Who cares about office politics? At the end of the day, isn't it all about doing what's best for the business by protecting its assets? Or implementing the best technical idea? Sadly, no.
Technically savvy cybersecurity professionals often find themselves performing well in individual contributor roles and then getting promoted to management and executive positions. The rules of engagement, however, change as one moves up the corporate ladder. How does a cybersecurity leader communicate to non- cybersecurity experts the value of a program and all the expense that goes along with implementing information security activities? What's the best way to ensure that optimal decisions for the business are made when push comes to shove?
Caroline is a dynamic cybersecurity expert with more than a decade of industry experience as a day-to-day manager at eBay and Zynga, product manager at Symantec, and managing consultant at Cigital (now Synopsys). She is currently VP of Security Strategy at Cobalt, a company that connects SaaS companies who want to improve their cybersecurity posture with hackers who can help find their problems before the bad guys do. Caroline received a 2010 Women of Influence Award in the One to Watch category and authored the popular textbook Security Metrics: A Beginner’s Guide, published by McGraw-Hill in 2011. She graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.
Robert Wood runs the trust and security team at Nuna, whose core directive is to protect one of the nation's largest collective healthcare data sets. Previously, Robert was a Principal Consultant at Cigital where he founded and led the red team assessment practice and worked with strategic clients across the United States in an advisory capacity.