Transcript
I'm your host, Megan Gartha. Joining me this week is Mark Wiggum, Director of Technical Architects at Salesforce. Mark specializes in infrastructure and security and works with the world's largest company to tackle complex security, data, and AI challenges. Welcome to the show, Mark. Thanks for having me. Mark has an extensive background in cybersecurity, cloud environments, and solution architecture, and relies on his experience to lead teams in developing cutting-edge solutions across sectors. Mark's unique dual perspective, both as an implementer of cybersecurity within an organization and as an external advisor, allows him to provide comprehensive and practical solutions to his customers. His commitment to innovation and excellence has helped make him a trusted advisor in the tech industry, helping customers navigate and solve their most pressing infrastructure and security challenges. Mark, tell me a little bit about your day-to-day responsibilities. My role is sort of split between a sort of hands-on tactical aspect of supporting the team, any sort of operational challenges we may be having, any sort of areas we need to work on to make sure we're covering and supporting our customers' needs as best we can. And then on the other side, into a more sort of strategic angle. So any new products that we're launching, any changes to our existing products or services, how are we going to alter our go-to-market strategy, any external factors, new sort of compliance regulations, anything that might impact our customers and their organizations. Just trying to stay ahead of that process to make sure myself and my team are ready to support them through their sort of journey. And what's your favorite aspect of cybersecurity? I think the thing that sort of keeps me engaged with cybersecurity is how it is constantly evolving. The constant change is just very, very enticing to me. I like solving problems. And so constantly having new problems to address is probably my favorite aspect, being able to work those problems to have a positive outcome for myself, my peers, for our customers, just really makes that sort of problem-solving process feel even more fulfilling. And I would imagine that the constant change can also work the other way. So what would be the hardest thing about your role? I think this is probably a sentiment a lot of cybersecurity professionals would share is that I think one of the hardest things or most challenging aspects of the role is how do we break out of our own bubble and sort of translate what we're really focused on in cybersecurity to people who are not really living and breathing in that world every day, right? How do we explain the importance of these new technologies, these new threats, these new innovations? How do we present that back to the business in a way that they can understand, they can consume, and then ground it within their reality? And what do you think is the number one rule for data loss prevention? Data loss prevention is a bit of a topic close to my heart. And I've sort of, for a few years, been talking around about DLP as an initiative. It's never something that is finished or complete. There's never an end to DLP. And it's definitely not a tool that you buy, even though there are plenty of tools that will say they are a DLP tool, but it is a multi-faceted approach to achieve your sort of DLP goals. But I guess when I think about the number one rule, I'd probably say the basics, right? Which is data classification. What data do you have? Where is that data? Who has access to it? Who's the owner of that data? The real fundamental principles are absolutely critical. You could then talk about least privilege or role-based access controls, and just broader identity and management, or endpoint security, all these other things before you even got to a sort of DLP tool that's on top. But if you don't have that initial understanding and a plan that you're going to execute, there's always going to be gaps within those tools. And you mentioned DLP. We certainly love our acronyms here in security. What is the most important acronym right now, today, in your opinion? I know there's a lot of acronyms in our space. I sort of don't love the overusage of acronyms for a couple of reasons, but I think, one, it causes greater confusion when we're trying to communicate with people outside of our sphere, outside of our bubble. And that's not good when we're trying to have good communication with the business. I think it is a barrier of entry for people trying to get into the field. There's so many things, they don't really know what they are, it's not plain and plain English. But I think if I really had to say what was the most important acronym, I'd probably say CISO, C-I-S-O, right? If you don't have good oversight, you don't have a well-articulated plan, you don't have somebody in the organization who is going to interface with senior leadership to fight for cybersecurity, to make sure security by design, security is integrated with the processes, the operations of the organization, any of these great tools you buy on top are still going to have risks around them and still have a chance of failure. And how do you get the board to view security as important as you do? So it's a little contradictory, right? I think you really have to have a really strong handle on the technical, right, initially. You really have to know what you're talking about because key decision makers are looking to you to provide the insight, whether you're a security architect, whether you're an engineer, whether you're someone in incident response, it doesn't really matter. If you're a specialist function and the business leaders are looking to you to provide insight, you absolutely need that. But then on the inverse, you need to sort of take a little bit of a step outside of your bubble again and recognize that to these industry leaders, these business leaders, they just want the business to do well. And making sure data is secured and privacy is retained and availability is enforced, all of those things are just things that lead to the business continuity. So I think at times we in the cybersecurity space can get a little bit on a high horse about, well, this is just how things should be done and this is obvious and everyone should listen to me because I'm right and this is how the rest of the industry are viewing this risk so I don't really have to make my case. And that may absolutely be true, but you have to recognize you have to meet those people where they're at with their appreciation and understanding of cybersecurity and recognize that you have to look at the impact of this decision, this purchase, whatever it is that you're pitching to that leadership and put it in language that they're going to understand, be able to translate it and to be able to ground it in business priority. How is doing this thing going to be positive or is not doing it going to be negative? What do you predict to be the biggest shift in cybersecurity? I could probably give this answer about the whole raft of the tech space right now, but it's hard to not say AI. I think when I look at the internal processes within cybersecurity teams, AI is absolutely perfect to augment those individuals in those roles. I think anyone in cybersecurity space or most people in cybersecurity space probably feel this need to do more with less. There's always pressure on resources. There's always more work to be done than you're ever going to be able to do. I think we saw a lot of augmentation through the predictive AI era, processing large volumes of data, trying to highlight the threats or anomalies. In cybersecurity, we're really looking for a needle in a haystack, but we don't even know if the needle's even there. We're just assuming the needle is in the haystack somewhere. These AI tools really are beneficial, and I think it's going to be incredibly valuable as we're going to transform how much we can do in cybersecurity. But then on the other side of it is the offensive side. These AI tools are scary, even to someone like me living in this space, of how they're going to change what a threat it is. I think we're all fairly aware that we need to be careful about what we do when we receive an email from someone we don't know. I think even my parents and grandparents are aware of that sort of stuff now. But as we see these AI threats evolving, those lines are going to blur. And what's real and what's not is going to become much harder to decipher. Can you share one thing that you wish future cybersecurity professionals knew? We really understand our world within, but we're talking a language that other people don't really understand. They don't really see it. If you can translate and communicate very challenging, very technical topics to people who don't know that level of technical depth, you'll do really well in this space. I think that's really one of the key things that I look for in people on the team. When I observe it from others, I recognize the strength of that individual is not getting caught in those deep technical rabbit holes of being able to give people just enough information so they can make a decision without drowning them in detail. And I think, again, that's something in the technical space, we're specialists, we really know this stuff, we're excited by it. We really want to just give everyone every piece of information because it's interesting to us. But to people outside of that sphere, it's too much. So being able to regulate and find that level of technical depth and find that the shortest path between starting the conversation and giving somebody all the information they need, the shorter that path, the more effective you would be as a cybersecurity professional. Thank you for joining me on Feed Data Mark. I appreciated your insight and point of view on Gen AI. Absolutely. Thank you for coming on the show. Thanks, Megan. Thank you. Bye.
