Episode 45 - Privacy and Security Controls with Gabe Gumbs

State of the CIO

From solutions architecture to security, Gabe Gumbs brings wide and deep technical experience to his position as Chief Innovation Officer at Spirion. Today, he is leading the Spirion product team through strategic product development to create technologies that push data security forward in an increasingly complex digital world. Prior to his new position at Spirion, Gabe held a range of positions in security technology, including VP of Product Management at Spirion. Other prior positions include VP of Product Strategy at STEALTHbits Technologies, and Director of Research and Products at WhiteHat Security. Gabe also served on the Board of Advisors at eGRC.com.

Show Notes:

• [01:16] Gabe shares his career journey and how he got into IT. His interest in technology actually began in high school.
• [02:39] He started his IT career as a junior network admin. About ten years ago he switched from the practitioner side to the solution provider side. So now he builds security technologies and that is the core of what he focused on.
• [04:25] Chief Innovation Officer means that he sits at the head of their project strategy. He ensures they are bringing the market the right technologies to solve their customers problems.
• [05:52] They spend a lot of time understanding and examining the customer’s problem well before jumping to the solution.
• [06:46] He spends a lot of time digging into the problems themselves with the customer.
• [07:11] For the most part, your average customer understands that they are not so unique that their problems would stand out from others.
• [07:55] When organizations are taking very differentiated approaches to solving their own problems where they might run into unique challenges of their own.
• [09:24] Privacy operations is going to become a very necessary function inside of any organization with any sizable amount of data.
• [11:25] It is especially difficult when the internal business doesn't understand where all the data exists in multiple clouds.
• [12:57] You can have security without privacy. On the security side you are dealing with risks that arise from unauthorized access to data. On the privacy side you are dealing risks that arise from authorized access data.
• [13:37] The expectation of privacy is a bit overstated in the corporate world.
• [14:38] Where is all your data and what type of data is it?
• [15:50] If that is data that you’re required to share with a third party, that is going to require different security and privacy controls.
• [16:14] We have to link the business use of the data to the security and privacy controls.
• [16:35] Align business use of the data with the data type.
• [17:01] Did I genuinely understand that problem and am I approaching it the right way?
• [17:56] The non malicious threats continue to surprise them in different ways. Underestimating human ingenuity will always get us in trouble.
• [19:03] It helps to visualize the problem.
• [19:51] Gabe shares his best worst boss story.
• [20:47] It is important to understand how the business operates and then understanding how you are going to secure the business.
• [22:26] Gabe’s advice is to slow down. Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up.
• [23:46] Spend more time in the problem space even in your personal life. When we are under pressure we tend to want to run towards solving it, but being uncomfortable for just a little bit longer so you can understand that problem is really where we need to be.

Links and Resources:

• State of the CIO Podcast Website
• State of the CIO Podcast on Apple Podcasts
• Dan on LinkedIn
• Gabe on LinkedIn
• Gabe on Twitter
• Spirion
• Privacy Please Podcast