Fireside Chat w/Kenneth Townsend, Global Chief Information Security Officer @ Ingredion

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 good evening. Welcome to our Fireside Chat. We're happy that you're able to make time out of your busy schedule to join us. We're joined this evening by Ken Townsend who's going to tell us a lot about himself in a few minutes. But before we get started, I just want to say I'm happy to be back having a conversation with my esteemed co-host. Happy to be back with the folks in the audience. And hopefully this will be a really good conversation that we have this evening. As you all know, we do this once a month for about 90 minutes or so. We'll open up for questions in about 30 to 40 minutes. And you can raise your hand and we'll bring you up on stage. There's a few quick ground rules. One, let's have a good time. It's the middle of the week. We've all had a stressful week or some parts of our week or some people are still on vacation or they've been coming back from vacation. I can tell you it's been a very long week for me and I'm sure it has been for other folks on the line. So let's have a good time this evening. If you're venting in the audience, we appreciate you. We actually are happy that you're here. But our only ask is if you do jump on stage, please don't try to sell us on your latest and greatest product or idea. Please reserve the conversation to learning more about our guests this evening. And that is Ken, who's a CISO at, who's a global CISO at Ingredion. So the other sort of guardrail, if you will, are comments for the majority of us on the line. Our comments and opinions are our own and do not represent our current or prior employers or future employers for that matter. So we ask that you do keep that in mind as you do jump on stage asking questions. So without further ado, I will go around the room. I'm just going to go around the room and introduce ourselves. I'm Tomas Maldonado. I'm happy to be here. I'm the CISO for the NFL. Katie, over to you. Hi, good evening, everybody. I'm Katie Hanahan. I'm a cybersecurity strategist, former virtual CISO. Looking forward to the discussion. Over to you, Octavia. Hey, I'm Octavia Howell. I am the CISO of Equifax Canada. I'm happy to be here. Everything that Tomas said is applicable. So my comments are mine and mine and all. Over to you, Stephen. Thank you, Octavia. My name is Stephen Garcia. I've been in cybersecurity for quite some time. My most recent role was running security over at FanDuel. Currently still doing board advisor work, but taking some time off as a hiatus before I jump back in the saddle in the fall. And over to you, Tomas. And I think you'll do the introduction for Ken. Sure. Sounds good. I just very quickly, Lisa Beth, you want to do a quick introduction? Hey, hey. It's Wednesday. And it's a great Wednesday because we're all together. My name is Lisa Beth, let's see if you're in the locker. I am a social counsel at Marquetta and also the CEO and founder of Women Worldwide Endeavors. And I'm really excited to have the conversation today. That's my back to you. So, Ken, look, we're really happy that you, one, have taken time out of your busy schedule to join us this evening and spend it with us. So why don't you take a moment and introduce yourself? And while you're introducing yourself, why don't you tell us a little bit more about you and your origin story? Yeah, definitely. Thanks, number one, for having me on tonight with this panel here. It's truly an honor here. So for those that I don't know, I'm Ken Townsend. I'm the global CISO for Ingredion. We're a global food manufacturer. Most people have not necessarily heard of us, but Ingredion comes up with a lot of different innovative solutions for our customers, such as protein, starches, and all those different things that goes into your food to make creams creamier, crackers more crunchier, whatever that is. So it's a very interesting place to work and what we do to help feed the world. So for me, I'm originally from Detroit. I'm in Chicago now. But, you know, Michigan is my home. Born in Detroit, you know, two parents, my younger sister, their father, you know, he was a barber, owned his, you know, barbershops there while growing up in Detroit. And, you know, my mom was a civilian in the, you know, in the army, you know, doing logistics there. So, and, you know, just growing up in Detroit was, you know, it was fun to do that till about, you know, 10. Then we moved to a town called Southfield, right outside of Detroit there. And, you know, pretty much, you know, average kid did okay in school, decent grades there. But I wanted to play basketball. I wanted to be Michael Jordan. So, you know, if you know about basketball at that time, growing up in Detroit and you're a Bulls fan, and it could cause a lot of challenges there. So, but I stuck with it and quickly realized that playing against other, you know, people who are bigger, taller and faster than me, that I probably should have a plan B. but I still love the game, still play it today. Some other things I've done through high school, my career is there that I think maybe played a role in my life where I thought I was gonna go is in television production. So in high school, they had a television production class and then there was a local community access station there. And I got to do a lot of things there, got to be behind the camera, got to produce some shows, one of the shows called Teen Chat. And some other, I had some friends that were musicians and did like a show called Jazz Notes. So they would bring in different professionals, things like that. So I got to produce all that, do the editing. And other thing I mentioned that I played basketball with my friends a lot and we would record ourselves, having slam dunk contests in the driveway, we would lower the basketball hoop. But then I would just edit those videos and add music to them. And then as we got older, people said, hey, can you do this in my football video? As they were getting recruited, so I would do those kinds of things there. So I thought that was gonna be my passion or what I was gonna be doing in life. And then my parents, they moved, took a transfer, then we moved to Huntsville, Alabama. So in my senior year, I had to kind of do a quick reset, figure some things out there. So I kind of got off track there, but still grounded in sports. I was playing basketball. I had, I think, a phenomenal coach there. At the time, I didn't know it, but looking back, I think he gave us some great life lessons for me, because he was like a disciple of John Wooden. Now, if anyone knows, John Wooden is one of the, you know, historic basketball coaches at UCLA, but he would just say these, you know, sayings that meant nothing to us at the time, like, be quick, but don't hurry. You know, so what does that mean? You know, so he had all those, those kinds of sayings there. And, you know, definitely, you know, yelling at us. But the main takeaway was, it was not, don't take how I'm saying it to you, listen to what I'm saying, right? And that's something, you know, to me, that, you know, really stuck out to me. So no matter how people kind of talk to me or react, I'm trying to listen to what they're saying to us. And, you know, being calm under pressure, you know, when we're down by 10 or 20 with, you know, whatever, a few minutes to go, he needed us to think, he needed us to be calm and, you know, and react. And you can probably see how I may, you know, when in the field of cybersecurity, you need to be calm and, you know, and be able to act under pressure there. So, so at that time I went on and I had to figure out what I was gonna do here. I didn't know if I was gonna go to college or, you know, maybe had a couple offers here at some smaller schools, you know, to play basketball. I was gonna go to the army. But then the bride came in at the last minute in Chicago and said, hey, you can do this telecommunications, you know, thing here and kind of be done in two and a half years. So sounded intriguing, you know, didn't again, really know what I wanted to do. I wasn't necessarily, I had a lot of, a whole lot of interest in computers, you know, kind of growing up, you know, I played games. I think we had a Tandy 1000, if anybody remembers that, you know, kind of growing up, you know, I got a playing games on that, got a insert disc four or seven, you know, those, those kinds of things there. But, but that was really about it. So went to DeVry and, you know, really did some classes there in telecommunications and understood how data moves and how it connects the world. And it really, really fascinated me. And I just, just really, you know, dove into that. And, you know, by the time I was ready, you know, graduating in my last year there, I got an internship at a local high school here in Chicagoland. And I'm thinking I'm going there to be working under the tutelage of someone. And I find out that really, I'm the only one there, you know, kind of running, you know, the show. So it was a little overwhelming at first, but, you know, it turned out to be a great opportunity to kind of number one, work with faculty and, you know, the students. And I can recall they were in these computer labs here. They were, there were students, you know, who were being mischievous, you know, we call it hacking today. I don't even know if that word was, you know, around, you know, at that time, but they were, you know, bright things there, just trying to, you know, be funny. So this was kind of my first experience of trying to prevent that, right? Because this was a, now a productivity issue, you know, in the classroom, you know, for the teachers. And it was like, how do we solve this? I'm like, I'm an intern. I don't know. So, you know, I had to figure those things out. And I can remember researching and rewriting DOS commands. So if anybody familiar with, you know, MS-DOS, and, you know, so I would make a table, I forgot how it went in and did it, but commands like make directory, NKDIR, or it would, I would change it to XYZ. So I would have my cheat sheet. I would do things to try to, you know, slow those guys down there. So great experience, you know, for me, you know, looking back, you know, to do that. And, you know, by the time I graduated, you know, went off into the world here, had some other, you know, consulting jobs, you know, regional things there and ultimately landed at a spot called the Marketing Store Worldwide here, you know, in the Chicago suburbs where, you know, one of the big things they're known for is, you know, making the Happy Meal toys, you know, for McDonald's and, you know, having, you know, creating Beanie Babies and all those things there, running the Monopoly game. I think I see one of my former coworkers there on the line there. So that was some great times there where I really got to cut my teeth, right, in IT, you know, network. I was working with switches and routers, building servers, storage arrays, you know, data center moves, you know, all of those, you know, things there. And while, you know, me and my team, we probably didn't do things, you know, right, you know, we didn't have all that formalized change management at that time, you know, it was like, hey, a server's running slow. Hey, let's just reboot it at lunchtime. You know, people out, you know, for lunch. So it was that kind of casual things there. And we quickly learned that, you know, that that's probably not the best thing, you know, to do. But it was a awesome experience, you know, working there. And it was really setting the stage, you know, for, you know, my career working in that global organization and getting the opportunity to lead and collaborate with my team. And it was really one of the first times where I really started to see the need to understand business, right? Before I was just trying to do IT stuff. I didn't really care what the business did or the priorities were. I was just doing IT stuff. But so again, that was that first inkling there of, you know, understanding the need for business there. So then, you know, I just, you know, security, you know, we kind of went on there, spent some time there and security became more prevalent, you know, you know, to me and it just kind of piqued my interest there. So I went back to school to learn, you know, more, got my master's in, you know, security there. And I just really wanted to know more about it and accelerate my learning there. So I went to PWC, you know, did about four or five years there where, you know, and it definitely did that. Accelerated my learning at a very fast pace, but I got exposure to a lot of different industries and working for, you know, airline, oil and gas companies, you know, retail, capital markets and those things there. You know, really grateful, you know, for some relationships there and people who invested in me to give real time feedback. Right. And, you know, here's what you need to correct. Here's how you need to grow. I really learned to start my own engines there. You know, when you go to a client, you know, you're on the clock, they expect results fast. So getting smart on things, you know, talking to executives by what matters most. And I mentioned learning the business, understanding the business, understanding their business was really key so that I can provide, you know, solutions. So while it was cool to do pen testing and all these encryption projects and all this stuff, I had to make sure I understood why the business needs this. So PWC was a great experience, you know, for me there. Then I moved on and went to the Federal Reserve, you know, Bank of Chicago there. Another, you know, great opportunity there to sit on a different side of the table as a as a regulator there, helping support our examiners there who go to banks, but really to understand the cyber risk and the systemic risk that, you know, from our large institutions down to a community bank and helping develop programs there to truly assess risk and see what's important and where the focus areas, you know, should be from a regulatory perspective. Then, you know, I had some other, you know, roles there at, moved on to a company called R1 here in Chicago, where I was the CISO there in a healthcare technology, you know, firm there. Again, a different industry, different perspective there, you know, working with, again, highly regulated data there and HIPAA and understanding those, you know, laws and controls and really serving our clients and healthcare systems around the U.S. So, you know, the stakes were, you know, still high, you know, in that environment as well. And, you know, just helping, you know, build programs and lead leading companies through incidents there was really eye opening. It strengthens you. One of the quotes that I, you know, still, you know, look at today and kind of tell my team is a smooth seed never made a skilled sailor. So and, you know, so these things here, we kind of embrace. Yes, there's a lot of, you know, stress in the role, but, you know, I'm excited about learning, you know, new challenges and turning programs around. And after R1, I landed at Ingredion again, the global food manufacturer here. I've been here for about a year and a half. And, you know, just a company that is great, ton of opportunities here. And, you know, to again, be that lead transformation here and support, you know, those business objectives. So that's really me. And maybe I'll turn it back over here. Hopefully I didn't go too long on that. But, you know, that's kind of my background there. No, that's great. Look, I think there's a lot there that we can unpack. You know, you mentioned the Bulls. I was looking at your sort of time window there. I'm sure 95, 96 Bulls was probably a great team that you were cheering on. I'm also a Bulls fan. And interestingly enough, I was just actually listening to Phil Jackson's 11 Rings book recently during my long drives into the office. But anyways, enough about me. But more to you, Bulls, great, great sort of story there. I'm curious to hear more about that sort of basketball career. You know, I think everybody wanted to be like Mike during that era. That's right. The other thing I wanted to sort of actually before I turn it over to Katie, who I know will take us in an interesting direction. Ingredion, I worked in the chemical manufacturing flavors and fragrances business. I'm curious if you've ever heard of IFF, which may be one of your supply chain or maybe even a competitor. But that topic for another day, I guess. So I'll pass it over to Katie. Yeah, thank you, Tomas. And thank you for that, Ken. Yeah, I mean, you took us through, you know, a journey. And there were a couple of things that really stood out to me, particularly going back to your PWC days. I think a lot of us on this panel have gone through some of those consulting phases where we are just continually having those aha moments. I mean, you mentioned that it was a time in your career where you're getting a lot of real-time feedback. But curious if you could take us to one or two of those experiences during that time where it really focused you then into, you know, into the cybersecurity space and what some of that real-time feedback was and even who some of those mentors were for you and how they impacted your trajectory moving forward. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. And I, you know, had feedback, you know, throughout my career. And I think there's different levels, you know, of it, right? You know, and everybody's not good at giving feedback because I think it's a muscle that you need to flex and build there to make sure that it's impactful and that that message is getting through. You can think you're communicating to someone, but is that message really being received, you know, as intended? And, you know, and at PwC, I think, you know, they've really, you know, trained on that. And, you know, and two people there that, you know, that stands out, Ryan Bachman and he's the CISO over at GM Financial now. Kevin Simmons is a partner at PwC where those who took, you know, pulled me aside and can kind of give that brutal, you know, feedback, hey, what you're doing is not going to cut it. Right. And, you know, they didn't have to do that. Right. They could have just took my work and been on, hey, I'm not going to use that guy again. Right. And so I think it's important, number one, that, and some of the feedback didn't necessarily sit around my technical competency. It's leading teams. Right. You know, making sure you have that sense of urgency, understanding, you know, the business, you know, working with the various stakeholders, you know, although that follow up those soft skills there, that that's really helping you be a leader. Right. And, and I think that was, you know, invaluable because it takes courage on their part. Right. Now people can go and be upset. Maybe how feedback is delivered for, again, kind of going back to what my basketball coach said, don't focus on how I'm saying it, listen to what I'm saying, you know, to you here. And I, today, today, you know, years later, I'm still like, oh man, okay, let me do this. You know, cause those, those guys are still, you know, in my head, some of those messages still resonate. And I pass that down, you know, to my team here. So I'm definitely appreciative of that. And, you know, feedback was again, super important. It's not the technical competency, you know, for me in that particular situation. And that helped me ultimately to be a better consultant. I think it sets the stage for me to be a better leader, right. You know, when I'm going forward and will continue to help me be a better leader. Well, I think the one that I'm not going to forget that your coach said is be quick, but don't hurry. I think that's a good one for, for everyone in life, including when we're giving, giving feedback, but no, I think that's really interesting. The other piece that kind of really stood out for me from that period is that, you know, as you moved into the next phase of, of your career, I wasn't quite sure when that moment was where you went from being that kind of higher level leadership consultant to the actual focus on the cyber component. Was it the federal reserve where it was the cyber risk? What part, what piece of the cybersecurity piece of the business is what really hooked you? Always curious what the gateway cyber threat is to everybody who actually ends up becoming a CISO. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a, you know, a great question. I think it kind of goes back to even, you know, before, you know, PwC, you know, when I got my first job or, you know, coming out of college there, I didn't know what a CIO was or anything like that. It really, these leadership roles, like I said, I was just happy doing IT. They gave me a laptop and a phone and I was, you know, happy, right? You know, hey, I can do this, you know, forever. But then you kind of learn and you see other people here. Oh, what's a, what's this? What's a CIO? Or let me, you know, let me explore that. But, but when I got to, you know, PwC, I still wasn't even thinking about, you know, being, you know, a CISO or anything like that. I just love doing strategy. And, and again, I think it was planting that seed, you know, for me, I think while I like doing the technical things, they're always gravitated to how do we solve this puzzle, right? How do I get this guy, the CISO at the time where a client was who's struggling with, with budget and all these different challenges here to help him get his objectives, you know, in place, you know, how do I help him sell this, you know, to the board or whoever he needed, you know, to talk to. Again, not knowing that I wanted to be a CISO at that time. But I think those were some of the things that I just really gravitated to and would spend extra time on, you know, weekends or at night, you know, trying to figure out the best way, find the right word or put the right slide together, you know, to tell that story. And build a roadmap, you know, for sustainability. Don't just, I don't want to just put something in place and then walk away. How are you going to have this impact later on, you know, down the line? And, and then, you know, ultimately leaving, you know, PwC and then going to the Federal Reserve is kind of that same, you know, thing there. How do I solve this problem? And, and then it was that just that you get that feeling like, Hey, I think I can lead this program. I think it's time for me to sit, you know, in the, in the big chair here. Right. And, and go out and lead a program. And you kind of, you know, I got advice from different people and, you know, people may say it can be stressful and challenging, but those are different people's stories. Right. You know, those are inputs that I took in, but I still had to make that decision. I think this is something that, you know, I want to go after. I think it's something that, you know, I can do and, and, and help, you know, companies, you know, mature their programs. So, so is it stressful? You said, so is it stressful? Yes. It is. It is. It is. It definitely can be, but, you know, it's funny you say that. Right. So I have a cousin who's a firefighter. And so I'm telling, oh, so what do you do? You know, cause some of my family, they still think I do a fixed VCRs or, you know, something like that. You know, I'm the one who was doing all those things there or fix computers. So, but we have more of a, you know, detailed discussion. He's like, man, that seems, you know, stressful. How do you do that every day? And I'm like, man, you run into burning buildings. Right. So it's like, so it's, it's all relative. Right. You know, and I think as we come, become more experienced and you understand, you know, maybe the team, you know, that you have and, and, and kind of assessing the situation and being, or being able to prioritize, you know, all the things there that I'm not trying to solve every problem, not trying to plug every hole in the dam can help manage, you know, that, that stress. Lisa Beth, over to you. Great. Well, this has been really interesting so far, Kenneth. And my question is oriented a little bit differently. We are, I think in many parts of the country, deep into back to school time. And I think that there are likely people on the call. And I know that people in my life that I care about who want to know, is it possible to follow the same path that you did or do things look different today? And how, what, what advice would you give to somebody who's heading off to college or thinking about college right now? Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's a great question. And that's something that I constantly find myself, you know, answering, you know, those questions and mentoring, you know, others there. And I, I share my story, you know, with them, but I don't, don't try to follow my path. I think, you know, it was interesting that I started off in a, in the IT world and, you know, made that switch. I think it gave me some advantages there. So it's particularly when I went to consulting, a lot of the students that came out of school and that was their first job there, they just learned, you know, cyber, right. But they didn't understand, you know, the switching routing networks and all those kinds of things there. So I think that helped me in my career, but a lot of them, if there's that willingness to learn and persistence and, you know, you have a passion, you know, for cyber, you're willing to roll up your sleeves, maybe, you know, get some certifications. I know there can be debates on that. Do you need them or how much experience you have? But, but learn because the world is so different now, right? I mean, we got AI out here and all of these different things here. So there's not going to be one path, right? And, and be, be your authentic self, but I think there are some foundational things as I, as I mentioned is being willing to learn because I used, I interviewed, you know, some students here, I do mock interviews. And, you know, we had some interns in, you know, this summer and you could kind of see some of the students who were just kind of trying it out, maybe more casual and others were really, you know, passionate about it, understood what was going on. And they may not be experts in it, but follow news stories or understood, you know, at least the basic high level of anatomy of a ransomware attack. So you can see that this is something that they were passionate about and that they were doing in their own time, right? And wasn't just looking to come to a company, hey, hire me. And then, you know, we'll figure it out from there. So, so, so, so the advice I give, you know, network, you know, let people know, you know, you're interested, you know, in the field there, you, you have to be persistent in, in going after what you want. You know, even early on, I had some certifications early on with my Novell, CNE, Microsoft, CCNAs with Cisco, because I wanted to do that. And I think, you know, it created some opportunities, you know, for me, helping me land, you know, roles there. So I'm not telling everyone to go out and do that, but at least learn. I mean, YouTube is phenomenal. You know, there's a lot of information out there now that, that wasn't out there before. So where you can quickly, you know, get smart, you know, on things, you know, understanding, you know, cloud, you know, security, that's, you know, building environments in Azure or AWS, you know, just using, you know, free accounts there, be passionate, be hungry. So, so, so long with an answer here, but, but I think, you know, you have to be persistent, let people know that you're out there. And I think those opportunities will come, you know, if you believe you can make those opportunities. I love it. And I love that, like, it's very clear to me that you have such passion for what you do. And I think it's great to just let future leaders know that, like, follow what you really care about and follow your passions, the money follows eventually. And, you know, I hope that the message that's well received by our future leaders that are out there. I'll turn it over to Tastania. Thanks, Lisa Beth. Kenneth, it's really great talking to you. And it's interesting, as you were talking, I was kind of laughing in my head. And I think Tomas was laughing as well, because, you know, you talked a little bit about kind of breaking it in and changing the variables of the codes over in MS-DOS. And you said that that was like, you were trying to prevent what the people from doing like nefarious things. I'm like, I'm laughing because I'm like, you know, you were actually doing the same thing. But that's when you're there, you're trying to make them seem bad. But that's what you were doing as well. So it was hilarious to me. But way to go to try to make yourself seem like you were innocent. That was great. Right. But, you know, I kind of had the same takeaway as Lisa Beth, right? It seems like sports really seem to ground you. And you talk about the old colloquialism, like within Alabama. I do not get those. Right. So all I got was like loose lips, shank shits and stuff like that. And the hit dog will holler. So I think that goes to like where your people were and where my people were. But back to kind of getting to the industry where we are, what things do you think you took away? And I know you spoke to it a little bit, but what did you take away from just your sports background and being a team leader within the CISO world? As you said, it's kind of like, you know, you go into fires all the time. And we have this meme that we do around Equifax all the time with like the burning building where, you know, like you have a cuff in your hand and the dog is like everything's fine. But as a team leader, how does your sports background and the background that you talked about where, you know, you always had to remain calm, how does that help you in navigating everything that it is to be a CISO, especially now that we see, you know, ransomware of AI, everything else that's going on? Like what are you, what keeps you focused? Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's a great question. You know, I love sports and, you know, there's just so many, you know, life lessons, you know, in that, you know, from, you know, playing basketball, you know, running track and cross country and, you know, and, and all of those things there. And, you know, I guess two things that, you know, that come to mind is, you know, I think there's another John Witten, you know, quote there. It's not about, you know, being the best is being the best given your abilities. Right. So that's playing that role on the team. You know, not everyone's going to be, you know, the superstar. I don't need to be the next, you know, Michael Jordan. What abilities do I have? And am I maximizing those abilities? Right. So that was, you know, the key there. The other thing that I would say is the will, you know, to win, right. It's preparation. That's more of a football quote. I'm not sure who attributed that to. I heard it from a few places here. But the will to win is meaningless without the will to prepare. So, you know, if I want to, number one, play in the game, I got to be prepared. Right. I got to practice. I wanted to run harder or longer than, you know, any other teams. I want to come in in the morning. You know, we had voluntary shoot-arounds. Right. But, but I was there, you know, in high school, right. Four in the morning, you know, getting, getting shots in so that I can get better. And you can start to, you know, see those results. And you've had your full school day and you had things afterwards. And, you know, even, you know, doing time to time, I still, with my old, you know, oh, you know, kind of the beer leagues, you know, now I still, you know, want, you know, to be the best. And we'll put some time in, you know, if I can find it, you know, to still get some shots up, you know, to get some shots up. So kind of translate that to, you know, how I am now. I tell my team, I don't necessarily need to be the best or the experts in every area. Right. I have, you know, SOC leaders, right, who are my security operations or identity and access. You know, I may be able to set a vision. This is where we're going to go. But I say, look, I know all the answers. We may have a problem here. Right. I'm counting on you guys, you know, to learn and be prepared. So that's me preparing my team, trying to get the maximum and maximizing them. Right. So that they can help lead the program. Right. And I want to make sure I acknowledge and, you know, and award them just like on a sports team. We all have a role to play in this. This is not just me. I don't want them deferring, you know, just to me. We're all going to be leaders here. And then, you know, I think the pressure, you know, dealing with pressure, you know, is in basketball, you know, in those type of situations, too. You know, calm. You can kind of see it today. I still get fascinated watching, you know, like these NFL films and, you know, all of these things here about players. You know, you can kind of hate players, you know, as you're watching them. But then when you hear their story and, you know, what's going on in the huddle or in those playsmen and just the composure that they keep saying this game isn't over. You know, we're not losing. And how they come back and win, you know, was always, you know, fascinating to me. And, you know, so while in the if there is a ransomware attack or IT outages that they had to deal with, I needed to make sure that, you know, my team knows that I have their back. Do what you do. Focus to get this server back online or get the storage array back up. Whatever. Don't worry about what's going on outside that server room door. I'll keep, you know, people at bay. I need you to be clear and to be focused. And again, to me, I think that was rooted in some of the lessons, you know, that I've learned, you know, from that. Unfortunately, I've been through, you know, cyber incidents, ransomware attacks and all those things. And the last thing you need to do is panic. Right. You know, follow the plan, you know, and get things back online. Worry about what comes happen or after that later. But follow, you know, the plan. Be composed. Because that's what leaders really want to see. Right. I know there could be fear or maybe from the outside people may say, oh, well, the CISO, oh, they had a ransomware attack. It could look bad. Some of the leaders I talk to and other boards, they understand this stuff happens. Right. But what they don't want to see is someone unprepared, you know, a deer in the headlights. So I think that, you know, sports has kind of helped prepare me, you know, for those type of situations. Yeah, that's awesome. I love the, you know, you guys in the serving room do what you do. I just remember, I used to be, I feel like that you could be so prevalent. But I think as leaders, we all need to get back to, hey, protecting the teams, making sure you provide that head cover and keeping everything at bay while they're doing the work. So thank you for that. I liked all the other sport references there. I don't know about anybody else. Oh, yeah, really? Okay. You can tell I'm about to spend my Sundays coming up to my Sunday. I'm just worried. I'm just thinking. You didn't do football at all. Well, I was also thinking. I was like, man, do I got to worry about my job? Somebody's coming after my gig, I think. No. We're going to go around. I'm going to pass it over. Well, actually, I'll pass it to Vijay because I think he needs to introduce himself. We'll come back to Vijay. We'll come back to Vijay. All right. Steven? Hey, thank you, Octavia. Kat, thank you again for your time today. It's been really insightful to hear what you brought up and how your history got you to this point. I don't know. I was just laughing when you were talking about coaches because I just in my mind have that Samuel Jackson line. I'm not yelling. That's just the way I talk. I hear a lot of that from coaches. The dichotomy of the be quick but don't hurry versus the military's hurry up and wait. I just entertain by hearing the different views and avenues that people get, and somehow we still end up here. But look, on the theme that Octavia brought up with you, I think more and more we see that security teams have to interface with other teams, and some of those relationships are a little bit more symbiotic than others. One in particular that I think has been one that I see more at the forefront and where security really needs to be is the alignment with product teams. So most organizations, that product is the real way that their customers interact with them. So I think it's one thing when us as security leaders can get our teams to be working together. I think a lot of that is under our control because we're the team lead, but when you have to interface with another entire team that you may or may not have, or you shouldn't have conflicting goals. Everyone's supposed to be aligned to these business goals, but how we get there is sometimes a differentiator. Something that security might ask might be considered friction point for customers on the product side. So I wanted to hear what your experience was like in that realm. And obviously, sports metaphors galore for this because we're talking about teams really working together to get to this one common goal. Yeah. No, I think that's a great question, and it kind of goes back to what I was saying even when I was at the marketing store, understanding the business. Right. And so my goal was trying to, especially now, is making sure my team understands why we're doing what we're doing. Right. And that we're not just doing cool security stuff or reacting, you know, to headlines. So that when we see risk or vulnerabilities or whatever, how do we put this in business terms? So, you know, kind of, you know, kind of make me think of another, you know, sports reference, you know, playing football. You know, you have your defensive backs maybe sitting in, you know, the defensive linemen meetings or sitting in offensive meetings and things like that. So we can understand how we're trying, you know, to do these things. Right. Because my team used to complain like, oh, well, I didn't know that the business was doing this or they were doing that. And then I'm saying, well, why not? Right. Maybe that's a failure to me. Maybe am I not communicating? So I said, we need to make sure that we know what the business is because our job is to protect the business or, you know, present the risk to them. Or so that we can put up guardrails and, you know, making sure that they're staying in their risk tolerance here. So, and I get it. It is tough, you know, for them, you know, to do it and others do, right? And because, you know, you're used to running vulnerability reports and all of these kind of things here and eyes will just glaze over, you know, what that means. But when you can kind of translate that to say, hey, this is going to impact this initiative, this is at risk, you won't be able to do these things or this could be threatened. Now you're having a totally, you know, different conversation there. The operational metrics, you know, are still important and we still do that. But it doesn't stop there. Right. And I think, you know, it's really started, you know, to show and people can come to them now like, hey, I have this initiative I want to do or we want to move to the cloud or can we consider these things? Because no one, when you start putting those dashboards up, you know, wants to say, hey, I've signed off on this risky area or, you know, I've authorized this thing in my particular business unit. You know, the conversation, you know, really changes. So it's really to me just kind of to recap, you know, here just starts with making sure my team knows what they're actually here to protect. When I do a board presentation or an audit presentation, they're in the meetings with me. You know, when you have when they present ideas, when we're kind of doing our road mapping, why tell me why the business, you know, needs this. Right. Who from the business, you know, can endorse this? Is this a security thing or is this something that, you know, the business needs? And what that does is helps build those relationships, not just in IT, you know, where we normally kind of spend a lot of time, but it forces them, you know, to get out and and learn, you know, the business. And I would bring, you know, different people in from the business product sales commercial into, you know, some of our meetings here to just kind of explain, hey, what are we doing? Because there there is a difference, I think, to understand what the company does. People can kind of grasp that. But how we do it right is is the underlying thing. And that can cause a big disconnect between, you know, security and those other departments. Thank you, Ken. I imagine it's a little bit more stringent and stressful when you're responsible for some of the health of a giant part of the world population. So I can only imagine. Thank you again. Vijay, I'm going to pass it off to you if you're ready. Yep. Thank you, Stephen. And Ken, it's been an absolute delight hearing you this evening. I'd like to switch things up, right, a little bit just to get to know you as a person. So if you don't mind, we'd like to do this quick rapid fire where I want to ask you really quick questions and maybe you could respond if that works for you, Ken. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. We're going to have some, like Thomas mentioned over here, one of the things that we like to do is like, we'll just have a little bit of fun. Right. So my first question to you, let's get to know a little bit of what your postal site. Let's say you got a $50 million lottery ticket. What would you like to do? That's my first question. Wow. $50 million. Okay. Quick, quick. You got to get back to me in like 10 seconds. We're doing rapid fire over here. Okay. Probably first thing that comes to mind, luxurious vacation. Very rare. Rare thing. We got to entertain this. I have never been to Thailand. I hear that's nice. So I'll probably go there. It is nice. Yeah, it's not there. Then I will go. Question number two. Question number two. Really quick. What's your favorite board bandwagon? Tolerance. Are we intolerance or out of tolerance? Excellent. Yep. Question number three. Right. You obviously hired a number of people in your career. What's your favorite interview question that you want to share with your, you know, with the audience over here? Hmm. I like to ask what frustrates you? Okay. Yeah. That's a nice one. That's a nice one. I like that. All right. Question number four. Right. You keep talking about not having enough cyber talent. And the response tends to be, all right, let's get some more, you know, talent to the K-12 education or let's talk about public-private partnership. Do you have a different view or amounting to you? I do think it is going to depend on the organization. Right. So I think that's a good conversation starter to say, you know, not enough cyber talent. You know, maybe that's true. I don't know. Millions of people, you know, millions of jobs out there. But what do an organization really need? Right. It's kind of how I look at that. Right. So, yeah. Yep. Not necessarily a quick answer, but that's... You've been dropping some jewels altogether. I love it. I love it. Last and final, you know, quick teaser. Maybe in seeing heavy, you know, heavy inundance of regulatory oversight, you saw the most recent, you know, guidance from the White House. What are your personal thoughts over here? Yeah, kind of, you know, I think, you know, it can be necessary. You know, coming from a regulatory working at the Federal Reserve, I think it's necessary. I think it can be good and useful. It's not going to be the silver bullet, but I think it can help drive, you know, change, particularly for, you know, key industries, right? You know, critical infrastructure. You know, you should be doing some of these basic things there. But again, unfortunately, it shouldn't be the driving, you know, factor. But there's a lot of sensitive data that companies are dealing with that could harm, you know, you know, people or expose secrets. So I support some of it. You know, some of it, you know, it's not my favorite thing, you know, to do and deal with. But I can see the need, you know, for it. Love it. Love it. Hey, this has been an absolute delight. Hey, hit a few of us up when you're in your career. Let's catch up. Tomas, forward to you for the room reset. Thanks, Vijay. Thanks for that entertaining, rapid fire line of questioning there, keeping Ken on his toes on a Wednesday evening. So look, this is our fireside chat. If it's the first time you've joined us, we do this every single month for about 90 minutes or so. So now's the time if you do have a question and you are in the audience and you want to join the conversation, feel free to raise your hand. There's a little icon on your on your app there. You raise your hand and we'll bring you up on stage and you can ask ask Ken a question live. If you don't want to do that for whatever reason and you want to type it into the to the comment, you can do that. And I will read it off if you have a question and you just can't speak with that. I will actually can. I'll ask you this question. Any interesting books that you're reading lately? Lately. Or that you've read. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it's a poker book. I used to play, you know, poker back in the day. And there are some parallels there. Thinking in probability. I have to look by Annie Duke. I'm not going to mess up the title here. But basically thinking in bets or probabilities. Right. How do you make decisions with incomplete information? And so I thought that was a lot of the things that we do here. Right. You know, you don't have to be right 100 percent of the time, you know, and leveraging, you know, probabilities. There and making decisions there. So that was one of the latest books that I've read that was, you know, pretty interesting to me. That's actually an interesting book. That sounds really interesting. Maybe helping you think in times of crisis. There's somebody that does want to ask a question. You just have to click on the accept button once I allow you to speak. Well, we've got a few people coming up. All right. Let's see who jumps up first. Larry, how's it going? Fine. Thank you. Thanks for joining us this evening. Anything you want to ask, Ken? Yeah. Thank you for accepting my call. Ken, what keeps you up at night? The Detroit Lions winning the... I think it's their year. I think it's their year this year. That's what makes me nervous. People betting on the Lions here. Well, I have to contradict you on that one, my friend. I think the Bears are ready. Yeah. Yeah. So Larry's my guy here. But no, kind of what keeps me up, it can be a lot, right? I have to have comfort and trust in my team. But we're global manufacturing. We have, you can imagine, in a manufacturing environment, you have your corporate systems, but you also have OT equipment there, just like everyone else. And there's just always that inkling, whether I was here or at other companies there, are all the doors locked, are all the windows closed, and those kind of things there. But what kind of what gives me, I guess, comfort is that we practice, right? Incident response planning, and we have those things in place. We have our teams kind of manage things 24-7. So I think, you know, we can, you know, be prepared. So I'm not every night worrying about it, but that is, you know, something that, you know, is still going to be top of mind. And you can probably see it in the news. Ransomware is, you know, still, you know, going strong. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Thanks, Ken, and great job. Yep. Appreciate it. Thanks, Tucker. Thanks for joining the conversation this evening. My pleasure. I'll pass it over to Harpreet. Hi. Can you guys hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Hi. This is my first time joining the Fireside Chat, and this is a very interesting concept and interesting lineup. Great story, great journey. Thank you for sharing the insights. I love the rapid-fire questions. So my question is, if somebody, so I have been in the industry for almost 30 years doing IT solution delivery, mostly on the application development side, and I'm fascinated by all the aspects of cyber. I have worked very closely with the cyber department in my organizations. If at this point in the carrier we want to switch to cyber field, what do you recommend? Yeah, I think that's a good question. And it kind of goes back to the shortage. Vijay asked that question about the shortage there. I think anyone can get in the field here. And one thing that I tell people is that there are a ton of roles in cyber. While you may not be looking to be a pen tester or a SOC analyst, but there are so many different roles from sales, compliance, identity, BSOs, business liaisons, all of those things there where you can take that business knowledge that you gain to apply that to cyber. Because, as I mentioned before, my role is to help protect the business. And those that best understand the business has the best chance to protect it. So, I mean, if you think of anything, project management, office of a CISO, right? You know, just helping, you know, formulate a strategy there. I think there are a ton of roles there. And that's the good and the bad. But then you need to figure out what is it, right, to narrow, you know, down on. So, I was just saying, you know, understanding what the different roles are in cyber. And kind of how did you leverage, you know, your skill sets, your soft skills, things that you built up your career in, and how could that be applied in helping manage risk? That's another option, you know, in risk management. That's really what this is. Understanding how the business works could be another area there. If you don't want to necessarily go down that technical route. And I think a lot of people sometimes think that, right? Oh, I need to get this certified ethical hacker, right, to get in. Oh, I need to really understand the ins and outs of cloud security. It's not necessarily true. So, hopefully that helps there. Again, there's just vast opportunities out here. And still probably more roles to be developed. Thank you. Thanks, Harpreet. Thanks for joining us this evening. And thanks for asking your question. Shani, over to you. Hey, Thomas. Thanks for calling on me. And, Ken, thank you so much. This has been a phenomenal conversation. I wanted to draw a little bit in on sort of your energy management. So, talking about how do you cultivate a work environment for yourself to thrive as well as others, taking into consideration mental health and awareness, work-life balance, resilience, given the nature of your job. There could be fires that need to be put out where you kind of come to work thinking everything is okay and then something happens and your world kind of blows up. What are some of the things that you do that you put in place for yourself but that you also put in place for your team so that you all are working optimally and efficiently? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great challenge. And I think that comes to retention, right, so that people don't get burned out. And I think leaders should have that strategy and don't just put it on their people to figure it out themselves. And the big thing that I do that I think I pride myself on is prioritizing the priorities, right? Everything that the business may bring to you, it could be a priority, but sometimes just asking, yep, I understand this is a hot topic right now, but when do you need this by? Right. Right. Sometimes we don't, I've noticed people don't ask that question. When do you need it? Right. It's just like, oh, hey, I need this to be done. And then, you know, teams just stop what they're doing and then they start reacting to it. Right. And I also encourage my team, if I give them work, because sometimes I do it rapid fire. Hey, we got to do this. We got to do that. Ask me, when do I need, when do I need to deliver on this? Or is there something that I should, or how should I prioritize these other things, you know, that you just gave me, you know, to do? And then we'll kind of, you know, roadmap, you know, those things out. So I kind of have them work on what's the priority. And because what was a priority today is not going to be a priority, you know, tomorrow. And, you know, we'll make sure that we get leadership, you know, buy-in on that. But other things that we do, I love, you know, that we're in a hybrid environment. You know, I have a mix of people that on the team still loves to come into the office, you know, and that's fine. Others can take care of family, you know, on those days. They can work on their schedules. And I don't really care. I tell them, you know, well, there is a policy we need to adhere to, but I don't care if you're on the moon or, you know, here, whatever, as long as you're getting, you know, your work done there. And, you know, I think having one-on-ones with them as well is important. And I have to make sure that I'm mindful of making sure one-on-ones are not project status updates, right? We can do that. But it's really checking in on how you're doing, right, from that, you know, work-life balance. Are you getting the time off? Are you, you know, taking the, you know, the vacation, you know, and things like that. So first and foremost, right, then we can get into any other thing, you know, that they want to do there. So I find that, you know, to be helpful because there is a lot of interesting work, especially when you're doing transformation. There's a lot of opportunities in companies. And there's a lot of excitement to put new tools in and all those things there. So I find myself, I have to pull them back a little bit. Hey, take a break here. We don't have to get this all done, you know, at this time. And, you know, for me, I kind of do the same thing, right? Well, the other thing that I do, and I kind of tell them to do, I block out time on my calendar. It's just called get stuff done time. I don't always say stuff, but get stuff done where no one can, you know, block that time. Except for a few people, you know, I may move it for. But that's time to think, get caught up on things so that I'm not always in back-to-back meetings and then coming home and trying to do work, right? Sometimes that happens. But I found that has been, you know, truly, you know, effective, you know, for me. And I make sure that my team does that as well. Because if your time is blocked, I'm not going to override it unless, you know, there's some, you know, critical thing, you know, that we do. So I would say that's probably the biggest thing, you know, for me that I had to do over my time is not working, you know, all the time. And the pandemic was really tough, you know, doing that because we were just working around the clock, you know, at that time. But blocking my time off to get things done and forcing people to work how you want to be engaged with, right? Don't leave that calendar open so that your time is booked from, you know, 7 a.m. to, you know, 6 p.m. So that's my approach, you know, to managing that. Super. Thanks so much. Thanks, Shani. Thanks for joining us this evening. Always great to see you. Stanley, over to you. Thanks for joining us this evening. Anything you want to ask, Ken? Yes. Thanks, Thomas. Thanks, Kenneth. I appreciate you sharing your experiences and everything. This is my first time on this fireside chat. So I'm really glad that I found this. So, Ken, I do want to understand AI seems to be the talk of the town. I do want to understand what about how generative AI concerns you or worries you. How are you thinking about, I guess, leveraging that generative AI to maybe augment some of your existing security processes or using it to sort of combat threats? Yeah. I think it should be on top of everybody's mind here and how we are going to use this. I think there's a lot of great opportunity, right? Like, you know, using, you know, AI, generative AI and all those things there when used, you know, responsibly. So I kind of look at it from two views there. You know, how will businesses use that, right? And, you know, to make sure that we're protecting, you know, the data, that we're using it in an ethical way and producing the product, you know, original product there, not, you know, just copying there. But also, you know, making sure our data isn't going to be used, you know, in these models or, you know, input up there. So that's, I think, some of the obvious things that comes, you know, to mind there. And, you know, and kind of on, you know, the security side, you know, I've seen, you know, different things and from AI being embedded in a lot of security tools, if it can make, you know, our job easier, you know, fighting, you know, this battle here, you know, I'm all for it, right? Once we, you know, kind of understand that, you know, better. So I, again, I love the opportunities because I'm thinking cyber, the threat actors are going to be using this, you know, as well. How do they craft better phishing emails, right? To kind of bypass, you know, our defenses and evade, you know, different security tools, you know, that we may have, right? So I think we need to be thinking about how we can leverage that in our programs to, you know, make us more efficient and detect, you know, things, you know, faster and anomalies or maybe help us baseline and then, you know, detect, you know, anomalies, you know, much faster. So it is something that we're definitely thinking about. We're, you know, investing and learning, you know, more about it. And hopefully, you know, we can, you know, start to leverage, you know, some of that, those capabilities here. Thanks, Kenneth. Pretty well put together. Thank you. Thanks, Stanley. Thanks for joining us this evening and asking your question. I can tell you I can't wait for Generative AI to be used for me to answer emails from all the people that send me emails every day. That's probably the first use case that I will use it for. It has to also mark them red and delete them from the inbox. I've already used it to create dad jokes. So we know it works for that. That's what we know is a film that maybe, you know, horrible. But Kiera, hopefully I didn't butcher your name. Thanks for joining us this evening. Anything you want to ask, Ken? Yes, thank you. So I definitely want to say good evening to the panel. This is my first time joining as well. Ken, I want to thank you as well for your valuable insight. As I was listening, I heard that you got to see cybersecurity across different lenses, going from the Federal Reserve to other areas of sector of business as well. My question to you is, what is the something that you know now that if you could go back in time, you would tell your younger self, whether your younger self, college, high school or as a child. What is that one thing that you know now that you wish that you could, if you could go back in time and tell your younger self? That's my question. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a great question. One thing that I, you know, will probably, you know, say could be two, but definitely comes to mind is build a network. Right. You know, get out of that server room at that time, you know, which is important. But build, you know, a network, you know, outside of IT or in IT. Right. Because I just, again, just wanted to do IT, you know, not understanding the power of the network, making sure people know who you are, build relationships and, you know, continue to support others, I think would be, you know, key. Right. You know, for me. And I would tell that to anybody, you know, starting, starting their career, mid-career or, you know, whatever it is, underscoring that, building the network and understanding the power of a network. And, you know, just the reason why I say it, you know, it's helped me, you know, so much where I didn't do it, you know, early on. But, you know, just, and it's not always just you receiving, you know, things there. You know, I love helping people. You know, I've been helped, you know, with my network. You know, it's just so much power in that and, you know, in supporting the community, learning from others. Right. You may, you know, open an opportunity for someone else. So, yeah, just the power of a network. I can't, you know, stress enough. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Cara. Thanks for joining us this evening and asking you a question. I'm going to pass it over to you, Katie, while we get, I see Eric trying to join us. Eric, there's an option there. You have to just click accept and it'll pop you up on stage. But while we wait for you, Katie, over to you. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Well, speaking of network, Ken. Yeah, that was, it's one of those things, too. You know, I wasn't a big sports person, but I did run cross country. And there was something about that last, you know, two tenths of a mile in a race where you're digging really deep. And I have to say, when I met you, I was exhausted from a day of working really hard. I had a really demanding job during that period of time. But there was a dinner that had, you know, a group of people that I was excited to see, other CISOs and practitioners in the Chicago area. That was where I met you, though. And I dug deep and I showed up at that dinner. And I am so thankful that I did because it was really one of my favorite networking events of the year, frankly. So I can't stress enough to everyone in every stage of their career how important that is. And just one thought I'd give you just a shout out. Like, thankful that you were, you know, you joined my network this year. I want to go back to something you said, if I could. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming when we're in these, you know, strategic roles, CISO roles. As you know, you know, I pursued some deputy CISO type work. So the will to win is meaningless without the will to prepare. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming when we're looking at, you know, this entire cybersecurity strategy to maybe take yourself from a really low rating. You know, I was in that position as a VC. So what do I do when I'm a 1.2? How do I prioritize? So in terms of your preparation, you've given us some tidbits. But where do you go to for some of that information so that you are fully prepared when you're going into those board meetings and having those meetings with your team about the overarching strategy for the next 18 months, for example? Yeah, yeah. You know, there is some – that's a great question. And there are some foundational things, you know, that we can put on the roadmap there. But what I kind of put to the top of the things that I do, we have our capital, you know, process, right? You know, I've kept these at other companies. But, you know, when you kind of sit in the meetings and, you know, you go and, you know, ask for, you know, funding, you know, for your project there. You know, when I have the time, I'll go in and sit and listen, you know, to other needs around the organization. And everyone is presenting, you know, their pitch, right? And so, number one, what that does is it gives me insight into some of the challenges that I may not have known about, you know, across, you know, the organization. And it kind of opens some eyes here. You know, it's like, man, I wouldn't even approve my own project. We need to be doing, you know, those things there. So I take that as information and input to, number one, making sure my proposals or strategy is airtight, right? Because, you know, CFOs need manufacturing. You know, this is general. They got to worry about implants, fire, chemicals, all these things. Even though cyber is like the number one risk, you kind of see that, you know, everywhere. They're worried about a million different things. So if I'm coming to you to ask for whatever that dollar amount is, I need to be answered the question, this is why you need this, right? And so it's really just going back to understanding their business, understanding their challenges. Yes, there are other risks and things that, you know, we have. I'm not saying this is a silver bullet. But I like to say that if we do this, it can apply to many areas and bring us back into our agreed upon risk profile, right? So the preparedness is understanding that risk profile, are we all agreed on that, and understanding how, you know, the business, you know, will work. So a lot of my time is sometimes not researching the latest threat actor is what are we doing from a business, you know, standpoint, right? So that I can, you know, build my strategy and strengthen my case. Absolutely appreciate that. Didn't mean to, I was, I was laughing with you, not at that moment. It looks like Eric has joined us on the stage. So Eric, what's your question? Hi, good evening. And thank you very much, Kenneth, for sharing your story. I truly appreciate it. If you had all of the money in the world, what problem in the cybersecurity industry would you solve and why? Very strong question there. Lack of CISO pay? Is that, I'm sorry, I thought I heard you say that. Eric wants to come out here swinging. He already, like, he already knows if he had all the money in the world, he would be in Thailand. Like, he would not be. Well, that's why I have to switch it up. No vacations allowed. We got to solve the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yep, yep. So to solve, you know, with the controls or something like that, using the money to plug those holes there. Yeah, no, I think that's a, you know, a really, you know, good, good question there. You know, I think one of the, you know, the problems, you know, that I would, you know, probably spend some time on, man, that's a really good one here. That I've kind of seen, you know, overarching and is probably around, you know, data, you know, protection, right? Because I think this is the, one of the lifebloods of the organization. They can have, you know, availability, you know, outages and kind of recover from that. But competitive advantage, right, is your data, your intellectual property, people taking that, you know, as you go, you know, and there. How can we protect data, you know, and follow, you know, where you are or where that user is and making sure that it's only in the hands and the eyes that it needs to see basically unauthorized access? Because I think that, again, that's the lightblood of the organization there. Now, again, if I had, you know, the blank check, would I spend it all in security? Would I even recommend that they spend it all in security, though? I think that's maybe a twist to the question. Probably not, right? Are we, you know, stifling the organization, right? Maybe put that in other areas so that, you know, they can, you know, go faster. But I want to make sure that, you know, at least those guardrails are there so as they're going fast, we're not going to be driving off a cliff. And, you know, in some of these industries, you know, data, it can be catastrophic. Thank you for that. I appreciate that, Kenneth. Thanks, Eric. Thanks for joining us this evening and asking your question. It was good to hear from you, my friend. My pleasure. Thank you, Thomas. Lisa Beth, I'll pass it over to you. Thanks again. Kenneth, you know, one of the things that your last question was about was about some of the needs for protection of data in general. And one of the things that I've seen is that there seems to be a little bit of a convergence of a couple of different disciplines that historically have been somewhat siloed. Maybe we didn't know we had worked together well. But compliance, data security, information security, and privacy all seem to have a little bit of dabbling in each other's territory. What do you think helps to drive best practices in that space? And are you seeing some of the same areas of convergence? Yeah, definitely. And, you know, I think it's definitely a shared responsibility, you know, or kind of having a centralized data governance there to help, you know, do that. Because there is some education, you know, around that in, you know, in organizations that I've been in and people think, you know, security owns, you know, everything when it comes, you know, to data, right? You know, if you take something as simple as a data classification policy, you may have your different classification levels, you know, restricted, confidential, et cetera. But I think even having clear definition of what fits in that bucket, you know, what is considered restricted, you know, especially when you're outside of, say, maybe government where that could be more defined. I don't know if every, you know, organizations have that clearly defined and agreed upon as to what would be restricted, what would be confidential. Because then now you can add a little more, you know, meat to it. Then you can start to define what is your tolerance level for data. So if it's confidential, our tolerance for loss on authorized access is zero or, you know, confidential could be medium. So once you start to have those conversations there, then you can assign, you know, the systems, who's the owner of it. If it's, you know, privacy related, where can it be stored and all those things there. So I think it gets out of the generalizing, you know, data and using terms like sensitive data. Okay. Yeah. I kind of push back on my team and saying, stop saying sensitive or our users stop saying sensitive. We don't have a classification level there. Right. I need to know is this confidential, restricted or internal. Right. And then that can help, you know, do that. And then what type of data fits in there? So kind of, you know, our privacy thing. Is it PII or where should this be stored? How should I protect this PII if it's stored in this country there? So I agree with you. It is, you know, converging there. So now what do we do about it? How do we operationalize? And that's one of the things that I've been, you know, working on here is to kind of help formalize, you know, that as opposed to just a standard data classification policy that, you know, sits somewhere. So something that we can really be using and help drive our strategy there. That's great. And then the follow-up to that is how do we play nicely in the sandbox together? Yeah, I, you know, for me, this is just about my personality. You know, I collaborate, want to collaborate and have a shared vision. Right. I don't come in kind of beating the tables that this is my way or the highway, you know, kind of thing. And kind of coming in, presenting it in a way that this is good for the business or this is what the business needs, you know, to do. Do we agree? Right. What are the different, you know, views? You know, who has a divergent, you know, view there? So what's, if we can get to a shared goal, right? So like security doesn't have to own everything. We need this input here. I found that to be really helpful, right, in having, you know, those shared visions and I'm not coming through my way or the highway. Because then you're just asking for resistance. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much. And I'm going to turn it over to Stephen with another question for you. Stephen, go ahead. Hey, thank you. So I guess final question for me, and then I think after this we'll start wrapping it up. I wanted to ask, you know, what kind of challenges have you faced in building teams, especially as of late? Look, I know your organization, you know, you guys are on the Gender Quality Index from Bloomberg. So there's a lot of good stuff going on. Maybe you may not have just the same challenges as some of us do there. But I think over time we've seen it pretty difficult to hire people, especially in the camp of diversity, equity, and inclusion for security teams especially. So curious about what your experience has been there. Yeah, you know, definitely, you know, finding talent, you know, that fits culture and all those things. It's definitely a challenge. But, you know, it can be done, you know, for sure. And you have to understand or view it from what do you need and, you know, do you need skilled, you know, labor if you're looking at to build a SOC, you know, for example. Maybe you don't have, you know, those junior analysts, you know, you can't build a team full of junior analysts there. But maybe there's other roles where you can bring some people in. I think someone asked a question like how can you break in into a role, maybe, you know, and maybe a GRC, you know, type function there. You can, you know, bring, you know, some people in there. But I think some of the challenges, you know, just speaking in general, you know, in certain areas like a security operations center, how do you staff 24 by 7? Are you going offshore? Are you trying to find, you know, staff? How do you manage, you know, those global teams? And, you know, having to do that can, you know, can be a challenge. So do you have a hybrid approach to use managed services for some of those things where you may need eyes on glass, you know, 24-7, but then have, you know, maybe some FTEs on your team to help with strategy and service delivery. And so one of the things that, you know, that I do, I have that, you know, different approach is going to be in different organizations here. But, you know, one of the goals that I have is that, you know, I try to definitely either in my org or, you know, somewhere else, you know, create diversity, you know, in, you know, the workplace here. And it's not necessarily cyber, right? You know, I'm in that space there. But, you know, I mentor, you know, students in, you know, in STEM fields there. But really, at the end of the day, you know, I know people in healthcare, you know, leaders who've moved up the ranks there. And they have the same problem, right? And, you know, having more diverse talent. And finance have the more, you know, the same challenges here, trying to, you know, find that talent there. You know, I'm an entrepreneur. I own, you know, some things there. And I find students who want to own their own business. I don't care what your passion is, but let me give you some of, you know, the skills you need or the coaching or mentoring to go follow your path. If you want to do cybersecurity, great. I'll support you in that. If you want to, you know, be a teacher or whatever it is, here's how I can, you know, help you to go create opportunities for those who, you know, disadvantaged or don't have the same opportunities, you know, as others. So I share my, even with my own kids. I have two, you know, two kids. And, hey, if cyber's for you, let's talk, right? But it may not be. And I don't want to force you down that road because, you know, dad did it. But there are some fundamental skills that I think you should, you know, have to prepare you for wherever, you know, you choose to go so that you can thrive in whatever industry or field that you're going in. Thank you, brother. Appreciate that. And keep paving that way. Yep. Tomas, going to toss it back to you for the wrap-up. Thank you, sir. Thank you, kind sir. Ken, it's been a pleasure chatting with you this evening. Again, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us. I do have one final question before we sort of conclude, and it will sort of take us towards the end. And it's a reflection question. I usually ask the question about a look back, but I forget who was it that popped up on stage and asked that question earlier. So I'll say look forward. What's that forward sort of view? Not sort of view, but looking at your career, where you've been, where you started, where you've been, where you are currently, what's next for Ken? What's on the horizon? Yeah, no, that's a great, you know, question there. I, you know, for me, you know, someone gave me a quote, anything that's not growing is dying, right? And I don't know what the next opportunity is, but, you know, I need to be continuously learning, right? I'm still, you know, passionate about that. And don't close the door on opportunities, right? Try, you know, different things there, right? You know, I used to do IT. Maybe, you know, I could be, you know, back in an IT role. How maybe I can go out on my own and, you know, start, you know, to do some things there and leverage, you know, the experience, you know, that I have here. So the number one thing is to keep learning, right? And don't silo myself or, you know, box myself in to say that I'm only going to be, you know, a security officer. I have, I feel I have a lot to offer, you know, the community here, whether that's advising, you know, boards or other, you know, organizations here. So, so I still kind of a high level general answer there, but I don't have that opportunity, but be prepared for the opportunity. Is it just kind of the model and the way I approach things? No, look, I think that's great. It's a tough question to answer, but I know a few of us CISOs on the panel are happy you didn't say taking our jobs. You can go to Canada and take Octavia's if you want, if she vacates that role. You can take my job. I keep my salary and I keep your salary and you can just have a job. Nice. Look, it's, it's been, it's been great, really great chatting with you and having you join us and answering our questions. Thank you to, to my co-host and thank you to the, to the folks in the audience who tuned in. Before everybody sort of departs, I just want to announce our next guest next month will be Steve Grossman, who's the CISO at the NBA. He'll be joining us. So please tune in for that conversation next month. Before we sort of give you the last final words, Ken, co-host, any, any final thoughts for, for Ken this evening? Just a heartfelt thank you and respectable of your time. So we'll not grow you any more from here. Yeah, so I'll tell you, thank you, Ken. Ken, we appreciate it. And, you know, don't worry, BJ left so you don't have to worry about us making me sweat with rapid fires anymore. And I would echo what Octavia and Stephen have said that, you know, it's been delightful hearing your perspectives and being able to take away some key wisdom from it for everyday life from here on out. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I guess, you know, the thing that I tell people and maybe to close with is just be your authentic self. It's something that I, you know, I had to learn. I was trying to mimic, you know, people, you know, take things from, you know, people. But you have to be your authentic self. And, you know, that's, that's what I'll leave everyone with tonight. So thank you. That's great advice. Thank you, Ken. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you in a few weeks. Have a great rest of your week, everyone. Bye bye. Thank you. Enjoy the fun of the summer, everyone. Bye, everybody. Okay.