KBKAST

In this episode, Shannon Sedgwick, Partner – National Cybersecurity Practice from MinterEllison, comes back on the show to talk about cyber warfare and its potential to precede physical warfare, especially targeting critical infrastructure. He also shares his insights on the intersection of geopolitics, technology, and cybersecurity, exploring the potential for AI to exacerbate global divisions and influence economic landscapes. The conversation also dives into the impact of increasing cyber threats, the challenges of AI regulation, and Australia’s position in the international technology landscape.

After two decades of working globally, consulting on risk and cybersecurity, Shannon has keen insight into what makes an organisation both protected and resilient from cyber threats. Shannon’s focus is on cyber risk governance and providing strategic advice to executive leadership and boards. Shannon works with government and corporate clients to develop solutions to incorporate cyber risk into their strategies. Shannon helps clients meet risk-reduction and compliance objectives and advises on the implementation of new and evolving technologies by ensuring they are secure, fit-for-purpose, scalable, and continually driving efficiencies. By employing his unique blend of experience in finance and cybersecurity, he assists in uplifting internal due diligence capabilities, focused on reducing risks and increasing return on investment.

In this episode, we’re joined by Josh Goldfarb, Global Solutions Architect – Security at F5, as he delves into the challenges of getting buy-in for security initiatives from management and executives. Josh discusses the struggle of presenting informative metrics to decision-makers and the need to bridge the gap between security professionals and business leaders. He also talks about the importance of modernizing security guidance to addressing the visibility challenge in complex environments.

Josh (Twitter: @ananalytical) is Global Solutions Architect – Security, at F5. Previously, Josh served as VP, CTO – Emerging Technologies at FireEye and as Chief Security Officer for nPulse Technologies until its acquisition by FireEye. Prior to joining nPulse, Josh worked as an independent consultant, applying his analytical methodology to help enterprises build and enhance their network traffic analysis, security operations, and incident response capabilities to improve their information security postures. He has consulted and advised numerous clients in both the public and private sectors at strategic and tactical levels. Earlier in his career, Josh served as the Chief of Analysis for the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) where he built from the ground up and subsequently ran the network, endpoint, and malware analysis/forensics capabilities for US-CERT. In addition to Josh’s blogging and public speaking appearances, he is also a regular contributor to DarkReading and SecurityWeek.

In this bonus episode, we dive into the world of tech leadership and the challenges and opportunities surrounding the adoption of generative AI, ethical considerations, and data security at TechLeaders 2024.

Chris Diffley from Optus, announces the launch of the Optus managed threat monitoring service powered by Devo Technology, emphasizing the use of AI and ML to automate threat monitoring and detection. Chris “Gonzo” Gondek from NetApp highlights the importance of data storage conversations, storage technology flexibility, and autonomous ransomware protection. Gavin Jones from Elastic addresses the evolving nature of technology and the lag in Australia’s adoption of generative AI, while Geoff Schomburgk emphasizes the importance of a positive approach to encourage MFA adoption.

Chris Diffley, Senior Director for Client Security, Enterprise and Business,Optus

Chris is an experienced Information Security Manager and Security Director with over 20 years of experience in Telecommunications, Security, Operations and Consulting. He’s lead teams across enterprise, midmarket and small businesses and has deep understanding of implementing and upholding a number of frameworks and standards across businesses.

Chris “Gonzo” Gondek, Solutions Engineer Manager, Australia & New Zealand, NetApp

Chris “Gonzo” Gondek is a technology evangelist who plays a crucial role in driving NetApp’s technical solutions specialists (TSS) to greater heights. As our TSS Leader, Chris and his team collaborate closely with our sales and channel business units to drive innovation, develop new opportunities, enhance our solution offerings, and ensure that our customers’ needs are not just met, but exceeded. Chris spent the past 4 years working in the NetApp Partner eco-system as a Technical Partner Manager, as well as spokesperson at our channel and alliance events. Prior to NetApp, Chris partnered with us at Commvault and worked as a solutions specialist at Symantec. With 25 years in the tech sector, Chris is a seasoned industry leader with a proven track record of delivering innovative solutions and driving customer success.

Gavin Jones, Area Vice President and Country Manager, Australia & New Zealand, Elastic

Gavin brings over two decades of enterprise software experience, with a track record of leadership in banking and financial services, telecommunications, and public sector verticals. Joining Elastic as an Area Vice President and Country Manager in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), he assumes a pivotal role in overseeing ANZ market operations, driving business development, and shaping the company’s strategy. Prior to joining Elastic, Gavin served as Vice President of ANZ at Confluent, where he spearheaded their transition towards vision and value-based selling. His focus was on high-value and priority use cases for the clientele. Preceding this role, he held the position of Country Manager for Tableau Software ANZ for two and a half years. In this capacity, he played a key role in shaping the BI/analytics category as a leader and a subsidiary of salesforce.com. His responsibilities included developing and executing the ANZ go-to-market strategy, as well as navigating the integration with Salesforce. Gavin is motivated by his ambition to lead a dynamic and inspired team within an innovative, growth-oriented organisation. His expertise spans strategic account management, new business development, and the skillful negotiation of large-scale, complex deals and partnerships.

Geoff Schomburgk, Vice President, Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), Yubico

At Yubico, Geoff is responsible for driving the Yubico business across the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region, working with partners and enterprise customers to implement modern phishing-resistant authentication, helping make the internet safer for all.

Geoff brings a strong customer focus and a proven ability to implement complex technology solutions across various industries, including telecommunications, utility and transport sectors across Australia, Asia and Europe. Critical to the success of these projects is the definition and realisation of tangible business value, where the combination of Geoff’s business consulting approach and project delivery experience consistently delivers business value.

Geoff is an experienced senior executive with a background in engineering and strategy consulting and over 30 years of experience in the global information and communications technology (ICT) industry. Geoff has a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) and an MBA. He is also a qualified Company Director (FAICD) with current Board and business mentor roles for several Not-for-profit (NFP) organisations.

In this episode, we welcome Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, to delve into the future of cybersecurity and its impact on cloud-based software. Jeetu shares his insights on the detrimental effects of monopolies in the industry and the complexities faced by Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs). He emphasizes the importance of resilience, updates, and collaboration in addressing security challenges and predicting exponential innovation.

Jeetu Patel is Cisco’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration. He leverages a diverse set of capabilities to lead the strategy and development for these businesses and also owns P&L responsibility for this multibillion-dollar portfolio. Jeetu combines a bold vision, steeped in product design and development expertise, operational rigor and innate market understanding to create high growth Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses.

A member of the Executive Leadership Team, Jeetu is helping to redefine Cisco’s SaaS business and strategy to further accelerate the company’s transformation and growth. His mission is to build world class, subscription-based products that solve Cisco customers’ biggest problems. His team is creating and designing meaningfully differentiated products that diverge in the way they’re conceived, built, priced, packaged and sold.

Prior to joining Cisco, Jeetu was the Chief Product Officer (CPO) and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Box, a role he pioneered. He led the company’s product and platform strategy, setting the company’s long-term vision and roadmap for cloud content management in the enterprise. He transformed Box from a single product application to a multi-product platform used by 100K customers representing 69% of the Fortune 500. The discipline, quality standards, performance metrics, and stability Jeetu instilled fueled the platform’s growth – nearly quadrupling revenues to $700M+. Box’s growth scaled to reach over 60M users with over 50% of customers using multiple products. He also created the Box Platform business unit where he led product strategy, marketing and developer relations – driving products from incubation stage to mature offerings.

Before joining Box, Jeetu was General Manager and Chief Executive of EMC’s newly acquired Syncplicity business unit, a cloud service for Enterprise File Sync Sharing (EFSS) and collaboration. One of the first SaaS-based solutions offered by EMC, Jeetu spearheaded the company’s acquisition. He created a world class leadership team, secured some of the market’s largest customers and led the group to become one of the fastest growing EFSS companies in a highly competitive market. Other key roles at EMC included CMO for the Information Intelligence Group and Chief Strategy Officer, where he drove the organic and inorganic strategy for the division’s cloud and mobile growth.

Previously, Jeetu was President of Doculabs, a research and advisory firm co-owned by Forrester Research. The firm focused on collaboration and content management across a range of industries including financial services, insurance, energy, manufacturing and life sciences.

He currently serves on the boards of JLL, an American commercial real estate services company, and Equinix, the world’s digital infrastructure company.

Jeetu holds a B.S. in Information Decision Sciences from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family.

In this episode, we welcome Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration at Cisco, to delve into the future of cybersecurity and its impact on cloud-based software. Jeetu shares his insights on the detrimental effects of monopolies in the industry and the complexities faced by Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs). He emphasizes the importance of resilience, updates, and collaboration in addressing security challenges and predicting exponential innovation.

Jeetu Patel is Cisco’s Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration. He leverages a diverse set of capabilities to lead the strategy and development for these businesses and also owns P&L responsibility for this multibillion-dollar portfolio. Jeetu combines a bold vision, steeped in product design and development expertise, operational rigor and innate market understanding to create high growth Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses.

A member of the Executive Leadership Team, Jeetu is helping to redefine Cisco’s SaaS business and strategy to further accelerate the company’s transformation and growth. His mission is to build world class, subscription-based products that solve Cisco customers’ biggest problems. His team is creating and designing meaningfully differentiated products that diverge in the way they’re conceived, built, priced, packaged and sold.

Prior to joining Cisco, Jeetu was the Chief Product Officer (CPO) and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Box, a role he pioneered. He led the company’s product and platform strategy, setting the company’s long-term vision and roadmap for cloud content management in the enterprise. He transformed Box from a single product application to a multi-product platform used by 100K customers representing 69% of the Fortune 500. The discipline, quality standards, performance metrics, and stability Jeetu instilled fueled the platform’s growth – nearly quadrupling revenues to $700M+. Box’s growth scaled to reach over 60M users with over 50% of customers using multiple products. He also created the Box Platform business unit where he led product strategy, marketing and developer relations – driving products from incubation stage to mature offerings.

Before joining Box, Jeetu was General Manager and Chief Executive of EMC’s newly acquired Syncplicity business unit, a cloud service for Enterprise File Sync Sharing (EFSS) and collaboration. One of the first SaaS-based solutions offered by EMC, Jeetu spearheaded the company’s acquisition. He created a world class leadership team, secured some of the market’s largest customers and led the group to become one of the fastest growing EFSS companies in a highly competitive market. Other key roles at EMC included CMO for the Information Intelligence Group and Chief Strategy Officer, where he drove the organic and inorganic strategy for the division’s cloud and mobile growth.

Previously, Jeetu was President of Doculabs, a research and advisory firm co-owned by Forrester Research. The firm focused on collaboration and content management across a range of industries including financial services, insurance, energy, manufacturing and life sciences.

He currently serves on the boards of JLL, an American commercial real estate services company, and Equinix, the world’s digital infrastructure company.

Jeetu holds a B.S. in Information Decision Sciences from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family.

In this episode, we’re joined by Wendy Thomas, CEO of Secureworks, as she talks about the pivotal importance of truth and consistency in executive and marketing communications, emphasizing the need for companies to demonstrate genuine change and sustained effort over time. She elaborates on the key elements of a sincere apology and recovery, pointing out the importance of understanding, action, and compensation to rebuild trust with customers. Wendy further emphasizes the economic lens through which trust and security should be viewed, underlining the interconnectedness and dependence on technology in daily life. Additionally, she addresses the harm of giving away personal data, the impact of data breaches, and the trade-off between security and convenience for businesses, ultimately calling for shared responsibility and collective investment in building trust and enhancing security.

As CEO, Wendy Thomas leads Secureworks to fulfill their purpose of securing human progress via innovative, battle-tested security solutions. She first joined Secureworks in 2008 leading Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), where she helped to execute strategic acquisitions that scaled the business and Secureworks’ IPO in 2016. As Strategy lead and Chief Product Officer, she developed the vision for Secureworks’ future, fueling the team that built and launched Secureworks® Taegis™. Prior to becoming CEO, Wendy served as President of Customer Success, where she drove a customer-centric approach to help organizations achieve better security outcomes. In this role, Wendy was recognized in the number one position in The Software Report’s “Top 25 Women Leaders in Cybersecurity of 2021.”

Wendy leverages over 25 years of experience in strategic and functional leadership roles, and has worked across multiple technology-driven companies such as FirstData, BellSouth, and Internap Network Services, Inc. Wendy is a graduate of the University of Virginia, with a double major in Economics and Foreign Affairs, and she holds an International MBA from the University of South Carolina School of Business.

Wendy currently serves on the Board at IonQ, an industry leader in quantum computing. Additionally, she serves as a Liaison for AFS Intercultural Programs, an international youth exchange organization, and is a member of The Executive Committee of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Wendy is an alumna of Leadership Midtown Atlanta, a program designed to propel established leaders to further serve their communities.

About Secureworks

In this episode of KBKast, Nathan Wenzler, Chief Security Strategist at Tenable, joins us once again to discuss the critical importance of ensuring the accuracy and legitimacy of data within back-end databases to provide reliable responses from AI tools. We explore the shift towards AI reliance and the associated concerns about data integrity. Nathan emphasizes the need for purpose-built AI tools to ensure data accuracy, especially within government organizations. Additionally, we uncover the potential for AI to automate low-level tasks and emphasize the value of AI as a skills augmentation rather than job replacement. We also address the challenges of balancing AI innovation with security concerns and the need for practical implementations of AI tools to mitigate risks.

Nathan Wenzler is the Chief Security Strategist at Tenable, the Exposure Management company. he has over two decades of experience designing, implementing and managing both technical and non-technical security solutions for IT and information security organizations. He has helped government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies alike build new information security programs from scratch, as well as improve and broaden existing programs with a focus on process, workflow, risk management and the personnel side of a successful security program.

As the Chief Security Strategist for Tenable, he brings his expertise in vulnerability management and Cyber Exposure to executives and security professionals around the globe in order to help them mature their security strategy, understand their cyber risk and measurably improve their overall security posture.

In this episode, Richard Seiersen, Chief Risk Technology Officer from Qualys, joins us to talk about the critical topic of third-party risks in business operations. Richard emphasizes the need for risk management professionals to measure and mitigate these risks, as well as understand the necessity of business resilience through risk transfer and capital reserves, particularly in the context of increasing third-party usage. He advocates for a shift in the security industry towards a more business-aligned approach, stressing the need for better measurement practices and the integration of concepts such as understanding the impact of breaches on customer attrition and brand trust.

Richard is focused on cybersecurity risk management – as a modern enterprise practice and leadership skill. His books, speaking, and work support security leaders who need to align security practice with business goals. That alignment is at the heart of cybersecurity risk management.

As the Chief Risk Technology Officer at Qualys, Richard helps customers and the broader security community measure, communicate, and eliminate risk. With over 10 years of experience as a CISO, he has led and supported security strategy, operations, and governance across various industries and orgs, including Twilio, GE, and LendingClub.

He is also a published author and a faculty member at IANS, where he share his insights and knowledge on security metrics and risk management. His books, “How To Measure Anything In Cybersecurity Risk” and “The Metrics Manifesto: Confronting Security With Data”, provide practical and innovative approaches to quantifying and reducing security risk.

In this episode, Sam Mackenzie, cybersecurity committee member from the Australian Computer Society, sheds light on the crucial aspects of protecting essential services from cyber threats. Offering valuable insights, Sam emphasizes the need for good practice, sharing learnings, threat intelligence, network segmentation, and clear communication of risk to address leadership challenges. Sam highlights the challenges and importance of protecting society from cyber-physical outcomes, the evolving threat landscape for professionals in critical infrastructure, and the significance of defending against social engineering attacks.

Sam speaks straightforward cybersecurity and technology with business leaders in critical infrastructure. With 25 years’ experience at international corporations and household names in Australia, he’s created and led high performance teams in health, telecoms, energy and more recently in local government, focusing on using structured thinking and making the complex simple.

Sam’s recent research project involves interviewing leaders of critical infrastructure in Australia to gain valuable industry insights. Sam also serves on the Cybersecurity Committee for the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and is building a new community of driven professionals, passionate about protecting critical infrastructure and keeping society safe.

In today’s episode, we’re joined by Matt Preswick, Principal Solutions Engineer from Wiz, in the company’s first podcast appearance, to talk about cloud security and the intersection of AI with security in organizations. Matt emphasizes the critical need for evaluating security risks and compliance states within cloud infrastructure, addressing the potential for false positives in identifying security vulnerabilities. He also sheds light on the challenges posed by cloud-native threats, urging organizations to integrate security into early-stage application and infrastructure design cycles for efficient prevention of incidents. Matt’s insights underscore the importance of collaboration between security and AI teams, aligning initiatives with organizational goals and customer needs.

Matt Preswick is the Principal Solutions Engineer from Wiz in APJ, with experience in network, email and cloud security at leading security vendors in EMEA and APAC. Before joining Wiz, he lead operations at a Sydney based network analytics startup before returning to Cloud security with Wiz.

Matt is passionate about developing scalable and actionable security practices within APJs largest organisations.