My Guest Blogger Eddie Block (CISSP, CIPM, CIPP/G, CISA, CEH) is a senior attorney in Gardere’s Litigation Group and member of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Legal Services Team who focuses on all aspects of information cyber security, including credentialing functions, firewall and IDS deployment and monitoring, and penetration testing, and related complex litigation. Eddie blogs at JurisHacker.
What qualifies a CISO?
Since the Equifax breach a screenshot of the CSO’s music degrees has been floating around the Internet.
As a Classical Civilizations undergrad, I take issue with the implications. During college I built networks and databases and worked on systems of all types. I also spent my summers on archaeological sites in Israel.
After graduating from college, I worked helpdesk support, moved into system administration, started securing systems and networks. I eventually became a full time pentester. Midcareer, I dropped out of InfoSec and went to law school.
After law school I went back into security doing product security, working with DoD networks, and securing a $20 billion enterprise. I eventually served as the Chief Information Security Officer for the State of Texas.
So I was the CISO for a state of 28 million people with degrees in Classical Civilizations and Law. Does that make me unqualified for my job? Should I have stuck with my life in archaeology?
I know a loooottttttt of people in InfoSec with no or unrelated degrees. In fact there was almost no university offering a security degree when I or my friends were in college.
What makes a security person? Curiosity. Grab all the degrees and certifications you want, without a natural curiosity of how things work (and more importantly break) you won’t make it in InfoSec. Making things work in unintended ways is the fundamental tenant of security. The most important word in InfoSec is “Huh?”
So was Ms. Mauldin qualified to lead Equifax’s security program? I don’t know, but I won’t make that judgment base of her degrees.