Guest-at-a-Glance
💡 Name: Ryan Gurney
💡 What he does: Ryan is the CISO-in-Residence at YL Ventures.
💡 Company:
💡 Noteworthy: Before joining YL Ventures, Ryan held security leadership positions at Looker, Google, eBay, and Zendesk.
💡 Where to find Ryan:
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Key Insights
⚡ Your cloud provider’s weaknesses can become your problem. Since the cloud has become more prevalent, many companies have switched to it. However, Ryan believes that users must be careful when choosing their third-party cloud provider since their weaknesses may become the user’s problem. “I’ve seen us go from attempts to keep all the data inside the borders of the company to utilizing private clouds, public clouds, and the explosion of right third-party SaaS apps and mobile apps. […] It means that there are more environments where customer company data is being housed. Accessing that and understanding your assets is supercritical.”
⚡ Security training needs to be short and to the point. According to Ryan, long-winded security training for employees is highly ineffective. Instead, it should be more precise and company-centered. “Security training needs to be short, to the point, frequent, contextual, and specific to the company and its culture. And that includes how you sign up for SaaS applications and how you manage your cloud environment. You should discuss only the areas that are important to the security company, security in their culture, and give people tips on how they can do things in their personal lives and help their family and friends. So, the old stuff around these long-winded four-hour-long training needs to go away.”
⚡ I’m excited about technology being able to reduce poverty. Ryan strongly believes that we can do a lot with technology, including solving the world’s most critical issues. “I’m excited about technology being able to reduce poverty and bring conveniences to people around the world. We’ve seen examples of it — easier access to water, bringing the Internet to everyone, and helping with sanitization. These are massive gaps in people’s living conditions around the world.”