SSL accelerators, and, uh, having rainbow technologies drop ship us a couple of like two you high crypto boxes that just generated random numbers really fast. Cause you know, we were just asking for P and P prime and Q and Q prime nonstop on launch. But at the end of that Amazing project, which launched a number of careers, including the current CIO of CVS was, uh, was part of that project team. And the CTO at Hewitt appr