Category: Apex 1 on 1

Apex talks to Maria Schwenger, AVP – Enterprise Digital Risk – Head of Application Security and Data Protection at American Family Insurance, to discuss how application security has changed with the rapid cloud adoption and what are some of the new approaches to application security and data protection.

Q: You have been leading digital transformation programs working exclusively in the DevSecOps space for several years now – according to your words “even before we could’ve imagined such a term”. What remained the same and what has changed in the DeSecOps implementations today? What are some of the new DevSecOps transformation strategies?

A: One thing that will always stay fundamentally the same is the very essence of the DevOps approach – the promise of speed in delivering value and the opportunity to adapt to the market needs at scale. This is the very reason why companies implement DevOps and more recently DevSecOps. The DevSecOps (also sometimes referred as Rugged DevOps) brings the additional notion of having the security implemented as early as possible into the development  process and in every phase of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The DevSecOps approach allows the security to be also applied in an agile manner by incrementally maturing the security practices within the CI/CD pipeline while accounting for the possible vulnerabilities and risks. These are the fundamentals of the 2 terms. 

Today we see a certain controversy between these 2 terms – some professionals get annoyed by having to talk about DevSecOps as a separate approach. They believe that if DevOps is done right, security will always be an integral part of the DevOps process. And, this is probably a fair statement. It is so nice if we can implement the security practices in a way that the security feels as an enabler (not a show stopper) to the DevOps process. Today, this is probably one of the most important transformation strategies around how we develop, release, and maintain code – the goal of having visibility and clear understanding of the vulnerabilities and the associated risk (the probability of being exploited and the possible impact to the business). No one will dispute the importance of end-to-end automation and tight integration of the security processes and tooling within the CI/CD pipeline, and why not – let’s experiment and sprinkle some Artificial Intelligence (AI) to additionally optimize the DevSecOps process! 

My take is simple – no matter what we call the process or combination of processes we decide to adopt (DevOps, DevSecOps, SecDevOps, SecOps, etc.) – the main goal is to establish and deepen the transparency and the trust between the 3 teams – development, security, and operations – and simplify the traditionally complex shared ownership in keeping our businesses on-line, safe, and agile. 

Q: What are some of the challenges of the modern DevSecOps? Where and how should we expect the security approach to change? 

A: I am glad to realize that more and more companies today understand the value of the tight integration between Dev, Sec, and Ops, and are attempting to establish the right level of automation and extended collaboration within their organizations. Every security and DevOps professional today knows that for a while the security was lagging behind the rapid agility required by DevOps, but now I see how companies are stepping forward to the right path addressing 4 main areas: 

• Slow security processes contradicting the DevOps perspective of rapid agile/iterative delivery – traditionally the security processes were more manual and sequential, not iterative and fast and that caused delays into the DevOps cycle. The new approach here is to use the very opportunity specified by the “agile” definition – iteration!  If the development process is iterative and continuous (CI/CD means “continuous integration” and “continuous delivery”), the logical solution is to build also a “continuous security”. This is a huge opportunity for the security professionals today. 
• Securing of new technologies at scale – By its own rapid experimentation nature, DevOps has rapidly adopted many new technologies that the security teams were not ready to support at the same rapid scale. The challenges came from adoption of new architectures (i.e., API, micro services), new technologies (i.e., cloud, containers, serverless), the role open source plays in the way we develop software today, etc. 
• Another major area is the security and the efficiency of the DevOps process itself. Do we have a holistic view of the end-to-end development process? Can we guarantee that it is fully protected and secured? What is the best way to integrate “continuous security” into the DevOps cycle? Because, let’s make no mistake – an unsecure development process will most likely translate into unsecure production environment. We also know that the remediation of vulnerability findings is time consuming and can be complex requiring specific skills. This is an area where the “Sec” part of DevSecOps team should play a leading role. 
• Last, but not least, every company should spend the time to rethink their global SDLC process according to the definition of their own digital transformation where security can never be an afterthought. Let’s not forget that DevSecOps is a people and cultural transformation as much as it is a technical, tooling, and process evolution. 

Q: You stated that due to the rapid cloud adoption and the agile DevOps, it seems that the traditional security tools and practices of application security simply cannot keep up with this demand? What is the new way to think about implementing application security? How do you see the DevSecOps vendors supporting these needs today and in the future? 

A: Yes, sadly enough, this is correct! In the last few years, application security has been seen as a hold up by the software development teams – something that is inefficient, takes time, is hard to do, and, in many cases, only available as a manual activity. 

The right approach is to rethink the entire SDLC process in a whole new way and to enhance it to a security enabled application development and deployment process. That means that security is an integral part of each step of the SDLC process. Let me throw a few terms out there, which are all targeting to establish the continuous security approach within DevOps and SDLC. Some colleagues talk about SSDLC – Secure Software Development  Life Cycle, meaning that we fully integrate the application security practices within every step of the development process. This also yields to yet another term – “Shift Left”, which is defined by moving the security testing as early (to the left) into the development process when there will be less changes required compared to remediating findings at a later time when the code is ready to be released. 

The security teams should also become enablers for the adoption of new technologies like Web Application firewalls, etc. that provide run time protection of the application layer. 

The vendor support here is an extremely important topic. Yes, we need modern application scanning tools that are easy to integrate within the CI/CD pipeline or, even better,  already pre-integrated within the development environment. I fully support the notion of testing the application code “from inside out”/”from within”. And, these tools should be intended to protect applications at both deployment and run time.  

Q: You have been helping many clients to move to the cloud as part of their digital transformation strategy. What are some of the most common challenges and what role does DevSecOps play in this? 

A: Oh, this is such a big topic – probably, for an entirely separate conversion. Let me see how I can summarise my thoughts at a high level. 

Many businesses today are defining and implementing their own “cloud first” strategy and the migration of applications to cloud is foremost in line. Since we are now entering a quite well established era of cloud adoption, the companies are looking to get more benefits from the digital transformation relying alike on both cloud adoption (for speed and cloud economics) and on DevOps (for agility and time to market.) Of course, any cloud adoption should be underpinned by effective security practices.

There are so many similarities between Cloud computing and DevSecOps. They are both pillars of digital transformation leading the business growth, both are accelerators for streamlining  processes and advanced automation, both are facilitators of global collaboration. They are also both accelerators for each other. Cloud provides “on demand” usage and scalability needed to develop and run applications. DevSecOps is often asked to be the bridge towards the cloud adoption – to lead in adopting the new architectures and new technologies, to perform the “stretch” within a hybrid cloud, and to integrate securely across the new business practices. 

Some of the common challenges are naturally coming from the above details. Companies need to grow skills and expertise to support their new cloud environments, to establish effective ways to manage their cloud spendings, budget, and forecasting while retaining full control over security of systems and data and compliance regulations. DevSecOps engineers need to lead with new technologies and architectures, executing “lift and shift” or building new “cloud native “ applications, handling multitude of deployments to new cloud environments with complex cloud configs, etc. The security (still listed as number one major concern) needs to handle extended access management controls and secure a much wider perimeter while being flexible and agile. Multi cloud adoption and complex integrations with 3rd party SaaS offerings often require additional skills and attention. In addition, all teams need to get used to the shared responsibility model where the cloud service provider is also part of the multidimensional collaboration.

There is a phrase that the cloud is a journey and not a destination (paraphrasing here). In respect to cloud and DeSecOps, it is a journey of building capabilities that enable our digital transformation for rapid business growth. 

Q: Looking at all security incidents, exposures, ransomware attacks, etc. today, what are some of the lessons learned in terms of Application security? For example – what are some of the Application Security takeaways from the Solarwind breach?

A: The SolarWinds incident brought a new dilemma to the AppSec practitioners. It showed clearly that our internal SDLC process can be compromised by attackers even though we do apply most of  the best practices of secure engineering, and that even companies who have in place most controls can still become vulnerable by using a trusted vendor.  We can review this from 2 separate angles: 

• In house SDLC or security of our “software factory” – How well secured is our own application development process ( build, test, and deploy)? Is everything we do routinely today in the App Sec space enough to protect and secure our custom developed software, our homegrown applications? Do we have an end-to-end visibility over the SDLC  – from the moment a developer creates code and checks it into the repository all the way to what happens with this code when it is deployed in production and upgraded there? How effective is our security review process if the attackers had compromised the entire build process and used legitimate certificates to sign their code? 
• Secure Vendor management – what is the best way to continuously evaluate and monitor the 3rd party software products and SaaS offerings we are utilizing today?

It is obvious, we need to be vigilant about our SDLC process and proactively monitor the way we design, build, and deploy our homegrown apps, as well as all integrations with 3rd party software. I see 2 main positive factors we can apply – “Shift left security” within the CI/CD pipelines within our DevSecOps process, and Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) to protect our assets via continuous verification between systems, devices, applications, data stores, etc. based on “never trust – always verity” approach.

Q: You mentioned implementing a Zero Trust Architecture and you recently presented on Zero Trust at one of our Apex events. What was most exciting to you about this panel? 

A: I believe that the concept of Zero Trust is an imperative for our post-pandemic world. I am always excited to discuss the new approach to Zero Trust and what the organizations need to consider to successfully implement the Zero Trust Architecture today. 

Although Zero Trust is not new as a concept (I believe it was introduced sometime in 2010),  most conversations in the past have been around securing the perimeter and led in large by our networking and IAM teams. And, this is to be expected – our data was mainly located in the corporate data centers and accessed from the corporate network, with the implicit trust to everyone inside and generally protecting from external threats. However, our IT landscape has significantly changed today – data and applications are spread between “on premise” and multiple cloud providers and accessed based on the principles of “anywhere – anytime”. We also worry about both internal and external threat actors, and the trust is never given by default and always verified – and not only once, but continuously verified. For these reasons, the new approach to ZTA today is to invite new areas of expertise – people like me, who bring into the conversation the new perspectives of application/workflows and inter-system trust, the knowledge of data security life cycles, machine identity, etc. There is also a strong connection between ZTA and DevSecOps – both are seen as accelerators for the business, and both are bringing a new mindset, building a new culture across the enterprises. 

Q: You are also leading a Data Protection program. What are some of the top priorities of a modern Data Protection program? What role does DevSecOps play in it? Any secrets you can share?

A: With about 4000 confirmed data breaches in 2020, of which close to 60% targeted compromised PII, the data protection today is a critical segment of the enterprise cybersecurity readiness. (The data I cited by memory is from the Verizon 2020 Data Breach Investigation Report). Of course, the ultimate priority of any Data protection program is to ensure successful growth of the business based on secure and compliant data practises. A lot of emphasis and even enforcement today is also put on the data privacy function explicitly granting the consumers the rights to their data.  Establishing a good Data Protection Program includes building many capabilities across the areas of data security, data privacy, data governance, addressing audit/legal/regulatory concerns, driving expense reduction, etc. Lately though, I catch myself continuously explaining the importance of data classification because, in my mind, the data classification rules. Let me explain. How would we know what network segmentation or access controls are required for a newly implemented data flow or what safeguards and controls need to be put in palace (i.e., encryption/tokenization for PCI data)? The only way to gain this knowledge is to classify the data according to the company’s policies, understand the type of the data elements, and then – design appropriately.

DevSecOps plays a very important role within the Data Protection implementation. Not only that the data scientists benefit from the consolidated CI/CD process, but If properly applied, the Devsecops  practices bring automation, control, repeatability, auditability, ensure velocity, prevent misconfigurations, enforce permissions and and data retention policies, etc. These are all very important capabilities of the Data Loss protection/prevention (DLP).

To answer your last question – Unfortunately, there are no secrets here. The Data Protection and more specifically the DLP, require a great understanding of the business and its data, utilizing quite an expensive set of tools, and applying effective processes across the entire company. Although not easy, this is entirely possible when we keep the doors open for a wide, cross company collaboration. 

Q: I know you are writing a new book on cloud – can you give us some preview? What is the book about and what is the specific “cloud” point of view that you selected to write about? 

A: Now that the adoption of cloud is consistent and no longer just a hype, there have been many great publications in the wide spectrum of cloud topics – from the financial and business benefits of cloud adoption to the best practices or particular technical challenges like management of cloud resources in multi-cloud platform, migration to cloud, adoption of cloud native technologies, specifics of cloud security – you name it!  There are so many important topics to write about! However, after talking to many of my colleagues and cloud practitioners, I selected a bit of an unusual point of view. The book is intended to explore the value and the potential of cloud adoption as part of the rapid digital transformation of 21 century in our post-pandemic world. We try to answer questions like: “How cloud adoption can fuel the business growth and support the agility every company (big and small) needs in order to effectively compete today?” and “What is the impact of the pandemic on cloud adoption and all technologies fueled by cloud?”, etc.   It is a practical book that discusses some of the most common questions posed by IT leaders and cloud practitioners today and provides a point of view expressed by use cases to back up the new, post pandemic, cloud strategies. 

Q: You enjoy presenting at conferences, and it seems that people like your presentation style. Can you give us a few tips on creating a technical presentation? 

A: Oh, I am not sure I am an expert here, but here we go! Usually, I like to keep the presentation entertaining and interactive – asking the audience questions, giving a lot of examples, building up on a story or two, and using meaningful (sometimes provocative) images. Remember -”a picture is worth 1000 words” – there is a good reason why this expression originated in the early 20 century and is still very popular. A good idea is to keep the slides “uncluttered” although I tend to have some “busy” textual slides…(guilty here!) Also, I like to have a clear outline with crisp introduction and summary or lessons learned. I always try to leave the attendees with some kind of a follow up – like “Next steps” or a “Conversation starter”. Something to inspire people to keep thinking about the topic and bring the conversation to their companies and colleagues. 

Maria Schwenger – AVP – Enterprise Digital Risk – Head of Application Security and Data Protection at American Family Insurance

Maria is an innovative DevSecOps and Data Protection Leader well-known for leading multiple successful implementations of the vision of modern DevSecOps and her leadership in executing digital transformation in areas like IOT/Edge, AI, and Big Data Analytics. 

She specializes in leading organizations to effectively adopt and utilize new cloud technologies and new architecture paradigms like API/micro services, containerization, orchestration, serverless, etc. and applying DevSecOps and Agile best practices of secure Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. The results of her work on building “5 Star DevSecOps experience” demonstrate a multitude increase of efficiency and productivity gains in the development process leading to fast and secure product improvements. 

Currently Maria is concentrating on creating a comprehensive, but simple to implement DevSecOps practice that can be easily adopted across the board based on the best practices of secure engineering and data protection.

Rick Doten, VP, Information Security at Centene Corporation, and CISO of Carolina Complete Health based in Charlotte, NC has spent his 25+  year cybersecurity career teaching, speaking and consulting . Today he speaks with Apex about his journey and outlook on what comes next and how we get there. 

Q: How can you best describe the relationship between the CIO and the CISO in the enterprise?

The CIO is responsible for developing and maintaining the technical infrastructure to run the business. The CISO is responsible for protecting from threats and managing risks that could impact the security and resiliency of that infrastructure.

Q: What is the biggest challenge for a CISO today?

Honestly, keeping the organization focused. There are so many security issues popping up in the news from Solarwinds, ransomware, spyware on phones, etc, that it becomes a frequent task to respond to executives who read these stories and ask “what are we doing about this?”.

Obviously, staying on top of these new threats and issues is important, and verifying what the risk might be to the business, but they should just influence the security strategy. Keep to the plan you’ve established and are following, and try not to get distracted by specific events.  Because otherwise, it’s like chasing dogs that burst out of the front door every time you open it. 

Q: How has the role of the CIO/CISO changed over your career?

I have been in the business long enough to see how the role evolved from when Steve Katz was appointed the first CISO in the mid-1990s. 

Initially, it was more technically focused, to find and close security gaps; then in the early 2000s, became compliance-focused. At that time, when I was a consultant, one of my CISO customers said he didn’t fear the hackers, as much as the auditors. In fact, in the mid-2000s, I saw many CISOs start to go to law school to better understand the rising regulatory landscape. Up to this time, the CISOs were reporting to the CIO. 

Then in the early 2010’s I saw the shift to risk management. IT security governance programs were more commonly being stood up more broadly, and we saw CISOs come out from under CIOs and to CEOs, COOs, CROs, CFOs, etc. This is where we started getting a seat at the executive table and board room on a regular basis, not just when there was a security breach.  

Today, it’s understood that CISO’s are part of the business, and that technology risk is a business risk. Business executives have come to realize that CISO’s have more of a role than just being the “in case of emergency, break glass” person; because a trusted, secure, stable, resilient infrastructure is a business enabler.  

Q: How do you stay abreast of the trends and what your peers are doing?

I am part of a local CISO group here in Charlotte that meets once a month. Because everything has been virtual the last 18 months, I’ve been able to do so much more networking with my peers than before. I do a number of CISO virtual roundtables, speak on panels, and conduct Keynotes at security conferences. I’m also on  Security Podcasts. 

Q: What advice would you give an early stage CIO or CISO joining an enterprise organization?

Understand the business you are in: How does it make money? Who are its customers? What obligations does it have to customers, regulators, or industry?  Develop a governance process first to link the business requirements to IT risk management goals. Develop an incident response plan and process to make sure you can respond when things go wrong. With technical controls, focus on the fundamentals, don’t chase the hot trends or threats. Technology is the easy part, don’t focus on finding the best tools, focus on the outcomes of the process—tools support a process.

 Q: How has DevOps and cloud services changed the way you design, build, deploy, and operate online systems and secure infrastructure?

I spent years doing application security consulting, from Ethical hacking online banking apps back in the late 90s, to training developers on application security, to helping firms integrate security within the application life cycle. Cloud is now part of the application security process.  The Cloud is an application itself. With infrastructure as code, governance as code, micro-services, and APIs in the cloud, applications and cloud have to be integrated. And also multiple diverse teams are now involved, not just developers, DBAs, and server admins. We’ve moved from design, build, run; to collaborate, integrate, and orchestrate.

Q: What are some of the personal experiences — or compelling arguments — that have influenced your thinking around gender and technology and have motivated you to get involved in being an advocate for change?

Cybersecurity talent is much more about personality and aptitude than education and certifications.  I think we have made the industry too intimidating for people who think they need to be geniuses, good at math, or have a certification to be a practitioner.  

There are specific personality traits that make a good cybersecurity person: inquisitiveness, correlation, pattern matching, tenacity, and not being afraid to try something that has never been done before.  These are not qualities you can train effectively into people who don’t have them natively.  But you can train people on tools and procedures.  

I’m a big fan of the Cyber Aptitude and Talent Assessment (CATA) test. This test doesn’t ask anything about security practices, controls, or standards, just questions to gauge how a person thinks. It has been used successfully in the UK and US militaries to identify potential cybersecurity talent. Anyone who has an interest in this industry should take the test, no matter the background, education, age, race, sex, disability–it levels the field to measure a person on aptitude.

Rick Doten – VP, Information Security, Centene Corporation & CISO of Carolina Complete Health

Rick is VP, Information Security at Centene Corporation, and CISO of Carolina Complete Health based in Charlotte, NC.  Rick supports both the NC health plan and corporate Centene in a cybersecurity leadership role. 

In his prior role, Rick worked as Virtual CISO supporting international companies. Rick also developed the curriculum for a Cybersecurity Master’s degree program for an International University.

Rick is an avid speaker at cybersecurity conferences, a guest on cybersecurity podcasts, and is a member of The CyberWire Hashtable.  Rick is on the Board of his local ISC2 chapter.

 He is part of the editorial panel of the CIS Critical Security Controls, and was the lead author on the newest version 8 of the Controls.  Rick has a YouTube channel where he is doing an overview of updates and changes into each of the 18 new CIS CSC v8 Controls.

Rick has alternated between being a management consultant and CISO throughout his 25+ year cybersecurity career, where he has run ethical hacking, incident response and forensics, and risk management teams.

With 25 years of experience in the IT Industry, the insight, advice and perspective of Benjamin Corll, CISO, Coats is fascinating. His views on the relationship between the CIO and CISO, the importance of knowing the business and collaboration among teams are some of many areas that Corll shares through this Apex 1 on 1. 

Q: What is IT security doing to support innovation in the enterprise?

InfoSec has been an underpin for enterprise innovation for decades. We have been a force for change, yet we have operated behind the scenes for many years. Yes, we have had a bad reputation as it has long been believed that the InfoSec team is the “office of no”. However, I do like to say that we’re the team of the “office of the know”. And by this I mean that we have monitoring of the organization. We have an obligation to use this data to feed the other teams and to help them make better data-driven decisions. By doing this, we are driving (or supporting) innovation in the organization.

Q: How can you best describe the relationship between the CIO and the CISO in the enterprise?

As in most organizations, the CISO generally reports to the CIO. This means that the CISO has a tight relationship with the CIO. There should be mutual respect. I truly believe that the CIO and CISO are only successful when they are closely aligned. Security and IT should be aligned in objectives and strategy. The CIO is focused on availability and the integrity of the computing environment. The CIO is only going to be successful when the CISO is successful, as the CIO suffers when the network is breached, when applications are unavailable, and when desktops are compromised. The fate of the CIO and CISO are intertwined.

I have heard many times that it is said that it is a conflict of interest having the CISO report to the CIO. Can this be true? Yes, if the CIO is ignoring the risks that the CISO is reporting in order to prioritize uptime for the sake of availability. Yet, if the CIO understands that her success is tied to the CISO, then she should partner with and support the CISO. When that happens, there shouldn’t be a conflict of interest.

Q: What is the biggest challenge for a CISO today?

 Prioritization is the biggest challenge for a CISO today. The threat landscape continues to evolve. Our budgets will never be large enough and our teams big enough to address every risk. We cannot do it all. There will always be more to do. And we cannot remove all risk as that would be too cumbersome to end users or it would remove the ability for users to do their jobs.

Security teams will have to stay nimble and pivot. This doesn’t mean that security has to be only reactive, yet it does mean that they need to be flexible. A roadmap can still be developed and delivered upon, yet it is not to be written in stone as new threats may be revealed and require a shift in focus, a reallocation of funds, and full support put into a new initiative. 

This is why I believe prioritization is the key challenge for a CISO today.

Q: How do you stay abreast of the trends and what your peers are doing?

Collaboration & sharing is how I stay up to date on trends and with what my peers are doing. Joining organizations which enable sharing of ideas and experiences in a trusted and controlled environment is invaluable. Some of these are free, some of them actually have a subscription model. Both are good.

 There are curated lists of news which do save time. This allows me to know what some of the top articles and happenings are from around the globe without having to spend a lot of time scouring websites. What this enables me to do is answer questions if my executive staff calls me and asks me about something they may have seen in the news. So long as I have read my lists, I am rarely uninformed of the topics they’ve inquired about.

Q: What advice would you give an early stage CIO or CISO joining an enterprise organization?

Learn your business. Don’t focus on your silo’d role. Learn what the company does and the workflows required to produce the goods or service that drives revenue. This is going to help with two main things:

1.       You’ll discover what the true crown jewels and critical systems are
2.       You’ll learn how to align your organization with the business objectives

Talk to the business. Empower your stakeholders. Listen to listen. And when you make a promise or commitment, do everything to keep it. Even if you have to go back and tell them that something isn’t possible after all, still go back and have that conversation (and learn not to overpromise when you’re not absolutely certain). Stakeholder management and setting proper expectations goes a long way to being successful.

And then for the CISO, look at things from a risk based perspective. And when someone comes with a request, rarely answer with a “no”. Instead, answer with “Yes, and…”. Include the and to be the required guardrails or stipulations that you would be comfortable with the request. If possible, give multiple options. Allow the requestor to decide the path forward or if they don’t want to proceed. This makes the decision a joint decision and stops it from being an adversarial relationships.

Q: What can organizations do to get more women into senior level and executive positions? What can companies do to address unconscious bias at all levels of the organization?

How do we get more women into senior and executive positions? Be intentional. We need to get diversity in our organizations. This is also a diversity in thinking. I don’t want to hire anyone who thinks exactly the way I do. I need other thought processes and perspectives, else I’m going to continue to make the same types of decisions that I’ve always made. So I have to be intentional to hire people who do not think the same way I do. So I, like others, need to be quite intentional to require my recruiters to bring me a diverse group of candidates. And then I need to be open to those who have the right mindset, even if they don’t have all the experience that I want. For security, a mindset is more important than technology experience. I can teach someone the technology, yet I cannot teach them how to be curious, skeptical, or persistent.

 As for getting people into executive roles, organizations need to require a diverse group of candidates when a role is available.

Q: Has security been more of a challenge to manage while your teams have shifted to a Work From Home structure? 

My organization was friendly to a non-traditional office location for our administrative work force. However, it wasn’t exactly ready for everyone to not be able to ever be in the office, and certainly not for a year. 

How has this impacted the security? The engagement of users is more interesting. We need to make sure people stay engaged as they are more likely to follow the standards and security awareness when they feel engaged, empowered, and involved.

Q: Have you found new vendors for your organizations that are now needed in this time of COVID-19 and remote working

One of the most innovative companies we found was one that has enabled us to use our existing cameras within our facilities to allow our health & safety team to monitor the environment. The H&S team can get real-time / near-real-time alerts to unsafe activities. It allows remote monitoring of locations while still being able to detect undesirable activities and incidents.

Benjamin Corll, CISO, Coats

I’ve been in the IT industry for about 25 years now. I started in the US military as a small computer systems specialist, also known as a UNIX systems administrator. Being versed in CLI and IPTables, I was assigned to taking care of the firewalls and perimeter devices. This started a transition from sysadmin to security administrator. 

During the dot.com boom, I transitioned from military life into technology consulting. I spent the next several years deploying network and security devices before deciding it was time to settle down and begin building and maturing organizational security programs. I was fortunate enough to be a founding member of the US Postal Service’s Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) where we built a world-class response organization with engagement with other CIRT/CSIRT/SOC’s around the globe.

 After a few years of building programs from a security engineering perspective, I shifted to building programs as an InfoSec Director. This allowed me to shift to a more strategic perspective and build programs that not only focused on risk management and protecting my organizations but also build programs that align security with business objectives.

Bojan Duric is the Chief Data Officer (CDO) of the City of Virginia Beach where he promotes a data-driven and citizen-centric culture at all levels of the organization. Bojan’s rich experience in data science and business analytics span multiple industries including government, transportation, healthcare, and consumer packaged goods (CPG). He shares with Apex how he has watched the role of a CDO evolve throughout his tenure and discusses the current data trends that can impact an organization.  

Q: What is the difference between a Chief Data Officer (CDO) and a Chief Analytics Officer (CAO)? Are they one in the same?

A: I personally wear both hats and view these roles as being one in the same. However, depending on the size of the organization, its culture, and individual skills and personalities, the roles might be different. Both roles often play change agent with the same end goal, utilizing data and people to support organizational growth, enhance operational efficiency, and deliver an exceptional and personalized customer experience. The CDO is often incorporating both roles, while the CAO might come from the business side, focusing on data utilization without data governance, data infrastructure and other more technical data-related responsibilities.

Q: How have you seen the role of CDO change? Have you encountered any challenges facing the CDO function?

A: If we look at any business capability from a technology, people and process framework perspective, we can see that data plays an integral part and sits in the middle, acting almost as a glue. Projecting this view onto the CDO role clearly indicates that the role is evolving as our customers, processes and technology evolve, especially regarding overall responsibilities and organizational expectations. The role has become more mature and better-defined over the last few years, but the major leadership traits of possessing a well-balanced approach to technology and process while being an overall good negotiator and conversational leader to empower and inspire an entire organization to embrace data-driven practices remains a challenge. As an organization matures in its data and analytics journey, the role is growing by fine-tuning and expanding certain responsibilities. When I assumed the CDO position with the City of Virginia Beach, we defined our purpose as “to promote a data-driven culture at all levels of the decision-making process by supporting and enabling business capabilities with relevant and right information accessible securely anytime, anywhere, on any platform.” We were early in our data adoption journey, and our main goals were to address challenges such as breaking data silos, building internal data and analytics human capital, implementing an enterprise analytics platform and becoming cloud ready. By focusing on these challenges for two years and successfully closing the identified gaps, we enhanced our purpose to include digital transformation and innovation which changed the CDO role and responsibilities. It requires 360-degree support from leadership, peers, customers and fellow data and analytics practitioners. To secure buy-in from all stakeholders, it is very important to define an agreeable and achievable customer-centric purpose statement and start delivering on the promise. I have been able to get the necessary buy-in and continuously grow my team by frequently engaging customers and taking on new responsibilities to deliver actionable insights and relevant analytics solutions.

Q: How is your Organization leveraging Big Data and AI and machine learning to transform their businesses and what opportunities does it present to the business? What are the challenges, and how can these be best overcome?

A: Both Big Data and AI have been occasionally used as “buzzwords.” Big Data almost started to fade after failing to deliver on high expectations from all the hype a few years ago. Thanks to AI, Big Data is getting its second wind. AI, particularly narrow AI (NAI) seems to be able to deliver quick wins by automating processes and integrating chatbots, paving a good foundation for wider more sophisticated AI-backed solutions. So Big Data as a backbone of AI is getting attention again more from variety and veracity with way better outcomes than a few years ago when most business could not comprehend its applicability. Bots, RPAs and virtual assistants make AI applicability tangible and relevant to the business users. We have seen this transformation and its direct, positive and measurable impact on our organization with simple bot integration to handle basic, repetitive yet frequent tasks such as password resets and knowledge base searches. After one successful implementation, a floodgate of other use cases opened. Just one case, demonstrating seeing makes believing, has inspired great demand while cloud services along with human capital skills has proved to be able to scale appropriately and meet the increasing demand. Further automation and NLP adoption have huge potential, not only as a new solution but as an extension of existing business capabilities, almost AI as a service and product enhancement. For example, we all have access to personal assistants not only senior management as was the rule in past decades, but we do not utilize it in our everyday tasks to be more productive. The key to marginal improvements and adoption on a larger scale to gain huge organizational impact and operational efficiency involves freeing the creative mind to deliver new values. It requires unlearning old habits, relearning existing ones and learning new approaches. 

Q: What are the current data trends and how will it impact your organization?

A: Data is growing exponentially and new trends are emerging almost frequently but I would focus on a few that can make a huge impact on our lives as data consumers as well as on data practitioners such as data sharing and data privacy. It seems these are on opposite sides but not mutually exclusive rather data ethics inclusive. It does not mean that private data cannot be shared or that sharing means opening up all data. There is governance in place to ensure appropriate levels of privacy and security. It requires a good understanding of existing data compliance as well as your role to support and enforce data governance processes. I found that “data owners” are most reluctant to open up and share their data even in instances where there are no legal, compliance or business restrictions. I always use the analogy of home ownership when trying to explain data governance and especially, the term “data owner.” I ask the group to raise their hands if they are homeowners. You will notice most people in the room raising their hands. Second, I ask them if they would still be homeowners after failing to pay their mortgages for 12 months to raise their hands? Only a few hands would stay up (those who owned their homes outright and no longer had a mortgage). It is the same with the data; we own certain data and it is protected and regulated depending on industry and compliance, but in the most cases we as data practitioners are data trustees. We take good care of our homes, we follow regulations, do home improvements to enjoy our homes, improve quality of life, and build equity. We certainly do not mind keeping our neighbors accountable if we see that their neglect can jeopardize our living conditions and diminish equity potential. Why should it be different with data? If your home is one of your biggest assets, and we continue promoting ‘data as an asset’, then we should manage it as an asset. Data sharing is one way of improving and enriching your data. It also promotes data reusability, significantly reducing the number of requests for new datasets which force highly-skilled data engineers to perform unnecessary and redundant ETL processes. I have to admit that the data sharing implementation might be painfully slow, but we will see enormous efficiency among our customers even with small improvements around data sharing. Streamlining the process and annotating data on small samples eliminates not only silos but unnecessary errors and increases trust in existing data. Thus again showing the importance of being a data trustee.   

Q: How has DevOps and cloud services changed the way you design, build, deploy, and operate online systems and secure infrastructure?

A: My decades of professional experience as a data practitioner and a leader have taught me that information is valuable and actionable only if received when needed—one day or even one hour late could easily make it irrelevant. A day-old newspaper is viewed as useless, almost like garbage to be recycled. My latest hire to lead data engineering efforts came from a strong DevOps and cloud background. I see strong, agile, and infrastructure scalable data engineering is a prerequisite for successful data science and data analytics practices. For those going to the gym regularly, data would be your legs and you never want to forget your leg day, while analytics is your upper body, the most visible thus getting the most attention. Data engineering is your core, abs and back. A weak core compromises your overall health and fitness. So strong data science without strong, agile data engineering is questionable too. I must be clear that DevOps is not a simple copy/paste to data engineering, but there are many similarities. The data engineer role is often used interchangeably to define data architect which requires a solid cloud understanding. It also requires good scripting skills where I pull parallel with software developers, and as every code, it requires versioning and collaboration. In previous years, we have managed to retool part of our DBAs practice and develop a data engineering team that is fully cloud-certified adopting DevOps principles with an ultimate goal to manage data via code repos rather than maintaining multiple data tables and views. On the analytics side, in addition to computing power and scale, the cloud offers production-ready, data science services which require borrowing DevOps methods. Both cloud and DevOps hugely accelerated a long-term need for data analytics and quick turnaround resulting in DataOps as not only a set of best practices but as its own methodology in data analytics.

Bojan Duric is the Chief Data Officer (CDO) of the City of Virginia Beach where he promotes a data-driven and citizen-centric culture at all levels of the organization. As CDO, Bojan is responsible for implementing data and information strategies across the enterprise with wide impact not only on Virginia Beach residents but whole Hampton Road region. Shortly after joining the city, he successfully implemented the highly demanded Data Academy Program, a data and analytics literacy initiative which enriches employees with data and analytics skills to support factual based decision-making process. Some key advances for the City of Virginia Beach in his short tenure include the implementation of the first data and analytics platform for collaboration and a framework for certifying both data and practitioners, as he likes to call “Data Governance in Practice”. He views data as an asset to empower employees, boost citizen engagement, and increase transparency.

Bojan’s rich experience in data science and business analytics span multiple industries including government, transportation, healthcare, and consumer packaged goods (CPG). He has held key roles in financial, operational, supply chain, and sales and marketing analytics. His vast business background includes providing management coaching, training, and consulting to Fortune 100 companies and government contractors, such as Norfolk Southern, Carlsberg A/S, and ADS Inc. He is proficient in several open source and proprietary technologies and has developed a range of data solutions and analytics products recognized by influential data communities, and both private and public organizations.

Bojan is a guest lecturer at the Old Dominion University (ODU). He is the advisory board member with ODU’s Computer Science and Engineering, and Storme College of Business. Bojan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from Rutgers University and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Old Dominion University. 

With over 30 years in the technology industry, his expertise in strategy and execution within the realm of growing business has made his 1 on 1 with Apex fascinating. Read John’s perspective on how the legal industry is evolving in the current state and his five step process for managing an organization.

Q: Have you developed a business driven data strategy; is there support for it and is your organization becoming more data-driven? What steps are you taking to ensure all areas of the business are data driven?

A: We set out to develop a business systems architecture that modernized all of our back office systems utilizing a platform first strategy.  This included moving to SaaS only vendors with modern API’s which allows us to move data in and out of systems as needed without heavy effort.  With a SaaS architecture, systems are automatically updated with new features, allowing IT resources to focus on value-add efforts vs. system upgrades and maintenance.  The organization has an ever increasing appetite for data driven decision making around client preservation, revenue generation and back office decision making.  We believe that simplicity in systems architecture plays a big role in adoption of tools and idea generation around them.

Q: How do you balance the need to ensure that non-revenue generating data-driven transformation efforts receive the commitment and funding that are required to sustain these efforts?

A: We build business cases for IT initiatives and run those cases through a technology steering committee for selection of a diverse set of annual investments.  While ROI is a key driver in the selection process, a balanced approach to progress across the entire firm is a key guiding principle.  Keeping the overall firm healthy from a technology perspective only happens if we invest in all areas of the firm vs. focusing only on revenue generating activities.

Q: How are you justifying the cost needed to evolve and adapt IT to support the speed and agility required by the business?

A: We have been successful keeping IT costs relatively flat despite investing heavily in new systems.  This is accomplished primarily by utilizing SaaS solutions.  Migrations from managing data centers and DR facilities to being 100% cloud as well as cloud PBX adoption has cut traditional IT infrastructure costs substantially, which offsets the investment in new systems.

Q: What operating model and cultural changes have you considered as you shift to a digital business?

A: This is something that is very much in progress in the legal services space.  Some technologies such as e-signature capabilities have made an immediate impact on efficiency and client service. Others such as Zoom have cut travel expenditures significantly.  There are many examples of technologies that have adoption curves that take years, while others catch on quickly.  Emergencies (like a pandemic) or an extreme competitive disruption can accelerate adoption, most however take a little time.  Our firm has moved in a direction of digital work processes quite a bit in the last few years with a focus on speed of delivery for clients.   

Q: What is the current state of Big Data and AI investment and do you sense the pace of Big Data and AI investment changing?

A: This has been mostly an experimental space in the legal world.  The biggest issue holding back adoption of AI in legal is the lack of focus on UX.  The majority of focus is on the back end of the systems, resulting in solutions that are hard to use, limiting who can take advantage of them.  This follows a typical innovation curve of complex systems and I expect this to change in the next 3-5 years.  There is already an uptick of focus on the UX of AI systems in the legal space.

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Q: What advice would you give an early stage CIO or CDO joining an enterprise organization?

A: I think it is important when you join an organization to learn the business at a high level and develop a multi-year (call it 3 years) technology strategy for the organization. If you get too bogged down in the weeds early on, it is very difficult to shift to strategic work. I try to follow a five step process for managing an organization:

• Develop a strategy aligned with the industry you are in and get executive buy in.
• Build a team of A level players that are excited about the strategy.
• Break the strategy down into tactics (prioritization, resource management).
• Show up each day and grind.  Be consistent and keep commitments. Your staff will mimic your habits.
• Develop the art of saying no.  You will be inundated with requests and ideas.  If you allow these requests to disrupt your tactical plan, you will not succeed with your strategic plan.  This is art form – you need to learn to say no without making people feel like you don’t listen or care.  That is not easy but it is a vital skill.

Q: How has cloud services changed the way you design, build, deploy, and operate online systems and secure infrastructure?

A: SaaS has changed everything.  You can focus on data and feature usage vs. deployments and maintenance.  Applications don’t get old, IT doesn’t have to choose what new features to give to the business because of limited resources.  There is no infrastructure to manage.  Tech access gets simplified, no VPNs, user experience is the same regardless of where you are or what device you are using.  The IT folks can focus on usage and value vs. keeping the lights on.  Product development can be more easily influenced with strategic vendors as they are now maintaining a single code base.