Fireside Chat w/Tomás Maldonado, CISO @ NFL

Hello and welcome to our fireside chat. This is the replay and you got here right on time. So thanks for joining and thanks for being a member of our community. We hope you enjoy the rest of the show. So hi everybody. I'm glad you all found us this evening on LinkedIn Live. I'm going to be introducing our lead moderator today. I volunteered to do that for a couple of reasons. One is as we were talking about coming into the new year and relaunching the fireside chat on LinkedIn audio officially in 2023, I actually came in later to this group. I am really thankful that I was able to stumble into this to a couple of these conversations and then was so graciously invited to then start to participate as a moderator for now over a year. But what happened before I joined is that a lot of the people that you see every week moderating this conversation had already shared their stories and I had not heard Tomas Maldonado's story, his origin story. And I would love to have not only for myself, but I thought there's a number of us who came into this community a little bit later, many of you that are listening tonight. So with that, that's kind of the way we wanted to kick it off. I wanted to make sure everybody knows where to find us. We will be on more of a monthly cadence now, but really excited to dig in tonight with, you know, again, with Tomas Maldonado, the chief information security officer for the NFL. So Tomas, it's so weird I'm taking your question. Tomas, tell us a little bit about yourself. What's your origin story? Sure, Katie. Just Katie, real quick, do you want to maybe go around the room and introduce the other Oh, see, this is why I can't be trusted. This is why we need you as our leader here. Yeah, sorry. Yes, what we'll do is we'll go around and do that quickly first. Thank you, Tomas. So I'm Katie Haney, and I am a CISO and a cybersecurity strategist. I've been in the industry for, for now it's almost 20 years and, you know, I have a background in working with the DOD, but now working with, you know, enterprise clients and, you know, really enjoy being a part of the, this space and, and part of this community again, where we get to hear the, the very divergent stories and backgrounds of the guests that we have on the program. As with that, I'll go over to Russell for the next introduction. Thank you, Katie. It's amazing to be back. You know, we were talking earlier, not having it on a weekly basis, kind of missed it. And it's great to be back here and especially being able to put Tomas back into the hot seat. Hey, Russell Eubanks here, been in cyber for a long time, former CISO for the Atlanta Fed and last three years been running my company, security ever after teach SANS, do work with ION, just a whole bunch of cool things. And the coolest thing I get to do is hang out here and get to learn from others and be inspired on a regular basis. And with that, I'd like to throw it over to my good friend, Neil. Thanks, Russell. Looking forward to kicking off the new year on the right foot. Looking forward to engaging with Tomas again. This is Neil Varghese. I'm the Senior Operating Advisor for Francisco Partners, multiple time CISO and the co-author of the CISO mentor. On to you, Octavia. Awesome. Thanks, Neil. I'm Octavia Howell. I am the Chief of Bridges Security Officer for Equifax Canada. I'm so happy to be back. Once a month is more my speed as I'm a board member of Cyber City, Cyber Security Divas, a whole bunch of other stuff, advisory board for CyberX and out of Toronto, Canada and just doing a lot of things. And so this is one of the things that I get filled from is actually hanging out with my friends. And I think I'm going to have probably the most fun here because I get to challenge Tomas Maldonado. If you all join the Fireside Chat on a regular basis, you know he tells the Jag jokes and I bust his chops. So let's get to bustin', Katie. Over to you. Yeah. And we already got one in the pre-room. So we expect to at least get one or two throughout the evening, Tomas. And actually, before we go into your origin story, one of the other things I was hoping you could share with us as we kick this off is the origin story a little bit more of how this community even kind of started. And then if you could kind of go pivot from there into the origin story, I think it would be interesting, again, for those of us who found us on LinkedIn Audio to know kind of where this was born and why and what the mission was when you first started this room on Clubhouse. Sure. Absolutely. And thank you, obviously, our moderators. Thank you for sticking with us and doing this for over the past. We've been, what, two years now, I guess. So we're into two years, if you will. And thank you, everybody, for tuning in and listening to the conversation. Sorry for those who have heard my origin story already. I'm sorry there might be some repetitive items on here, but I'll try to keep it somewhat fresh and new. But the origin story about the fireside chat, that's an interesting one. So I'll try to be quick, but also descriptive enough so that you can get the idea. So you all remember what happened maybe around 2020, where there was this thing called a pandemic. And we all kind of went into lockdown and we were all sort of isolated and restricted from being able to see our family and even talk to our friends. And there was this sort of disconnection to the world, right? So fast forward to maybe about 2021. And during that time period, I remember we were getting ready. It was actually around this time period. We were getting ready for a Super Bowl in Tampa, Florida. And there was a lot of chatter, if you will, amongst our back chat for several of the mods that aren't on the show today, but a lot of the, I'll call them OG mods, where we have a back channel text messaging group chat, if you will. And we're like, hey, what are you guys up to? What's everybody doing? How's everybody getting through with the pandemic? And I remember chatting with them and saying, hey, you know, I'm heading down to Florida. We've got really strict COVID protocols. We're trying not to essentially get sick and knock out any member of the, of the information security group so that we can essentially secure the, the Super Bowl so that our fans and everybody watching who were, I don't want to say dependent, but if you think about during that time period, there weren't, there were sports happening, but there was different flavors of sports happening. Some, some leagues were doing it in a bubble. Some leagues were doing it in one location. Some leagues cut their, their season short and, and played minimal games. And the NFL decided to put on the full season with very strict COVID protocols and, and contact tracing and the like, which I, you know, I believe we were very successful in doing so. And I should probably preface to say, I'm not here really speaking on behalf of the NFL. And so my comments and opinion on my own. So please keep that in mind. But during that time period, you know, with all of our strict COVID protocols to keep us safe and healthy so that we essentially wouldn't knock each other out because we were going to be in very relatively close confinement within the stadium as we work to try to secure the actual event so that fans could then see it. You know, I started to realize during that pre week that we were very isolated. You know, I found myself eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner in my hotel room because we, we couldn't necessarily be with our, our colleagues. We had to take separate car service to, to the stadium and the likes and entering this, this application called clubhouse, which I know we're on LinkedIn. It's the same sort of concept and principle of a drop in audio, if you will. So entering clubhouse, we started logging in the clubhouse and we were chatting with each other. And then what we realized is as just like we're on here. And if I look down, there's about 70 or so people on this conversation right now, people can jump in, listen to the conversation. They can raise their hand, join the conversation, or they could just listen and then go on to another room. And what we realized was that we were all, there were several other security leaders on this call, on this clubhouse call, and we will get on and folks will want to ask us questions, specifically around how to be a CISO, how to be a security practitioner, or they're at different levels within their career. And they wanted to essentially ask questions of folks that, you know, they may not have direct access to because proximity, right? We were all sort of isolated and working in this virtual world. So fast forward, you know, one of the, one of the, one of the guys in the, in the group said, Hey, why don't we do this a little bit more periodically? And I, I remember saying, well, why don't we do it weekly? Do you think we could do a weekly chat? If we set up like a fireside chat, can we do a weekly chat? And they said, yeah, there was about 12 of us or 11 of us at the time. We said, we could do this at least weekly. Great idea, right? We're thinking, you know, a way for us to give back to the community, answer questions, answer those sort of pressing questions around how to do security, how to get into the profession. You know, we always talk about how to build that pipeline of talent, but we said, why don't we build this fireside chat community and see where it goes? And the other reason was, was really because I would get messages and I'm sure my, my colleagues would get, my CISO practitioners would get messages like, Hey, can you mentor me? Can you provide us some guidance and feedback? And we said, why don't we pull all of those people that are asking us these questions and pull it into this sort of fireside chat discussion. And that turned into not only having you all great moderators on joining the conversation and sitting in the hot seat and answering questions, but it also turned into us having close to almost a hundred people or so, because we did this every single Wednesday since, I want to say March of 2021 up until December of, you know, late December last year with really just missing two or three days, I think in that time period. One was Black Hat, one was RSA. I think one we, um, when we may have taken a, uh, the week, the last week off in December to start to spend some time with family, but that was it. Every other Wednesday was us, right? You all that are on now and others that joined us throughout the journey, uh, really having that conversation and really using that as a vehicle to connect, not only with ourselves as they sort of deal with mental health, but also give back to the community. And, you know, the feedback that we've received, I know myself personally and others, uh, and you go can sort of chime in as well. The feedback that we've received has been very, very positive, which is why we kept doing it for every, you know, for so long. So that's the origin story of, of the fireside chat. Uh, hopefully everybody has found it still to be very useful. Uh, I know we don't do it on clubhouse anymore longer. So there's questions around what are the, where are the playbacks? Can we listen to the playbacks of those prior sessions? Well, there was a good year where we didn't actually record the conversation because the platform didn't allow it. And so when we started recording the conversation, uh, early 2022, so last year, uh, we have all of those playbacks, uh, ready to go. And even as we shifted over the LinkedIn audio, thanks to Russell, uh, who's been able to record the sessions, we have all of those playbacks ready to go. And we're, we're finalizing our, our new website. And so that'll be pushed out shortly, uh, which will have all the details. So you can go back and listen to, to those conversations. Uh, and then we'll also share with you a list of all of the guests that we actually had, and maybe we'll invite those guests back and do an encore, uh, performance, if you will, or encore conversations so that we can get those on, onto, uh, onto tape. There's my dad joke for the day, Octavia onto tape if tape exists anymore. Now, so that we can play it back. It's not funny when you're an out for dad jokes, but. All right. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Um, but that's the origin story of the, of the fireside chat. And hopefully that makes sense. And I'm happy to answer more questions on that. Uh, Katie, to your question about me and the origin story about myself, um, you know, I'll say, uh, and I'll, I'll try not to go too far back, but I'll go back enough for you, for you to paint a picture for you all. So who I am and how I sort of, uh, developed if you were in this world. Uh, so I am a, a, a, a son of two, uh, beautiful parents, uh, that were born in Puerto Rico, uh, spent their childhood in Puerto Rico, moved over to the, to, uh, to the mainland, right? Uh, cause we're, we're Americans. Uh, and I say that because there's still people that think that Puerto Ricans aren't Americans and that's just, anyways, I'll leave that there, but, uh, they came over to the mainland and, and grew up in New York city and went to, uh, uh, school in New York city. And they didn't know each other until they, until they met each other in New York. And so those are my parents. Um, they had my sister who is a few years older than me. Um, five, actually five years older than me. She's not on. So I'll say exactly how she is five years older than me. And I'm celebrating my seventh anniversary of turning 40. So, uh, you can do the math there, but we grew up in the Bronx, New York. I am a, a product of New York city, high school, school system, public school system. Even though I did spend early, early part of my life in the Catholic school system and Holy Cross, uh, I also spent four years living in Puerto Rico when I was 10, aged from 10 to 14. But then I came back to New York and did the, and did high school in New York city, in the Bronx, New York. Uh, for those who don't, who, who know the Bronx is one of the five boroughs, it's really four boroughs, no offense to people from Staten Island. I do see one in the audience that I know of, uh, Staten Island is not really one of the boroughs. Uh, but anyways, I, I, I digress, uh, grew up in, in the Bronx and the, uh, and I remember as I was growing up, my dad was a, um, a federal postal officer and my mom was a very stern administrative assistant. And I remember lessons that, that my dad and my mom would give me is don't become a statistic. Don't be a product of your environment. Don't become a statistic, really try to leverage education to continue to propel you yourself and build your, you know, what you would essentially be. And that's advice that I'll say it didn't always resonate when I was younger. Right. I wanted, you know, it was a, even though I was a student athlete, uh, I grew up in that sort of high school world where a lot of my friends, you know, they were just hanging out, right. Just hanging out, just living life, really no sort of a desire to get past their environment. And, you know, to be very transparent, right. I grew up with people that are no longer with us any longer. Uh, they died at a very early ages cause they took a different turn or different path in their life. Uh, luckily for me, that was not going to happen. My dad was not going to allow that to happen being a, being that sort of not only a Korean veteran for, from the Navy, but he also being, uh, you know, very stern and, and working in law enforcement. Um, you know, that was not going to, that was not an option for me. I'll just say, uh, to, to not do well, to not focus on studying, to not, uh, to stay hanging out with those individuals on the street corner. And so, you know, luckily for me, I had, I had that sort of, uh, foundation, if you will, and people within my family that were also in law enforcement to look after me while I was, uh, in and around the, the hood and the, in the Bronx. Um, fast forward a little bit to, to when I started college, I, I stayed local, uh, again, my, my world was Puerto Rico, Florida. I have been to obviously Connecticut and New Jersey and really the Bronx, New York. And that was really what, what I knew. And so I remember when I was looking for colleges and where to study, I found a, I found that I had a real interest in computers very early on with, for my, my, uh, elementary school days. I remember working on an Apple 2SC, I think it was, or an Apple machine. Uh, and there was a program there where we would have to, it was like a little triangle. And I remember somebody told me the name of this, uh, a few, maybe about a year ago and I just forgot, but there's a little triangle and you would sort of type in commands like RT 10, LT 5. And it would basically just draw kind of like an Etch-a-Sketch. If you know what that is, uh, Octavia, if you know what an Etch-a-Sketch is, uh, picture that on a computer. Okay, there we go. All right. So picture that on a computer and being able to, to make the computer draw. And I found, I, I, I really found that very fascinating when I was like in the second or third grade, I think. Um, and so when I got into high school, I remember taking a class that was, it was called Keyboarding 101. And I get into this course and I'm thinking, Keyboarding 101, this will be computers. My dad had already got me a computer when I was younger. I remember it spent, he, I learned how to do a lot of MS-DOS, uh, before there was Windows. Um, and so I was like, this is great. I'll learn how to do computers. And I get into the class and I'm walking and I sit down and there's nothing but typewriters. And I'm looking around and I'm like, what am I doing in this class? I'm in the wrong class. This is not what I expected it to be. I go home that day. This was when I was a high school freshman. I go home that day and I tell my mom, like, Ma, you know, I don't want to be a secretary. No, no offense, Ma. I know you're, you're, you're a secretary. I don't want to be a secretary. And my mother tells me, she's like, I'm not gonna say the nickname that she says, but she's like, you know, Tomas, um, why don't you stick with it? Because you never know where that, where, what that skill will allow you to do in the future. This was before there was like this whole concept about everybody really having a computer that could afford a computer in their house. And obviously the internet wasn't around or anything like that. That skill that I learned in high school, freshman year high school, Mrs. Reed, I, if she's around, you know, God bless her. If she's not, God rest her soul. But what she taught me in high school is one of the best skills that I still use to this day. And one of the best pieces of advice, one of the plentiful pieces of advice that my mom has given me throughout my life that has helped me. Um, so fast forward, I get into college, I start to realize I like doing computers. Uh, my plan was I actually wanted to do a lawyer, uh, legal studies. I wanted to be a lawyer. I used to, for those who know Perry Mason, I used to joke about this with a few of you on the different weeks that we would have a five-side chat. My dad grew up, again, I grew up watching Perry Mason with my, with my dad, with my pops. And I wanted to be a, I wanted to be Perry Mason. When I was in high school, I was the president of my law club, uh, at Aspida. Aspida is a organization for Latino youth, uh, to help Latinos within the New York City area and basically help them get on their path to college and help them with other sort of resources. And so I, one of those resources was starting up a law club. So I was the president of the law club. And my plan was to go to school. Uh, we grew up from very humble beginnings. My parents didn't have money to, to afford for me to pay for, for school. So I was in HEOP. So for those who know New York City and the higher education opportunity program, HEOP, uh, that's a program that allows people like myself who were not very well off, uh, to be able to pay for, for college. And I remember, uh, having to have more than one job. I had actually at one point, my senior year, I had four jobs, uh, just to be able to put myself to school, pay all of this sort of supplemental, um, bills that I needed to pay, uh, to get to school. Um, but I remember while I was, my plan was essentially, I'll use my skill and love for my initial love for computers to get through my four years of college, get out of college, have a job, make some money, and then go back to law school. Well, tell you that I never made it back to law school, but I'm not going to say no, because I'm still, I'm still young, uh, definitely young at heart. Um, and there might be a possibility at some point in time. So I'm not going to say that I would never get back to school to go to law school, but I haven't yet, I'll say. And, uh, and, and part of that reason was because I was, I was broke, right? We grew up poor. And so once you get out of college and you start making some, some money and you start realizing, Hey, I can afford certain things, you know, I started to realize that not only could I afford things that could change my life, but also I could afford things that can change my family's life, right? My, my, my core family. And so, you know, I started to really use my skill for, uh, for helping me, um, better our lives. Right. Um, and then, uh, you know, I'll say, uh, I'll sort of, I'll sort of try to fast forward past college and not go into any more glory detail there, but I'll get into more of the sort of professional side of, of what I've learned. Uh, and then I'll pause in and let you all ask me questions. Um, and if anyone in the audience has any questions, we'll, we'll sort of open up within 30 or 45 minutes of, of me shutting up and drinking some water. But, you know, I studied at Fordham university in the Bronx. I didn't, again, stay close to home. Uh, didn't want to, uh, leave that sort of proximity area in hindsight. I probably should have went to like Columbia or some other school, which I would have applied to. And I was encouraged to apply to, but I didn't, I must've applied to, I want to say over a hundred colleges, uh, maybe not over a hundred, maybe just under a hundred. And you might be saying, well, how can you afford that? Well, the interesting thing when you're broke, once you have one little, uh, waiver that says that you're broke and you can apply to colleges for free, your guidance counselor will apply for colleges for free. And she did, God bless her. So she did. And, uh, you know, I probably should have went to some of the schools that she actually, uh, that, that I actually got into because I was a pretty decent student. I was a B student, uh, had decent SAT scores. Um, but I decided to go to Fordham. I went to Fordham one time for some event, uh, with upward bound. If anybody knows New York city and upward bound or has a come across an upward bound student, I went to Fordham and I was there with one of my high school teachers and he was doing an upward bound program. I wasn't part of upward bound, but I just happened to be there that day. And I fell in love with the New York city, really the Bronx, New York campus of Fordham university. If you've ever get the chance to go there, I really encourage you to go there. You don't feel like you're in the Bronx. You feel like you're in like, I don't know, some other part of the state. Um, there's a lot of greenery and it's very peaceful and quiet. So I went there, fell in love with it and that was my first choice. So I didn't really care what my high school guy was constantly was trying to get me to apply to the minute I got into Fordham. I was like, that's it. It's a wrap. I'm going to Fordham. So I went to Fordham, studied computer science. Um, I learned a lot about programming. I would say I kept the analytical skill and dropped the programming. I never programmed outside of, outside of my four years of college. I realized in my last two years that programming wasn't really going to be my future. My, my vision of somebody that was, that was doing programming. And please don't judge me on this. I didn't have many role models back then, but it was somebody, you know, locked away in a, in a room, jamming away at a keyboard with a little pocket protector. Right. Because if you think about that time period of revenge of the nerds, that's what I grew up with. Right. Watching that. And I was like, I don't want to be that guy. I'm not point index. I'm more of a people person. I like to get out and socialize. So I started taking networking because the internet was starting to evolve. I use some of my programming skill. Again, I know this is not programming, but I used to do HTML web design. It's not programming language for those who really graduated computer science degree know that that's not a true programming language, but I did web design. I realized that while I was doing internships, I took internship at MSNBC. I used to do Brian Williams. Yeah. Brian Williams website, a webpage. I realized very early on that I liked doing web design as a hobby. I didn't like doing it as a full-time job nested tables and all that junk around that time period. This was before DHTML and Java and Ajax and all that good stuff. Um, I realized I didn't like doing that as a profession. I wanted to do more internet. The internet was starting to evolve. I took internships, uh, did several internships while I was in college. My last year, I did an internship at a consulting company called Align Communications, which was still existing in existence today. Um, and what I learned there was they would send me out on jobs to do web design, which was fine. I did like Scientific American and some logos there and whatnot. But I realized that, uh, that I was working with system admins and network engineers. And at the time there were only a hundred CCIEs in the world. And I remember looking at, and we had two, and I remember looking across, um, you know, across the, the, the, the cubicle space and seeing one of them who was always going off to travel. And I was like, I figured I had a conversation with him. I said, Hey, what is it that you do? And I realized I want to do that. I want to travel. I want to get out of New York city, get out of the Bronx and really travel the world. He was going to Japan. He was going to Europe. He was going all over the world to set up the internet, right? This concept of the internet. And I was like, absolutely. I got email at the time. Well, I only got, I used to get like one or two emails a day, uh, a week or a month. Now I get like a million a day, but that was, that was so much fun learning about, uh, networking. And so I thought that's what I actually wanted to do. My, I pivoted, I didn't want to finish and read sort of, uh, I'll say rehash out my, my college career and pick a new major. I wanted to finish my college career in four years because again, I was broke, right? I have four jobs. I mentioned I have four jobs. Here were the four jobs. I used to tutor kids on computer science. Uh, I used to tutor them in C++. I never took C++. I took C when I was in college. So I knew C, but they, they had just switched over to C++ the year after that I finished my sort of, uh, requirement. And they were, and my teacher was like, Hey, you're pretty decent at C and C, and you could probably figure out C++. Why don't you tutor these kids? And I did, I used to tutor kids on C++, even though I never took a course on it. Um, and they did well, by the way, I will add, they did well on the, on the studies. Uh, I worked in the computer lab. So while I was in the computer lab, helping people, uh, get mad at the computer for not saving their, their word documents before they hit print or the computer's just to crash. And I'd have to deal with kids crying all the time. So I'd please get it back. I would do double duty. And I would tutor kids while I was actually working in the computer jobs in the computer lab. So that was two. Uh, my third job was working as a, as a consultant, right. Or an intern, if you will. I had a four year internship at that consulting company. I mentioned online communications. So I worked there in the summer. They liked me. I liked them. My college schedule worked out where I was able to go to work 20 hours a week. And so I was, you know, lugging it into Manhattan to work 20 hours a week or 25, maybe at the time, and then do my, uh, college studies in my off days. And then on the weekends, right? Because there's no, there's no rest for the wicked on the weekends. I was a shift manager at White Castle. Yep. Yours truly. I was a shift manager at White Castle. I used to work seven to three. Uh, I was pretty smart in, in terms of accounting. And I used to be the one that White Castle is a 24 by seven operation. They only closed one day a week for, for Christmas. Sorry. One day a year for Christmas. And I was a guy that would go in on Saturdays and Sundays. I would run the shift from seven to three. And on Sundays I would close and reset the store. So I did a lot of the accounting, uh, and had to do some of the finances there. So I actually had some, uh, background in that because what I forgot to mention was while I was majoring in computer science, I was actually working towards minoring in economics because I saw a flyer at the time that said, Hey, why don't you couple your computer science degree with economics? And I said, that's not a bad idea. Let me do that. And so I, I, I started down that path and then I got to like stats two or something like that. And the class was at like eight o'clock in the morning. I kept getting there late. I was like, you know what, scrap this. And I dropped that. Uh, funny thing is I spent 17 years in finance after that. So after college, I went to work at Bloomberg, uh, worked at Bloomberg for a short period of time as any other college kid that doesn't really, that was like me, where you study computer science, you had an idea as to what you wanted to do, but you really didn't know what you wanted to do. And you go interview for jobs that they all looking for programmers. And you realize I don't really want to program, even though I know how to do it. I found myself working at the health desk, Bloomberg tech support, Tomas speaking. That was my line. I hated it. I loved it. And I hated it. I loved it because it helped me realize that I could do, I can get paid for a skillset that I was able to develop in four years. And I actually did really well at it. I hate, so that's what I loved. I hated it because I always had this little earpiece in my ear saying Bloomberg tech support, Tomas speaking. And it was only really like a 30 minute break. Um, but I, I was able to move up to second level support because I had networking background. And then I decided to leave Bloomberg and went to take a role at a company called Schroeder's. Uh, and I remember it as if it was yesterday. Recruiter tells me, Hey Tomas, I know you want to do network engineering. Um, because again, I wanted to do that CCIE route. I was studying to be a CCNA. Um, I know you want to do network engineering, but I've got this network security offer several opened up. This was 1990, uh, late 98, early 99. Why don't, what at this, at this investment banking firm, why don't you go in and interview and see if you like it and see if they like you. I go away and I interview with the CTO. They like me. I like the company. It was, it must've been like $20,000 more than what I was getting paid at the time at Bloomberg. And just to give you some idea on numbers, Bloomberg was about $36,000, uh, in 1998. So just giving you that, uh, that idea for you, for you folks coming out of college thinking, man, I want to make six figures. I hear you. Me too. At that time, I would have loved to make $50,000, but I wasn't. Uh, but when I went to Schroeder's, it was, it paid me a lot more. And it also gave me the right path of, uh, or it allowed me to learn about security. And so I stumbled into this world of what we call information security or what has been translated now into be called cybersecurity. I stumbled into that world and what working at, at Schroeder's allowed me to do it. It allowed me to, to fine tune some of the earliest areas of firewall management that I did when I was at the consulting company. Uh, for those who know what Sidewinder is, by the way, that's the best firewall, proxy level firewalls are the best level firewalls in my opinion. Then came the stateful inspection firewalls, like the checkpoints and the, and the likes. And then you got your, your Palo Altos, which are also stateful, but also application based, but I digress. I learned how to do TCP IP security. I learned how to hack machines. I learned how to do firewall administration. I became firewall certified, uh, and the likes. And then I also experienced my first level of controversy, if you will. I don't know about controversy, but my first, my first time having to work for a company that got acquired, imagine in your twenties, you work for a company, you're thinking, wow, this is great. I've got my career right on deck. Everything is carved out for me. And then the company sells off the business and you're like, Holy smokes, what do I do now? And so I found myself having to find another job. Luckily for me, Erson Young was in the same building. Uh, um, and Goldman was very interested. Goldman Sachs was very interested in me. I was still of the mindset where I didn't shift from having a career. I was still thinking about a job, right? And, and, you know, happy to talk about a little bit more about that later, but I was still thinking about a job versus a career. And so I was thinking, well, what is my next job going to pay me versus where's my career going to go if I take this opportunity? So I went to Erson Young to work at Erson Young because Goldman Sachs decided to take a long time to hire me. They wanted me to interview with, I don't know, X amount of people and they, it took, you know, five months or whatever. And Erson Young decided to hire me right on the spot. And so I took the Erson Young job, uh, because I didn't want to go work at Sullivan, which was a company or actually for those who don't know that city group now, um, who, um, uh, purchased the, the, the business of shoulders. I didn't want to go work and work Rutherford, New Jersey. So I ended up going to Erson Young. I realized very early on that Erson Young was interesting, but it was a consulting company and it felt like a revolving door. There were several people coming in and out and I found myself constantly trying to interview for jobs, even though I was a full-time Erson Young employee, you still have to get put on other jobs. And, and, you know, I could have been on a very fast track for management, but I decided this wasn't the right, it didn't feel right for me. And so Goldman was still interested in me. I told Eric Kureke, if you give me a few more dollars, I'll go entertain the conversation with Goldman. In hindsight, I think about it and I, and I laugh because Goldman was one of the companies that rejected me because my, my GPA was too low when I was coming out of college, but the laugh, laugh, I guess I got it because I spent 11 years growing my career there and really building their program. But I ended up going to Goldman Sachs, uh, spent 11 years there, as I said, uh, really grew into my skin and into my sort of skillset and really started to think about a career versus a job. Uh, ended up leaving there as a vice president, uh, started off as a, obviously an individual contributor, really focusing on hands-on doing hacking. And, and I used to have a dual boot laptop and the likes and ended up leaving there after creating, you know, big programs for them, namely the data loss prevention program. Uh, I reached the top of my, I'll say, um, of where I wanted to get to at Goldman and decided to go to Chase, worked at Chase for a good four years, um, or close to four years. I think it was three years, 11 months. If you, if you check my LinkedIn and I was the CISO for one of the lines of business at Chase, if you know much about Chase, it was just five lines of business, major lines of business. Chase is about 300,000 people. My line of business was 55,000 people when it was the corporate technology and risk area. Uh, so you have like HR, finance, legal, and all those other departments. Uh, spent close to four years there, worked for really good CISOs. I worked for a really good CISO while I was at Goldman. For those who know Phil Venables, uh, it's probably one of the best CISOs that I worked for my career. I worked at Chase. I worked underneath Anish Pamani, another good CISO. I also worked underneath Anthony Belfury, uh, David Fairman. I'm naming these people because these are people that you probably come across. These are the people that I worked for. Uh, and so I, I was very fortunate to work and be able to learn from these very talented individuals who are still doing really great things in their careers today to this day. And I'm still people that I call upon, uh, to ask questions if, if I need, uh, you know, an answer to a question of something that I may not know, which is, is usually the case. I don't know everything. Uh, and then I decided to leave. I left financial services, went to a chemical manufacturing company, international flavors and fragrances. Uh, decided to take my skillset to a completely different industry and take some bit of personal risk. Happy to talk about that later. Uh, and I went to IFF, spent four and a half years there building the security program from the ground up. And then I decided to come to the NFL, uh, where I've been for the last three years. So I went a little bit longer than I, that I probably wanted to, but I also gave you some more information from what you've maybe heard me say before. So I'll pass it back over to you, Katie, while I take a sip of water. Well, thank you. Yeah. And it certainly did fill in a lot of the blanks, clearly, you know, us spending that much time together, interviewing other people. I did get a glimpse into pieces of this story, but no, I had, I had not heard it really from beginning to end and, um, really appreciate you taking us on that journey with you. And before I pass it over to, to Russell, there's something that I found really interesting. I think I already knew this about you. Um, but, um, as you were, you were talking, I just, uh, you just reiterated something that I've always admired and learning more about you as, as a co-moderator. Um, it was that you started out talking about, you know, the fundamentals and even just that first initial fascination with figuring out you could make the computer draw a line by typing and, you know, uh, commands. And then, you know, also taking that keyboarding class and those fundamental skills. And then the journey that you went on where, you know, even when I can't, you said something like, you know, you're, you're, you're at a point at a line communications where you're like, Oh, now I can travel the world. Um, and then here you are now in what a lot of people, even on this program have said to you is in this dream job of CISO for the NFL, but people often underestimate the journey one has to take to get to what is, you know, maybe in their mind, uh, you know, where they want to get to. And, um, what I really appreciated though, is, is the fundamental skills, the time you spent to have doing the four jobs, the late shift at White Castle, um, you know, the internships, the, the pivoting throughout your career. It's just really inspiring for anyone, uh, particularly I'm mid career, I'd say, you know, and, um, you know, I have a son going off to college soon. Um, and, you know, stories like this are really inspiring because I think a lot of people want to get to that travel the world bit, but they're not doing some fundamental things they need to do, uh, whether it's, you know, professionally or personally or, or whatever it takes to be able to start out, um, in this, in this profession or in life. So thank you again for, for sharing that and filling in a lot of the gaps that I had from, uh, from that, you know, knowing that whole story before. Uh, so with that, I just, Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, no, you're welcome. And, and look, it's, it's like an iceberg, right? You always see that picture of the iceberg where it looks very nice and sort of shiny on top, but you, you forget all of the, the amount of effort and not the amount of effort, but in the iceberg picture, the big foundation that you have. And so, you know, those different opportunities that I, unbeknownst to me at the time, right. Doing keyboarding one-on-one when I was in high school skillset that I use today, right. Being able to type without looking at your fingers, uh, and not look like you're trying to hunt the keys, you know, doing learning about customer service while I was at white castle, try doing, try doing white castle in the Bronx. And I used to work, sometimes I would work night shift where you got people that are coming out of bars, really angry, trying to get their burgers, try, try, try to diffuse that. Right. I know we have Bob on here at one point, try to diffuse that at midnight or one o'clock in the morning, you know, customer service skills. That's really helped me to this day. You know, those different things that those different opportunities that I've been lucky to have, have really allowed me to, to be successful. And, you know, to this day, right. Some people will see me and the first question they ask me is, how'd you get to the NFL? Part of me is like a little offended. It's like, how did I get here? I earned this. Right. But the other part of me is like, let me tell you a little bit more about what it actually took because some people generally want to know. And so I appreciate that you found those, those pieces within that, within my story, at least. And my story is not over. So I'll pass it over to Russell for a question. Yeah. I love that so much. My story's not over. Yeah. I love being here. I love hearing the impact stories we get from people from, from doing this for so long. And it's just, uh, it's a never, uh, it's never a dull, especially this time here, Tomas, to get to kind of turn the tables and get to hear and fill in some stories. You know, you've got a cool job. We talked about it here and how you got there. And, you know, maybe even the envy of being a CISO of the NFL, I think it's pretty, uh, pretty awesome. And as you talked about some technical thing, you made me think about sidewinders. I've not thought about those in a long time. So see and teach me how to do that. Um, and I imagine it's very tempting to stay technical and want to live in there, maybe put your hands on keyboard or go command line every once in a while, but probably, uh, imagine with your job, the need to, you know, engage with the business side of the NFL and engage with, you know, the mission of the NFL. How do you take that balance of wanting to remember the technical things that got you to where you are and then probably to be successful like you are maybe putting that aside in favor of understanding and serving the business? Any, any tips there for some of us nerds who like to stay technical, but consider what's, you know, maybe a day in the life of Tobias? Yeah, no, like that's a, that's a great question, Russell. And I'll say that I realized early on specifically when I was at Goldman that I enjoyed doing the technical stuff, but I didn't enjoy being the person that was only called in to help with the technical stuff. Like I remember being in meetings sometime and I'm like, wow, if I would have been in that meeting with you guys thinking about this, I could have probably helped, you know, I could have added value and help you with a better solution. Not only just don't just call me when, when something breaks or when you want me to break into something, you know, cause I used to do, I was really technical. I used to actually break into wifi and do VLAN hopping and do IPT hacking. And, and, you know, my skillset was more networking and network security. So breaking into networks was, was my core competency. But I realized early on that if I, if I stayed on that path, right. And at Goldman, I used to think about it in two ways. One was the management track or the technical track. If I stayed on the technical track, I wouldn't get called into the meetings to talk about the strategy. And those were things that I enjoyed doing. I enjoyed sort of designing a DMZ, right. I was part of one of the, the, the team where we designed the DMZ that I think Goldman still uses to this day. And so I realized that I needed to shed a bit from the technical and show a little bit more about my short of strategic thinking and planning and organizational skillsets that I, that I bring to the table. And so at first it was a little scary, right? Because I'm mentoring, I'm losing, I'm leaving what I'm really comfortable with to go into something that I may not very, I may not be very proficient in at the time. But it was something that I knew that I needed to do to continue to build my career. And the other piece of that was, I just didn't want to be that guy. I didn't want to be that person that was only called in for solve this niche problem or come in and assess this niche technology area. I wanted to be able to teach other people because I thought, and I still think this, there's, there's a benefit, you know, a piece of gratification. And I know, Russia, you're an educator, right? At the end of the day, you're an educator now working in part of your, your, your day job with SANS, you know, being able to educate other individuals and teach them what you know, years ago, that might have been taboo, right? If I teach this person what I know, they're going to take my job, I'm going to be out of here. I want my team to take my job. I want to build other CISOs. I want to empower my team to do what I can do. I want them to be able to maybe not think exactly like me, even though I do see some of my team members in the audience, or my, you know, folks that work for me in the audience. I don't want you to think like me. But if I could rub off, if anything can rub off from what I'm able to do to you and help you get to that next level and become a CISO, by golly, I'm happy I'm done. My job is, my job is complete. I always wanted to be that person that can teach that next level of people to do what I knew how to do and what I enjoyed doing, which was hacking or breaking into things at the time, again, all legally done within the confines of Coleman, because I didn't want to end up in an orange jumpsuit, right? Don't go to jail, don't become a product of the environment. But that's, that was the motivating factor. And I, hopefully I answered your question. I think I may have lost a piece of it. But hopefully I answered the majority of your question. Now, that was fabulous. It's rare to see someone willing to say, yes, let me help you take my job and work towards that. That's, that's exceptional. And I'd be failing you if I didn't acknowledge and recognize that. I'd also be failing if I didn't stop and throw the mic over to Anil. Anil, over to you. Thanks, Russell. It was a great conversation so far, Tomas. Loved hearing more and more about your story than filling in some of the gaps I didn't know about and some of the paths that we've crossed and philosophy should we share in the approach and trying to be that, you know, that thought leader, right? Not just security heavy, but business heavy, right? And I think, I think, you know, you touched upon it as a great segue into giving back and getting your insights just as this forum, the fireside chat was a vehicle for that. I know you're heavily involved with other groups in advisory capacity. What are those things that have, has pulled you or grabbed your attention? And how are you giving back? So people will have some of those opportunities like engaging further and learn more about the field. Yeah, look, I think there's a few ways that I, that I give back. One, one way, as you mentioned, is in the advisory capacity. So I am contacted, what you realize, and I'm sure you all realize this, but for those in the audience that may not be at this point in their career, what you realize is you stick around long enough, right? I've been doing this for maybe 25 years or so now. You stick around long enough, people start to know who you are and they start to ask you for advice because you've seen a lot of things within the different industries that you've worked in. And so I'm very fortunate to be able to work with startups and other sort of VCs and the likes to, to help provide guidance and shape the, the different products that are coming to market and the different companies that are coming forward with ideas, being able to help them think through how to go to market, right? How to sell their ideas, how to market their ideas to, to meet and solve real business problems. So that's, that's one way that I'm giving back, I think to the community that is a benefit to not only, sometimes it's just a, it's not a benefit to me at all, other than the fact that I'm able to shape a product and maybe leverage it for my, for my day job. But sometimes there is a benefit where they'll ask me to be, to be a former advisor for the company. So it's a, it's a good two way street there. The other way, you know, is, is not only with these fireside chats that we've done for the past few years, you know, this has probably been one of the biggest benefits, I think that I've been a part of in terms of giving back to the community, just because of all of the individuals that I've come across and met throughout this journey of, of doing these fireside chat discussions. Like I remember going to RSA last year and, and, and Black Cat last year and just, you know, bumping into people. It's like, Hey, I I'm on your fireside chat. You know, even today I was at a teammate conference in, in New York and people were like, Hey, it's nice to meet you. I join your fireside chats regularly and it's nice to put a sort of face to it, to a name and to a voice. So, you know, I found that this has been really valuable, obviously mentorship, whether it's formal or informal, I, I'm not going to say that I'm open to having more mentors because I, I, or mentees, if you will, I don't have the capacity. So I try to redirect people to, to these fireside chats, but I do have mentees that I do mentor on a regular basis and I meet with them on a regular basis. And so that's my way of giving back. And then one of the things that, that is, is sometimes, you know, for the companies that I've worked with specifically when I worked at Goldman and when I worked at Chase, there's a lot of community involvement and community service activities. And even now that I'm at the NFL, I just haven't been able to get fully involved and ingrained in that. But I, there was, those were ways where we would sort of, or I would get involved to try to volunteer, to go teach a class about economics, if you will. I remember going to Puerto Rico to do college recruiting. And while I was doing college recruiting, we were teaching a class or teaching resume writing or the likes in my, in my home, you know, my, my parents' home country. Right. And, and, and my home country, even though I wasn't born there, I didn't live there. So I always feel like I'm going home. So those were ways. And then, you know, more formal ways, right. By way of the organizations that, you know, I remember when I met Octavia about a, maybe almost, it's almost two years now, I think. Well, just before we had Octavia on the show, you know, Octavia connected me up with, with her network of friends and a lot of her network is folks that are running organizations like black girls hack, right. The, you know, obviously diversity with, with Larry who's, who's usually on, on these calls you know, those, those have been ways for me to sort of get involved and try to give back to the community. So I know there's more that I can do, but you know, it's sometimes I feel like I stress myself too thin and, you know, I didn't talk about the other aspect of my life, which is my personal life. So my, you know, my wife and my kid, and you know, I got to also spend a lot of time with them. And so being able to do that is, is, it will be very helpful for me longevity wise. But hopefully that answers your question. There is somebody that's trying to ask a question. I'm just going to bring them up to you, but I'll pass back over to you. Thanks Tomas. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing. And, you know, again, I think the points taken for all those listeners out there is when you get the opportunity, definitely take a chance to mentor when the opportunity presents itself and the timing is right for you to do so. On to you, Octavia. Thanks, Anil. I'm going to take it on myself to just do a quick room reset. And so, you know, this is the fireside chat we're on with, with our host Tomas Maldonado. And we are, we have moved our fireside chat from clubhouse to LinkedIn. And we are now doing this every month instead of every week, but hopefully for a more robust conversation. So as you said, we're on with Tomas Maldonado, the CISO of the National Football League. So Tomas, you know, one of the things that every time I hear a story about the, about, you know, the way that it used to be when, when we were initially starting in the career and really, you know, looking at packet capturing and actually tracing wires and, you know, zip drives and floppy disks. And, and for me, it wasn't the, the, the kind of etch a set program, but it was Oregon Trail and where in the world was Carmen San Diego. And so, you know, every time I hear about those stories, I'm, I get a little bit concerned, honestly, about the future, right? In the, in the talent gap that we have. And I'm wondering what we can do as, you know, as CISOs, as practitioners to make sure that, that as we're bringing more, more people into the, into the, the industry that we're also ensuring that they have a fundamental. So I wanted to know your thoughts about just like getting back to fundamentals and how we actually help really get back to the foundation of, of cyber and what we do. Yeah, no, that's, that's a great question. And, and I agree with you, Octavia, right. As we continue to progress and evolve and become more complicated, if you will, in our technology or stack, you know, we, I always say, and if you, if you follow me on Twitter, you'll see my, one of my, I guess, Twitter slogans, if you will, says, you know, focus on the fundamentals. I think it's very important that we do that. And so one of the questions, I'll let folks in on, on an interview question that I ask anybody that I, anybody and everybody that I interview, whether you're coming in for a security job or not a security job, and whether you're more senior to me or more junior to me or anywhere in between, I always ask this question and it's, tell me the difference between, do you understand the difference between confidentiality and integrity? And can you explain it to me? And the reason why I asked that question, and I could ask obviously the, the, the difference between confidentiality and integrity, and obviously tell me about availability. But the reason, and I think, you know, you may know where I'm going with this is because I focus on CIA, right. Confidentiality, integrity, and availability. If the data is not confidential or kept confidential, if it's not, if it's not the same way it was when you first created it. So the integrity has compromised. And if it's not available when you need it, then you're not doing your job as a security professional, in my opinion, right? My opinion, our job is super, super simple. All the adversaries, whatever they are in the world, whatever they're after, unless they're trying to do some sort of physical harm, if they focus on cyber, they're usually focused on trying to compromise confidentiality, trying to, trying to compromise the integrity of information, or trying to ensure that it's not available when you actually need it. If we were to focus on those three fundamental things, our job is super simple, super easy. So I asked that question in my interview as the very first question, maybe, you know, after I get past the sort of small talk around your name and how's the weather and things like that. But I asked that question, because to me, that's the foundation and bedrock of what we have to do and have to worry about when we are doing security practitioners. And if we don't understand that, if somebody that's been doing security for, what, a year or 20 years, doesn't understand the difference between confidentiality and integrity, then we need to start over with that individual and start at that foundational level and build from there. So I don't usually expect, you know, whether they're newly freshly minted college students to come out of college or the likes to understand that, although now I do because a lot of the college curriculum teaches security, although they're not, not all of them are teaching the foundational pieces of the CIA triad. But I do expect you to, at the very least, understand English language and what those definitions might mean. And if you do that, then I can teach you, right? To me, it's, do you understand the foundation or these fundamental things? If you do, great. I can teach you everything else, because now I understand, now I know that we are speaking the same language and we're on the same page in terms of what's really important. So that's how I do it, Octavia. And you could ask just about anybody that's either had an interview with me, and now it's going to be recorded. So everybody's hopefully, they'll be prepared. But that, that's my usual first question. That's, and that's why I do it because I think that's foundation. Absolutely. Always go back to the foundation. So I'm going to pass it back over to Katie. But thank you, Toma. Yeah, thank you. It looks like Lisa, Lisa Beth has been able to join us. And so, Lisa Beth, I'll go over to you. Before you jump into your question, just want to say, just a quick intro as well. As a moderator, just want to make sure everyone knows who you are. Over to you, Lisa Beth. Hey, hey, it's Wednesday, and I'm excited to be here. My name is Lisa Beth Lentini Walker. I, by day, I'm an assistant general counsel for a fintech based out of the Bay Area. And I run a compliance ethics and corporate governance consulting group called Lumen Worldwide Endeavors. And I wanted to say, Tomas, I love the question that you asked, because it's very similar to a question that I ask, which is, what's the difference between ethics and compliance? And those differences in language are really, really important. And we need to understand the nuance between, you know, kind of that Venn diagram. So I'm glad to hear that you're asking that question. And one of the things I wanted to ask you is, I have so much admiration for everything that you do and the way that you give back to everyone. But I want to know, what gets you most excited about the future? And that can be a pretty open ended question, whether it's about like, what you're looking forward to in your future, or what you see for the industry. Wow, that's a, that's a really good one. Nobody's asked me a question like that in a while. Look, I think what motivates me about the future is a few things. One, if I think selfishly about me and my career, what motivates me is that I think I'm, I'm on, you know, some people are climbing that hill, I think I'm probably at the hill on my way down getting ready for to coast into retirement at some point in time. So that motivates me that I'll be out of this fight at some point in time, at least on a day to day basis. And maybe in a different sort of capacity, you know, and that different capacity, I'll put it out there, right, trying to get on a board and be a sort of a CISO security practitioner, or even just a business function leader that has security skill, that understands governance, be able to help and shape the future governance structure of a, of a, of an organization by way of a board seat. Now that's one of the selfishly speaking, that's one of the things that motivates me. Um, the other things, when I think about technology wise and where we're going as a, you know, as a cyber security or an information security sort of industry, I think the, you know, just seeing how artificial intelligence is and the capabilities behind AI, whether they're good or bad or indifferent, just the capabilities as a whole. You know, I remember the days of learning, um, learning artificial intelligence in college. And I remember my, my college professor at the time was very excited about this concept of, of AI. And I remember us in class were like, dude, calm down. Like, really? Like, this is, it sounds like a good idea, but I don't really know. It's a little far-fetched. And we were learning how to do those different languages, right? And how, and how to program a computer do that. So just seeing that take shape over the past, I'll say 10 to 15 years or so, or even, you know, most recently within the past sort of year, if you think about like chat GPT that everybody's been talking about, just seeing that take shape, that's motivating me that, that there is, you know, there is a focus on, on leveraging that technology. And I'm going to say ethically sound and using that for good. Obviously there's always adversaries and things that we need to protect against. Um, but those are, those are two motivating factors. And then just thinking about the, the scope of the industry that I decided to choose or that I not choose that, that chose me, right. That I stumbled into as a profession, just seeing how ripe it is and how much opportunity it's been able to, to give me, you know, I'm thinking about, and when I say opportunity, I'm talking about this young, you know, kid that grew up in the inner city of New York city in the Bronx, New York broke the opportunities for me to have a better life. You know, people would think about like sports as ways for, for kids growing up in the inner cities to get out, if you will get out the hood and make some money. I'm seeing it as the ability to be able to do information security or cyber security and be able to capitalize on that industry on this industry where there's such a shortage of talent. If you could extend, or if I could reach every kid that's growing up in any, any city that has, you know, that has, has not been afforded those opportunities and I can help them see that this is a career path for them to help them get out of the hood, quote unquote, you know, that motivates me. And, and, and the motivation factor is that there's such a shortage of talent, but such a huge opportunity to bring a whole new set of diverse talent into this industry and really give them opportunities to better their lives and better theirs themselves, and also better the actual industry and the community at large. So those are the three things, you know, when I think about it, and I really appreciate that question because you really did put me on the spot and I just gave you that the most candid answer, hopefully possible on that thought. I just love it. And, you know, I have to say, the excitement in your voice is, is apparent. It's just palpable how much hope you have for the future for, for, for your own personal journey, but also for the future that might be available to everyone who is interested in this space and wants to learn and grow in it. So thank you for everything that you do. I'll turn it back over to Katie. Katie McLean Yeah. And I think it's a perfect time to, to mention again, that to anyone who's in the audience, this is your opportunity to go ahead and raise your hand and, and come up and, and be able to ask, but let's put some us on the spot as many times as we can. We have another 28 minutes together. Katie McLean Yeah. And, but feel free to ask, ask your questions. So with that, thank you, George, for raising your hand and, you know, regular, you know, a contributor to the program. George, what is your question this evening? George George Yeah. Hey gang. Good to see you on LinkedIn. Give me a reason to delete. Thomas Thomas. You give a lot. And I think, especially here on LinkedIn, you know, there is Thomas Thomas. And I think there is an unspoken kind of vibe around constant hustle. You know, what certifications can I get? What other skills can I do? What is the side hustle? This, that, and the other. So my question to you is twofold. The first part is how do you currently Thomas Thomas. Relax, refuel, energize. I'm loathe to say recharge because it feels like we're all just like iPhones that plug in just to function the next day. So the first part is what are you doing? I know in the past you've mentioned you had a long commute. I don't know if that's changed since COVID and then you would listen to books, but what do you do that's sort of like multidisciplinary, right? Because it kind of takes different levels of thinking at the level you are. If you were to just sort of drill into technical cyber all day, you may not be as effective a business leader. Yeah, no, that's a good question. So look, it's, I'll say it's shifted over the years. The sort of, what do I do to recharge if you will, or relax? My team will tell you that I don't relax ever. And if you're, and they probably feel like I never sleep because I, even though I try not to send messages late at night, you know, sometimes things just pop up. But the reason why I say it shifts, because when my son was in high school, he used to wrestle and used to do a lot of sports. And so I was always actively engaged and trying to, you know, disconnect and make it to those events. And now that he's in college, you know, his third year in college, studying business administration, business management. If anybody's hiring any interns for the summer, feel free to please ping me. He's looking for an internship. You know, it's a little different, right? I used to do scuba diving, but the pandemic kind of put a kibosh on that, George. So I haven't done scuba diving since 2019. You know, so I would like to get back into doing scuba diving. Now working for, I was gonna say now working for a demanding company. But if you look at my career trajectory, you know, just about every single company I've worked for has been demanding in terms of stress level. So I still have that long commute. And what I do is I still listen to audio books. I'm actually listening to the Will Smith book. I don't think he has a chapter in there about smacking Chris Rock, because I think the book was published before that. But I, but it's actually, if you, if you haven't listened to, or read his book, I've got about three hours left out of 15 hours. It's actually a really, really good book. So much in there that resonated with me. But, so I still have that long commute. I still, I still sort of listen and try to use that as a, as a, as an opportunity for me to continue to educate and grow and learn something new. And I find that I'm starting to gravitate towards more towards learning about more, towards learning more about people's individual journeys and their origin stories, which I guess is probably what attracted me to always saying, asking that first question. But I need to do more. I need to do more for myself, for my own sort of mental health and wellbeing. I need to do more and more of like disconnecting more of, of using vacation days to really take some time off. I'm not doing enough of that. I found myself for last year, getting a little bit stressed out and burnt out. And so I started to, to try to go to bed a little bit earlier. And I'm very, very, very candid and human with you all. Right. You know, this is, yeah, I work for, I work for what may be a dream job for, for many people, but imagine having that dream every single day of the night. It'll probably exhaust you a little bit. Right. And so I don't dislike my job. I love my job. My job is great. I love what I get to do. And I love the people that I get to interact with, but it could take a toll on you if you don't take care of yourself. So I, you know, I started to try to get back to sleeping a little bit early in the day. And then the one thing that I don't usually talk about, but maybe I'll get some DMS on this later. You know, I'm a gamer. I like gaming. There's a game that I played to distress. I, you know, not really call of duty. I don't, not a call of duty sort of fan, but I have played that, but I pay, I play apex legends for those who know, uh, EA, um, I was gonna say EA sports, but the EA company and electronic arts, they make a game called apex legends. So I use that and I play actually, and I obviously play, uh, EA sports football. Um, so that's what I do. It's not the best formula, George. Uh, I need to do more. Uh, I don't meditate or anything like that. I don't, not that I don't believe in it, but it's just not something that I do. Um, but I need to get back to being active. I am, as I mentioned, I just turned 40 for the seventh year in a row. Uh, so I do need to, um, uh, get back to being active and taking care of myself because it'll catch up to you. Yeah. I mean, lucky, lucky number seven, I think you've kind of answered, uh, part two of the question, which was, you know, given what you've learned about that need for yourself, you know, how are you, uh, recommending either your team or younger people who are asking for advice, you know, should I take this? I mean, I, I, I just get this vibe of like constant hustle on LinkedIn. And I sort of worry that if we're thinking about head count and problems in cyber with resources, it doesn't do us any good to have a ton of people come in with super excitement and then burn out five years later. It's not a recipe for long-term success. Yeah. Look, I, I, I try to, I try to tell my team and, you know, maybe we'll have one of my, my, I think they're still in the audience, maybe we'll have them pop up and they can sort of, uh, call me out on this if, if I'm not saying they're, if I'm, if I'm lying, but I try to tell my team to use their vacation days and take some time off, uh, to disconnect them and recharge with their, with their families, um, so that they can avoid things like burnout. Uh, I'm not a person or a leader that, that's pushing my team to take certifications. I don't believe in, not that I don't believe in certifications, but I don't believe in, in pressuring my team to take certifications. We don't get paid by how many certifications we, we, we have in our portfolio of, uh, or in our, you know, and in, in, in what we do, you know, we don't get paid by that. Uh, so I'm not the one that's out there saying, Hey, why don't you have, why haven't you gotten this certification? I do encourage my team to do education, continuous education. Um, obviously if it's, if it's cyber security related or it's my security related and they want to do it, you know, the more the, the, the, the merry, but if it's something completely different and it's going to help them in their career, you know, they, they can take it. I've taken improv classes, uh, you know, improvisational skills classes that deal with acting early on in my career has nothing to do with cyber security, but it helped me to give presentations really well. So, you know, something that, that helps me skill-wise. Um, so that's, I think I'm getting to your question, but I, hopefully I didn't lose the No, no, no. Yeah, that's great. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I love the improv. Irvin. Okay, good. Yeah, I just, uh, sorry. I was, sorry. I was, I noticed that Rose joined the stage as well as Irvin. I wanted to make sure that they knew we were going to them, uh, next. Um, I'll just go in order, uh, Rose over to you. Uh, thank you, Katie. Um, hi, Tomas and, and everyone else. Uh, thank you for, um, putting this together. I have had the pleasure, um, in meeting Tomas at, I think RSA and he kind of called me out and he was like, well, what are you doing, you know, to be a CISO? And that kind of, um, I think I kind of needed that fire, um, which, you know, kind of helped me start thinking about, you know, what contributions I was making, um, you know, to the industry and things like that. Um, so I guess Tomas, one of the questions I have for you is, you know, I think I'm trying to understand how to better get involved, right? Like I'm, I'm part of cybersecurity, but I definitely want to do more speaking engagements. And I think you're, you're really good at talking to people and like, you know, putting them out there and kind of challenging them. So I guess how can I get more involved or what have you done in that space to get more involved in speaking engagements or maybe even writing, um, and, and, you know, maybe talk through some of that. Sure. And, and hey, Rose, it's, it's good to, uh, to see you on here and thank you for sort of joining and asking your question. And, and it was, and we did meet at RSA at one of the diversity events and, and I'm glad that that sort of, you know, fire, if you will, or whatever I said, lit a fire on you. And I know we, I think we're due to catch up at some point in time when I can get past my busy schedule. Um, but, uh, to answer your question, this is me doing the, oh crap. I forgot how question, but no, I think I got it. Uh, to answer your question about speaking engagements and the likes, um, I will tell you that it didn't happen overnight. So I appreciate the, the, the feedback that, you know, that, that, that I'm, I guess, quote unquote, relatively good at it or decent at it. Uh, but it didn't happen overnight. Uh, I remember the first time I actually, the first time I actually had to speak in front of people was when I was at Goldman Sachs and I was doing a masterclass and luckily, or luckily for me, I'll say luckily for me, but unluckily for me at the time, that masterclass, it was basically an hour session that we had to basic, uh, teach or, or talk on a topic to other security professionals and they, and, and it was used to educate, uh, the team on different topics. So I think I talked about it in a wireless or maybe, uh, IP telephony at the time, that that's not the point. The point is it was recorded. It was recorded, you know, with a, with a, with a video and a VCR, a video camera and a VCR. If I don't remember what VCRs are. And I remember, I remember thinking, Oh wow, it's recorded. Okay, cool. I took the video and I brought it home. And when I heard that video or when I heard myself on video, I wanted to like jump out the window. And I'm not really, but I wanted to like re I was like, who is that person? You know, that was the, the first initial feedback that I had about myself. I was like, who is that person talking? And why does he talk like that? Why is he talking monotone? Why is there no like personality? And I was trying to be somebody that I had, that I was not, I was trying to be other people that I thought were good speakers, if you will, or what the model Goldman Sachs employees should speak like. And it wasn't me. It wasn't natural. It wasn't myself. Right. And it wasn't up until a manager of mine, his name is Tom Tom. At the time, his name was Thomas Tom Quinn. For those who know Tom Quinn, I worked for Tom when I was at Goldman. And, and, uh, actually, I'm not sure if I was working for him I worked for him, but I'm not sure if it was the right time. Sorry, I digress. But he gave me this advice. He was like, Tomas, be yourself. He's like, just be yourself, have a conversation, be yourself. And that stuck with me throughout every other speaking engagement that I, that I have. So for better or worse, when you see me, if I'm on a, having a good day or a bad day, however it is that I sound at that point in time of day, I was being myself. I wasn't acting like what I thought people wanted me to act like. And even when I present to the boards and others, I'm injecting my personality into the conversation, into the flow. And what that advice gave me, it gave me the liberty of not the liberty. It gave me the opportunity to recognize that my personality is what makes me better. And it's, what's going to help me deliver a message in a way that's unique to the person listening and unique to me because I'm the one that's saying it. So that's one of the things that, that helped me very early on. And then just get out there and do it and do it and do it, right? Take any, any and all opportunity that you might have to do speaking engagements. Take any and all opportunity that might be doing your way and do it. If you feel uncomfortable at first, you can do a panel. Panel discussions are the best. You don't have to speak the whole time. You go and you share your, your, your voice and then you start to get used to speaking in front of people for when you actually have to talk for an hour and a half and people asking you questions. I'm talking about this, by the way, but that, that's what worked for me, Rose. Uh, hopefully that, that makes sense to you. There are also a lot of formal things that you can do, like there's Toastmasters. I know a few folks that I've worked with in the past that have done Toastmasters. They recommended that early on. I was a little fearful of that. I didn't really want to get that, you know, my ego, I didn't want my ego to get shot down so early, early on in my career, but, uh, Toastmasters out here is really good. So you could try that as well. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for, for answering that question. And, and, um, thank you for, for putting this together. This is great. You're welcome, Rose. Thank you. Well, and Rose, you can always come back every month now, um, and raise your hand. You're always welcome. I will. I will. I promise. All are welcome. So glad you joined our stage tonight. Um, it looks like, uh, we have Pauline join the stage, but, uh, Irvin, uh, welcome, uh, over to you. Actually, actually before, Irvin, sorry, before you, before, can I just say one other thing, Rose, just to, um, on the speaking piece. Um, I was talking to my, my director about this the other day and one thing that I'll be remiss if I didn't say this, this, I learned this late in the latter part of my career when I took, when I took on the CISRO at IFF, I worked for a general counsel. Her name was Ann Schwatt. And one of the things that I was always used to doing while I was at Chase and Goldman and other companies was always doing presentations in a very candid and private improvisational way. And when I worked for the general counsel, she had never managed a security person before. And one of her ways of helping herself be comfortable with what I had to say was forcing me to write down what I was going to say and to be very candid, Rose, and everybody else listening. That's hard for me because I never know what I'm really going to say until I actually say it. But what I learned and what it forced me to do, writing down and structuring my thoughts in a way that made sense for the person that's going to hear what I have to say was very helpful for me for when I presented to the board of directors and the likes. So to this day, I carry that forward where I'm actually writing my talking points. I didn't write anything for this conversation this evening because it's more unscripted. But when I am in very formal settings, I'm usually a little bit more concise and my thoughts are hopefully much more structured because I've taken the time to really think through what I want to say and how I'm going to present it. So that's one piece of advice that has stuck with me and hopefully that helps you as well. Irvin, sorry about that, but over to you. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate the follow-up. Hey, I always like to start by saying thank you to all of the moderators. You guys created a venue that gets people like myself who are entering the field access to people that we normally wouldn't have access to. So thank you guys for that, for all of you for putting this on. I am kind of bummed we're going to once a month just because I don't get to hear your stories. You guys literally created the industry that we're starting in and buried the bodies and hopefully not literally. But so I appreciate that. My question is always this. I'm the new guy. Like I always, I always preface that I'm just entering this field and I'm overwhelmed with the opportunities in this field. Like there's so much knowledge to be had through either certs or degrees or conferences. Where do I begin? Like I know that every time I read a job announcement, I'm like, oh, that's not me. You know, and we try not to feel like imposters. But the question is, how do I go get more knowledge? How do I go get that? I don't have experience yet, but how do I go get more without going to get certs and being a paper tiger, if that makes sense? Yeah. I'm so glad I followed Rose because she's at one end of the spectrum. And I feel like that's a great example of a foil for me at the beginning of my journey. Thank you. Yeah, no, good question. So I'll give you some tips. And I'll give you, I'll give you some tips. So the first tip that I, that I would say is look at, you have to be self-aware. And what I mean by that is look at your, obviously look at yourself, but look at your core skillset and competencies. And you probably have had some opportunities throughout your life so far. So you've had people evaluate you and your skillset and have provided you some feedback and have said certain things about you. What are you organized? You communicate well, you're pretty good at dealing with customer, with interacting with people, you know, anything of that nature. And the reason why I say, look at your, look at, you know, be self-aware and look at those skillsets that you've developed already is so that you can start to piece together. What are the skillsets that are transferable for where I want to get to, right? What are some of the transferable skills that I can leverage to get to my next step and my next level in doing if information security or cybersecurity is, is your desired choice of, of, of field. What can I bring to this new field? There's things that we can't teach you in cybersecurity. I can't teach you how to communicate. I can't teach you how to be interpersonal. I can't teach you how to, how to be, I can teach you a little bit about how to be organized, but you're not going to go get a certification on how to develop interpersonal skills and communicate or interact with people. So look at those skillsets that you bring, right? And then look at the, then you start to piece together a plan to say, all right, I like doing this. What is it that you like doing technology, information security related? And once you start to piece that together, you can then start to piece together. All right. Do I like doing more technical stuff? So I like break, I like messing with computers, logging into them, playing with them, doing more hands to keyboard things. Do I like just understanding how they all work and how they all interconnect? So I like more strategy. I like more sort of design. I like being more of a thinker versus a tinkerer. Or do I like the governance structure of like information security, right? There's policies, there's bills the same way they are. I mean, information security is very similar to a government structure, right? You've got bills, they go to Congress, they get to the Senate and get signed off by the president. So Congress could be your stakeholders, right? You're trying to push forward policy, the policy within the Congress, you know, does it make sense? It then gets to the Senate. So it gets to a leadership team, maybe a steering committee, the leadership team then says, yep, this is the policy. It gets to the president or the CISO and the CISO's rights, you know, signs off on that policy. If you like that, if you like the technical, if you like the strategy or strategic thinking, or if you like the policy side, there's a track for you. If you like educating people, right? If you have transferable skills and you like to educate people, there's a training awareness function for you on how to then cultivate that skill set and be able to work on educating people. There's a job, there's literally a role in a career path for every single discipline. If you were an English major, you could do technical writing communications. If you were a political science major, you could do policies, strategy, and governance. If you were a network engineer, you could do network security, firewall administration, and the likes. If you were a computer scientist, you could do system administration, SOC analysis, data analysis, anything within that SOC world of log analysis and build your career, you know, start there and build into different areas, leveraging that core competency, and that core skill that you have, and then expanding once you fully appreciate the breadth and scope of information security. Hopefully that helps you, and hopefully that gives you some things to think about and then, you know, just execute, right? What we can't teach you, as I mentioned, the soft skills, we can't really teach you, some places we can teach you, but I would prefer you bring that to the table. I can't teach you hard work, showing up on time and really trying to learn and independently trying to do what you need to do. I can't teach you that. You got to come with that. If you bring those things to the table, then I can help mold and shape that. I say I can't teach you, sometimes I may not want to waste my time in teaching you how to show up on time at work, right? One of the things that, one of the skills I learned very early on when I was working in White Castle, my manager told me never show up to a meeting without a pencil and a paper. And I was like, where White Castle? What do I need to write down? How to flip a burger? How to put the oil in the oil thing? How to put fries in there? And it was like, you always want to show up with a pencil and a paper because you never know what idea might spark or what note you have to take or what action you want to take. And you want to show the person that's holding the meeting that you take them seriously and that you're organized and ready to write down and work through whatever situation. That's one of the things I forgot to mention that I used to teach on my earlier staff when they would show up into meetings without a pencil and a paper. I'd be like, where's the pencil and paper? Nowadays, they show up with their iPhone or their, you know, whatever phone. And I'm like, all right, all right. So I'm just taking notes. It is what it is. But hopefully that resonated with you and hopefully that helps you. It does. Absolutely. I was hoping for a golden bullet where you just tell me what to do and I'll go do those steps. But self-reflection works as well. So I really appreciate the advice and hopefully it'll, it'll lead me to greener pastures. Thank you so much. Yeah, no, absolutely. Look, and if you have money to burn, go take a science course or take a course. I took courses like that early on and that helped me sort of get more focused. If you have money to burn or a company that's willing to sponsor your education, take one of those more formalized courses. You know, that'll definitely help you get to where you want to be quicker or sooner rather than later. But thank you for your question. Hey, Pauline. Hey, Pauline. Hi, how are you? Can you hear me? We can hear you, Pauline. Go ahead. So, yeah, I just wanted to say hello, Tomas. And it's nice hearing your voice after I think the last time I was on was two years ago. And I, you know, it's still the same wonderful group of people that I remember and such interesting questions and thoughtful questions that are put forth. So, I guess my question for you tonight, what has been your biggest challenge in the security field over as a leader over the last two years? Oh, man. I see somebody in the audience that will be able to relate to this. So, one of my biggest challenges as a leader was I joined this new company, which was very, very exciting company that people are like, I would love to have that role in that job or, you know, be in your position. And that's, you know, my current company, right? The NFL. And I get thrusted into the mix of having to deal with my first, very first Super Bowl, not knowing anything about Super Bowls from an internal perspective and how to secure it or anything like that. And then I want to say within a few weeks after the Super Bowl, two, my only two leaders that I had at the time decided to both resign. One resigned on a Friday, one resigned on a Monday. That was probably one of my single most biggest challenges that I had to deal with as a leader because I had to completely reshape and re-figure out how am I going to do this? And I'll tell you, Pauline, when that happened to me, I remember being almost shell-shocked, like, WTF? What now? What am I going to do now? And I remember talking to my wife and coming home and talking to my wife and telling her, I was like, would you believe, you know, on Friday when one person quit, I was like, all right, you know, such and such person quit. And I didn't really mention it. Actually, no, I did mention it. Then I come back on Monday, after Monday evening, I'm like, would you believe my other leader quit? And she was, you know, and I was sort of venting and like almost going off on the deep end. And she was like, and what are you worried about? I'm like, you don't understand. I'm the CISO for the NFL. It's a high profile company, very brand oriented, game integrity, this, that, and third. She was like, she calls me a nickname, I'm not going to say. She was like, you know, she was like, you know, Tomas, you've done this before. Did you forget that you built the security program at your prior company from nothing? Did you forget that? And I was like, you know what? I didn't forget that. She was like, so why are you like sulking right now? Write up a job description, put it out there. People will love to work within the organization because it's the NFL. And they were, and if I had to guess, since you built the team in your prior place, you probably have a few people that will want to work for you again at the NFL. And so that was one of my biggest challenges as a leader. Probably one of the ones that I'll mention just in the interest of time. But that was a pain in the ass moment, I can tell you that much. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Vijay Bala. Vijay Bala. I don't know if you would as Vijay. I hear you, Tomas. Like, hey, listen, first, firstly, I want to say thank you. You have been a pillar and sword to all of us. And having these VT chats. My question to you, Tomas, like, what do you want to achieve? Like, if you have to change something, if you want to change the needle in the cybersecurity? I think you cut out a little bit for me, Vijay. I think you said what I want to change in the cybersecurity industry. Is that maybe to oversummarize? Is that what you heard, Mads? He cut out. I heard move the needle, too. I don't know where he was going with the rest of it, but I heard that part. Yeah. Hey, Tomas. Hey, Vijay. Yep, go. Hey, no, apologies. I'm in the cab. I'm just leaving the office right now. I was going to ask you, firstly, hey, thank you. You've been a steward and a pillar for having these weekly fireside chats. My question to you is, like, if you had to change one thing in our cybersecurity hemisphere, what would that be? If I had to change one thing, you know, it's probably not a fan favorite, but I would probably change people complaining. And even though I complain a lot, I would probably change people complaining about the industry that they chose to be in. When I hear cyber practitioners complain that they're under attack or they wish the adversaries would stop and this, that, and the other. But I wish that, too. I sincerely wish that, too. But imagine if they did. Would you still have a job? Would you still have something to protect or would you change and do something else? I would want to change some of the bad guys that do really, really bad things, right, like the ones that are attacking hospitals and the likes. But all the other ones, it's almost a yin-yang relationship. We need them as much as they need us, right? We need them because we're employed and they need us because they need to attack somebody and they need to be continuously sharpening their skills. So I would probably change that. And again, I don't think that's a popular opinion, but I, you know, maybe that's a jaded one for being in the industry. But I do hear a lot of people complain that. But maybe I'll give you another one that's probably a little bit more realistic and more practical for folks. What I would like to change, and this might be a difficult one, but I feel sometimes that in our profession, folks that don't do what we do or fully appreciate and understand what we do, don't appreciate us as much until they start to see the light and we start to peel back the onion for them, right? And you could relay that in the way of like some of your stakeholders, your business stakeholders, right? You know, if they don't fully appreciate and understand what you're doing, they think that you're like a cost center. And they don't realize that you're actually an enabler to their business function. You're actually driving revenue. You're helping drive revenue because you're, you know, you're like brakes in a car, right? The brakes in a car for a car to be able to go as fast as it can and slow it down when you need it. Not the other way around, not to constantly stop the car from moving forward or moving in a direction, right? And so I think that's probably one of the things that I would like to change. I think as our profession continues to evolve and become more of a better defined profession, similar to like credit risk and market risk and all those other types of risk management functions, and you start to really appreciate and realize what we do and how we align to those other risk management type functions, you start to then raise the bar and raise the level of maturity across the organization that you're operating. So that's probably one of the things that I would change. And that's probably one of the things that I spend a lot of my time educating people on, trying to be more transparent in what we do and why we do it. I try to lead with the why with my team so that they understand why we're trying to get to certain initiatives done and why we're trying to focus in on certain things. And then I try to align our program to our business leaders to where they're trying to go and help them understand why we're making certain decisions and why we're trying to help them, you know, be better at what they're doing or, you know, help them mitigate risk. So that's probably one of the things that I would say that's a little bit more practical and tangible for practitioners. Always a wealth of knowledge and self-actualization, Tomas. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Vijay. Thanks for the kind words. David, how are you, sir? Over to you. If it's the first time you joined us, David, there's a little microphone button on the bottom right that says mute. You can hit that and you can unmute. All right. Katie, I'll pass it back to you. I was on the edge of my seat, David. But we're actually coming to the close here of our 90 minutes, which went by incredibly fast. And I think my actually did have a piece of paper and a pencil, by the way. And I was joking to my in my head. It was like there's smoke coming out of my pencil because I was writing so many things down and just so many pearls of wisdom. You know, especially, you know, as someone who's a newer, you know, executive in the space and the leadership advice you gave us tonight was so invaluable. Before we come to a close on what may be my favorite fireside chat to date, just wanted to go around the room with the mods before we go back to Tomas for final thoughts. Popcorn style, if anyone has any. All right, Katie, maybe maybe I'll go first. You know, my goal or at least my team's goal is someday change the perspective in the general population that one day. I don't want to just be a doctor or a lawyer or a finance professional or investment banker. But someday my goal is to have the general population, the regular Joe, talk to their kids to say that, all right, if you want to have a phenomenal profession, join cybersecurity. That's my one single goal. So over to you, Katie. Well, I'll pop in here and just say, Tomas, you are an inspiration. And every time I talk to you, I learn something. So thank you for sharing with us tonight. Because, I mean, you are absolutely incredible and you help provide a lot of hope and inspiration to those around you. I'll go ahead and go. So also, Tomas, you know, it's interesting because the more and more I hear your story, the more I'm like, man, that's why we get along. It's because, like, some of the things, you're a couple of years older than me. Just a few. Maybe one. Maybe just one. No. Because we're both. It's more than one, sir. You're 39. I just turned 40. You're 39. I'm not 39. Stop. But, I mean, honestly, there's the stories and everything, the background. You, as Lisa and Katie said, you're an inspiration. I'm glad to call you my friend. And I'm glad that you're here influencing the industry and keep doing what you do. And, Tomas, I'll just say, you know, when you gave an answer to the question that Irvin said, I was taking notes and I was motivated and I was inspired. And I appreciate you and you telling us your origin story again. And I'm glad there's a recording. And I'm going to listen to it again and get all fired up about staying in the wonderful profession that we all get to enjoy, that of cybersecurity. So, thank you. And with that, Tomas, as we come to a close tonight, what are some final thoughts? I know you sometimes ask a question, but I'm just kind of curious at a high level. Just leave us with your parting wisdom as we close out the evening tonight. And thank you again. Sure. No, look, thank you. And I'm sorry. I did age Octavia. She's not 39. I think Octavia is like in her mid-30s or early 30s. So, I'm sorry for aging you, Octavia. 20, dude. 20, 20. Octavia is 20. And you're going to be with 17 years in the industry. Exactly. 16 at home. 16 at home. Look, I'm flattered. Thank you. You almost got me to tear up. I feel like I was on Oprah for a second there. Thank you for all the kind words. I think we've built an incredible community of not only having folks come to us, but I hope that, you know, the community that we've built has continuously enriched your lives. Because I know it definitely has enriched mine. You know, as much effort that it does take to do this and spend an hour and a half. We were doing it every week. Now, we're doing it monthly. So, I think that I agree that that's probably more manageable. But as much effort as that took over the past couple of years, it was worth it. It was completely worth it to me, in my opinion. And so, you know, parting words. Actually, Dave McCaw, I know you back up. I don't know if you wanted to ask something, but we do need to wrap up. So, if you do want to ask, I'll answer your question. Tomas, I'm here, man. Sorry I was having iPhone settings problems with my mic. But first off, Happy New Year to you and to everybody else here in the Fireside Chat. And I was just thinking, man, you know, it's been an amazing last few weeks in the NFL. Lots of entering stuff, interesting stuff going on. And, you know, we always hear about your origin story and, you know, all the great work you've been doing. And in the community, both on LinkedIn and, you know, in New York, et cetera. But just for a little bit of fun, you know, I love hearing the most interesting security challenges that folks face in their day-to-day jobs. And I'd just be curious. Like, do you have anything fun to share about, you know, what you have to do as a cyber professional getting ready for the biggest event of the year? Wow. Wow. Yeah. Okay. I, man, I have so much that I want to say. And as you all know, I can talk a lot. But I'll try to keep it to 30 seconds in the interest of time just for folks. And I'll leave you with this on that. The convergence of cyber physical threats are very, very present and alive and things that we worry about in our day-to-day. I report up to physical security. My boss is an incredible leader, Kathy Lanier. She used to be the former Metropolitan PD chief of police. And she is an incredible and fascinating woman. So if you've never heard of her before, I encourage you to Google her. Listen to her story, her origin story. I'd love to probably get home one of these shows in the near future. But for us, cyber physical threats are very apparent, things that we worry about. And it's not a fun sort of cyber story, if you will, but something that we take very seriously, especially when we do the big games where we have tons of fans in our stadiums, you know, making sure that nothing from a cyber standpoint impacts health and safety. So that's my quick spiel on that. And I have a lot more to say, but, Dave, just in the interest of time, that's what I got. Thank you, man. And I'm sure we'll catch up on it later, but appreciate you. Yeah, no, I appreciate you as well. Thank you for jumping up and asking your question. So, look, final words, very simple. I was going to say something that my son, I remember learning from my son when he was in the Boy Scouts. And actually, I remember now. And it's the concept of leave no trace behind. And, you know, in the Boy Scouts, I think that's the saying. And I think, Russ, you're probably a Boy Scout. Maybe I got that wrong. All right. But basically, don't leave your trash in the, you know, in the forest when you're hiking and things like that. Right? Leave no trace that you were there. You know, leave it the same way you found it. What I would encourage people to do is try to leave your mark on this planet and leave it better than the way you found it. You know, that would be my sort of one parting word, if you will, words of wisdom, Katie. That's what I got. I don't have anything else other than that. And that's what I try to do. I just try to leave it as a better place. I try to leave my mark on this industry. I never really thought about it like that until I started to get older and started to really reflect on the years that I've been doing this. And the people that I've actually had opportunities of learning from and interacting with, there's several in the audience that I've worked with and I've learned from in my lifetime doing information security. And so that's probably the best piece of advice that I would give you or leave with folks. You're definitely going to get what you put out in this industry. And if you come with, you know, if you come correct, you're going to get a lot of benefits and a lot of flowers thrown your way. So hopefully that resonates with people. I think it's the perfect way to end the evening. And it really wraps it up, you know, everything we talked about and going into the week and the inspiration. So thank you again for getting back into the hot seat and retelling your origin story to this now new audience on LinkedIn Audio. Thank you, everyone, again, for joining us. Please follow all of the moderators. Follow Tomas to know when the next program will be. We will always make sure you know in advance where to find us. And we look forward to seeing you in February. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Jamaz. Love you, bro. Thank you. Love you all, too. Thank you very much. See you, everybody. See you next month. We'll be back. I think around the 18th. Maybe shortly after Super Bowl. See you guys. Bye. Love. Bye-bye. Peace.