And the Networking Winner goes to … CISOs

With the upcoming season of awards ceremonies, including the CMAs, AMAs, Grammys, Golden Globe, and Oscars, I thought I would venture into the fray. I would like to nominate CISOs or more generally, Information Security professionals, for “Best Networkers”. Yes, there are certainly a lot of good networking events and user groups for technologists and CIOs. This new category by no means diminishes those forums. They ARE good, and I have participated in many of them.

But I am talking about the best of the best. And CISOs take it.

In my experience, CISOs realize the need to help one another and reach out beyond IT functions. I learned from growing up a farm that it’s important to share high quality seed corn with your neighbors because cross-pollination of inferior seed can negatively affect your own crop. Likewise, in Information Security, anyone around you, effectively EVERYONE connected to you, can infect your enterprise. Like a good farmer, good Information Security personnel realize this. They want to make sure that entities connected with them are following good security practices. They help each other. They share best practices. They realize it takes each of us to protect all of us.

So, as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday and we give thanks to those around us, I would like to give thanks to the many Information Security specialists who have networked with me. Thanks for sharing your expertise, and for making the world more secure.