How to be an authentic thought leader: Steve Stone, Rubrik

It’s not every day that you get chatting with someone who, in the first five minutes, casually drops into the conversation that they “ran a couple of SWAT teams”.

But this is an episode with a difference. And if you’re involved in anything to do with cybersecurity marketing or thought leadership, then it’s one for you.

There ain’t no cybersecurity expert with more expertise than Steve Stone. From managing nuclear security and running counter-espionage operations for the US Air Force to then moving into counter-terrorism as a federal agent (including over 1200 interrogations of high-level terrorists), the early part of Steve’s career was action-packed, to say the least.

And it hasn’t slowed down since. After moving into cybersecurity as a case agent for several nation-state cyber intrusions into the US government, Steve left the military and joined the US intelligence community where he spent five years as a cyber intelligence expert, before moving into the private sector to help firms like IBM and Mandiant to convince C-suites and executive boards of the mission-critical threats that cybersecurity poses.

Today, Steve heads up Rubrik Zero Labs, the data threat research unit he helped to create inside the data security firm Rubrik (and Shaped By client). We’ve had the pleasure of working with Steve on the creative aspects of RZL, so Dave was stoked to get the chance to interrogate him about:

• what led him from dusty interrogation rooms to the clean, bright corridors of a Silicon Valley tech firm
• why Zero Labs is such an important resource for Rubrik’s clients and security leaders everywhere
• how to engage busy CISOs and CIOs with thought leadership content
• how committed thought leadership like RZL builds genuine trust and credibility
• the role that storytelling plays in the RZL experience

Thought leadership in B2B is so often a badging exercise, consisting of a few hastily-trotted-out reports with a foreword from the company’s CEO. So if you want a bagful of tips on how to build a true thought leadership platform, get your ears around this episode.

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