In this show, host Allan Alford interviews his friend Chris Castaldo about how to align information security with the business. Chris is the CISO at Crossbeam, and is also the author of the book "Start-Up Secure: Baking Cybersecurity into Your Company from Founding to Exit", available for pre-order at Amazon. Chris, like Allan, views himself as a very business-oriented CISO. Allan welcomes Chris down to the ranch to discuss business orientation and alignment of information security in detail.

The show starts with Allan asking Chris to introduce himself and to tell the listeners a bit of his background. Chris's book fills the void in books for founders that seemed to utterly lack any reference to cybersecurity. Allan recommends the book, as he was one of the lucky few to review the book before its release.

But that is not what they are here to chat about today... Allan asks Chris what it means to be a business-oriented CISO - and what does it look like to NOT be a business-oriented CISO?

Allan asks Chris how a CISO can affect both the bottom line and the top line as well. Allan and Chris discuss the nuances of that conversation in the context of business-to-consumer ("B2C") businesses vs. business-to-business ("B2B") businesses.

Allan and Chris discuss the challenges of striking the balance between meeting the business' security needs and being agile enough to quickly respond to the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the business.

To close the podcast, Chris shares that he loves information security because of its always offering something new, and because of it evolving towards a user-centric approach.

Key Takeaways:

0:36 - Chris tells the audience about his security book for founders.
2:19 - Chris talks about his day job as CISO at Crossbeam.
3:08 - Chris talks about what it means to be a business-oriented CISO - it's mostly about understanding the rest of the business.
6:05 - Chris walks through how a CISO's impact to the top and bottom line varies for startups vs. mature businesses.
7:16 - Chris compares security aspects of a non-security offering to airbags in a car.
9:02 - Allan shares his past as a product security professional and how business-aligned product security in tech companies is.
12:00 - Chris compares B2C to B2B and how business-alignment for the CISO varies across the two.
14:41 - Allan talks about expectations of security vs. liability caps for failing to deliver it: B2B vs. B2C.
18:24 - Chris discusses how to enable security without putting the brakes on the business.
22:40 - Allan explains how some of his basic security controls that also accelerate the business.
25:17 - Chris explains why he loves working in information security.
26:21 - Chris is looking forward to user-oriented cyber security.

Links:
Follow Allan Alford on LinkedIn and Twitter
Learn more about Hacker Valley Studio and The Cyber Ranch Podcast
Learn more about Chris Castaldo on LinkedIn.
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