Diana Kelley – CTO & Founding Partner, Security Curve; Chief vCISO, Salt Cybersecurity, Board Member and Inclusion Working Group Champion at WiCyS

The CISO Diaries

About Our Diary Entry:

Diana Kelley’s security career spans over 30 years. She is Co-Founder and CTO of SecurityCurve and donates much of her time to volunteer work in the cybersecurity community, including serving on the ACM Ethics & Plagiarism Committee, as CTO and Board member at Sightline Security, Board member and Inclusion Working Group champion at WiCyS, Cybersecurity Committee Advisor at CompTIA, Advisory Council, Bartlett College of Science and Mathematics, Bridgewater State University, and RSAC US Program Committee.

Diana produces the #MyCyberWhy series and is the host of BrightTALK’s The (Security) Balancing Act and co-host of the Your Everyday Cyber podcast. Diana is also a Principal Consulting Analyst at TechVision Research and a member of The Analyst Syndicate. She was the Cybersecurity Field CTO for Microsoft, Global Executive Security Advisor at IBM Security, GM at Symantec, VP at Burton Group (now Gartner), and a Manager at KPMG. She is a sought after keynote speaker, the co-author of the books Practical Cybersecurity Architecture and Cryptographic Libraries for Developers, has been a lecturer at Boston College's Masters program in cybersecurity, the EWF 2020 Executive of the Year, and one of Cybersecurity Ventures 100 Fascinating Females Fighting Cybercrime.

Diana Kelley recently joined Cyber Future Foundation as an Advisor.

Highlights:

0:00 - Introductions and Backgrounds

• On how she does it all… “It takes a village – everything I do is in partnership with others”
• “I’m super hyper organized and that helps a lot – once I showed somebody my pantry and everything is labeled”
• Loves being back on the advisory side; has been at big companies for 8+ years – gives her balance working with smaller companies

6:09 - “When you get to the really big companies, as things get scaled the complications grow exponentially – have legal requirements, regulatory needs based on the geo – people can get really siloed in their focus. CISO has to have some kind of a view…”

8:44 – Diana’s Perspective on Leadership.

• Leadership – she’s been called “pushy,” but some people want to go in and get organized and bring people together.
• In college (she went to Boston College) and loved the radio station. They needed a general manager, and it was a student selected role; in her second year she decided to run for GM and she was the first woman!
• Years later when she was working in Cambridge and building out a team, she thought to herself “I could be a Vice President someday – she had been building towards this…
• Advice: think about what is natural for you and embrace the opportunity.
• Leaders don’t necessarily have to be managers

21:09 - The Button Learning - @whataboutbunny on Instagram

41:04 - What Gets You Excited and Which Role in Cybersecurity?

• There are CISOs presenting to boards – what is that you want to do in cyber?
• Look at people who are in those roles and reach out and talk to them – ask them what their job is like
• “I’ve learned so much by just asking people. For a while I was really curious – what’s a distinguished engineer…”
• Ask people what it’s like to be in their job and how did they get there

Engage with Diana Kelley:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianakelleysecuritycurve/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dianakelley14

The (Security) Balancing Act: https://www.brighttalk.com/channel/17830/