Chris Russell - CISO, tZERO, Cybersecurity Mentor, Snyk Ambassador, Advisory Council Member at NightDragon

The CISO Diaries

CHRISTOPHER RUSSELL, CISO, tZERO Group

About Christopher Russell:

Christopher Russell is the Chief Information Security Officer for tZERO. Apart from holding a master’s degree in cybersecurity, he also has several certifications in cloud security, endpoint detection and response, SIEM, NGFWs, and blockchain. He has a background as a human intelligence (HUMINT) collector for the U.S. Army and as a combat Veteran. Christopher graduated from the Defense Language Institute with a specialization in Arabic.

Christopher Russell is the Head of Information Security for tZERO Group Inc. He has a Masters Degree in Cybersecurity and numerous certifications and experience in cloud security, endpoint detection and response, SIEM and blockchain. He is a combat Veteran of the US Army, where he was a human intelligence (HUMINT) collector who graduated from the Defense Language Institute, for Arabic.

Chris is also Advisory Council member at NightDragon, a venture capital firm investing in and advising late-state and growth companies, providing a platform of growth for the next-generation of cybersecurity, safety, security and privacy companies.

Connect with Chris on Twitter or LinkedIn

Episode Highlights:

00:00 - Background and First CISO Role

• Hard to leave CriticalStart / CyberOne
• Personal interest in blockchain and FinTech

3:03 - Path into Cybersecurity

• Cybersecurity is second career
• First career was in Intelligence - really enjoyed it, did meaningful and exciting work oversees
• Learned Arabic at Defense Language Institute
• Was in Middle East as long as they could keep me there
• Getting into Systems (human operations - debriefings, extracting information from people) was easy for him. He had an 'a-ha' moment that this is where it's at - Information Systems.
• He hit the books, self-studied, went back to school with GI bill - went through courses, spinning stuff up and tinkering to have enough of a background to function.
• Had basic networking skills and sensitized to it already.
• Got his Masters

5:59 - First Job at AT&T

• Low paying, but learned a lot in networking
• Could make his own Cat 5 and troubleshoot a network to round out his background

6:18 - First Engineering Role in Cybersecurity

• Still felt like I knew nothing
• Stayed late, constant research, networking, put in the effort early on
• His military background helped him with the detect part and making it make sense to the right people - being able to articulate.
• Mentoring - he created a mind map with all the different stuff you can do in cybersecurity. Start with Security Engineer, then into Security Architect, then Cloud Architect, then pivot into leadership, for example.
• If goal is to be a CISO - yes, you can get there from Analyst

14:53 - Using Intuition in Cybersecurity (is he going to host a podcast on this topic soon)?

• "This is something near and dear to my heart - I feel like I get data from things and situations on a different frequency than most and can quickly address problems."
• In Intelligence this was invaluable and it helped him get a lot of success there
• In cybersecurity it's not much different - there's a lot of people like this - we have quirkiness and different personalities in cyber, high on IQ side and they have high intuition - they just know where to go and look for problems and answers. It's not something out of the text book.

33:25 - Parting Thoughts and Fear

• I am on the low end of the fear scale - try and take my energy and be proactive vs. worry.
• On a scale of 1-10, I hover at a 3. I have times where I have to remind myself to relax and I creep up to a 6 or 7.
• In a leadership level, bring a sense of calm - keep everyone focused and calm on the mission.
• As much as I understand why the fear factor is high right now, I choose to stay focused on a 3 and be proactive.