View this email in your browser

CISO Series Podcast

Fast Track Burnout for Your Cyber Team with Layoffs

This week’s episode is hosted by me, David Spark, producer of CISO Series and Dan Walsh, CISO, VillageMD. Our guest is Nick Vigier, CISO, Talend. We discussed the following.

Do you know your signs of burnout, and can you take action on them before you do burnout? Joseph Lewis who just became CISO at the CDC wrote a confessional post about realizing he was taking on too much. He had just taken on a new CISO role and he was trying to finish his PHD program. We want to think that we’re super human, and that we can do everything, but that’s not realistic. Be self aware when you’re taking on too much. 

Don’t require a potential buyer to talk with you in order to get information. We have heard again and again that gating information about your product (e.g., “email us for more information,” “let’s set up a meeting,” “click here to schedule a demo”) is a really quick way to get CISOs and security leaders to completely ignore your product and to move on to something else. If security vendors want to be considered, create a journey for interested parties to gather the information they would like. All along the way you can offer ways to connect with you as well.

Layoffs stink for those who lose their jobs, but what about your team that’s still there? What happens to your team after the layoffs? Your overextended team now realizes they're going to have to pick up the slack for those who left. How do you shift responsibilities in such a situation? Does anything fall away? Because you can't still operate at the same level. How do you adjust while maintaining morale and not burning out those who are there?

What’s your advice to your younger self as to how to handle a career in cybersecurity? 

• "Consider the business aspect of what you’re doing." - Rick Deacon of Interlock

• "Don't be afraid to ask for more." Rob Fuller of United Airlines

• "Understanding and explaining business risk is more important than pwning any application." Ashish Rajan of Cloud Security Podcast

• "Security is all risk based. Don’t get too frustrated when management don't listen to your advice." 

Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast app, or over on our blog where you can read the entire transcript. If you haven’t subscribed to CISO Series Podcast via your favorite podcast app, please go ahead and do so now.

Thanks to our podcast sponsor, Sentra

What I love about cybersecurity...

"I love that I get to understand the entire business. I have to understand how every team does their job in the way in which they do their job. So, while you have an HR team that might work across the entire company doing HR things, we have to understand how a development team works, how a product team thinks about product, how the HR team does performance management, finance team does budgeting and the tools they use, and all of those things that put that context together into the bigger story, and then talk about risk." - Nick Vigier, CISO, Talend

Listen to full episode of

"Fast Track Burnout for Your Cyber Team with Layoffs"

How to Become a CISO

"One way or another. I think you will fail in a certain way. I think the number one thing is when you feel like I become a CISO, I got to be perfect. And there’s just so much…there’s just so much you don’t know even from day one and also that things are changing so quick. You need to learn all the time. You will fail some aspects." - Yabing Wang, CISO, Justworks

Listen to full episode of

"How to Become a CISO"

Subscribe to our newsletters on LinkedIn!

We've got our bi-weekly and daily Cyber Security Headlines newsletters available right here on LinkedIn. Go ahead and subscribe to one or both!

CISO Series Newsletter - Twice every week

Cyber Security Headlines Newsletter - Every weekday

Cyber Security Headlines - Week in Review 

Make sure you 

 to join the LIVE "Week In Review" this Friday for 

Cyber Security Headlines 

with CISO Series reporter Richard Stroffolino. We do it this and every Friday at 3:30 PM ET/12:30 PM PT for a short 20-minute discussion of the week's cyber news. Our guest will be Kurt Sauer, vp, information security, Workday.

Thanks to our Cyber Security Headlines sponsor, Conveyor

Thank you!

Thank you for supporting CISO Series and all our programming

We love all kinds of support: listening, watching, contributions, What's Worse?! scenarios, telling your friends, sharing in social media, and most of all we love our sponsors!

Everything is available at cisoseries.com.

Interested in sponsorship, contact me, David Spark.