The people part
has always been
the best part for
me. Coaching and
mentoring the
teams to operate
to a new doctrine
with new technical
functionality to
achieve an effect.
One of the great lessons I learnt both
in the military and in the world of
cyber capability development is that
you need a great team to make things
happen and to make a difference. My
internal team consist of a team of cyber
analysts, privacy experts and matrixed
IT architects and programme managers.
It became clear early on that the
programme manager was a vital aspect
of that work and that’s where Expede,
as the fourth partner, helped to navigate
the sequencing, tasking into IT teams
and acting as the glue between me and
my partners. The pace was slow initially
but we now have a battle rhythm in
place that is providing core intelligence,
automated defensive measures and
threat hunting through our CSOC.
The next stages of the strategy are to
implement data loss prevention and
cloud monitoring as we move on towards
creating Zero Trust environments.
Cisco and Exabeam have been
magnificent in acting as the expansion of
my team, and their critical thought and
positive attitude has made a difference.
Teamwork has made a huge difference
where I now see IT teams, privacy, cyber
and programme teams all operating
towards a common goal and that in itself
has infiltrated our university community
where security is now well embedded
into everyone’s thinking.
In terms of my day job, all this has
allowed me to provide accurate threat
and risk metrics to the executive
board on a regular basis. They are
very keen to see that we invest in our
IT and cyber infrastructure, not least
because they want to future-proof our
environments to better protect our
high-grade intellectual property and
staff and student personal data. A data
breach could have a huge impact on
an organisation such as ours, mainly
because we operate in a place of trust.
Trust with our research and commercial
partners, with our clients we serve,
with the students and the staff whose
data we store and process. A breach
64 Issue 27 | www.intelligentciso.com