Ethics, education and a plasma ball: five questions on The Cyber Pro Podcast

The Cyber Pro Podcast asks five questions, give or take, in under nine minutes, because hackers never sleep. I was CISO at Kaia Health at the time, and we talked about what I love about this work, why security has to be part of a company’s culture, and the ethical side of the job we rarely discuss.

Why I love this work

I specialise in cybersecurity management, research and education. I was born and raised in Montenegro, on the Mediterranean coast, and the laid-back culture there has helped me more than you would think: it keeps you calm and your head clear during a cyber attack, when everybody else is losing theirs.

The best part of the job is that you get to talk to everyone in the organisation. A CISO who wants to do the job well has to talk to everyone, because that is how you find the risks no standard risk assessment will show you. What I love most, though, is meeting people, listening to their stories and learning what they care about, because it keeps widening my perspective, makes me reflect on my own life and makes the work very fulfilling.

Awareness still gets lost in translation

It is long overdue that leaders call cybersecurity a top concern. When I work on awareness, I look for two things: reaching as many people as I can, and getting across why it matters. That second part still gets lost. Too many leaders tick cybersecurity off as a compliance checkbox instead of making it part of the company’s culture.

It matters because its absence hurts real people: identity theft, financial loss, damaged reputations and, in the worst case, loss of life. Think of a hacked car in motion, any transport vehicle, surgical equipment or a power plant, and the why becomes very clear. Still, I think we are on a good track.

Security is an all-hands effort

The more people you involve, the faster you reach your security goals and the faster you find risks. Cybersecurity is not a one-man job, where a company has one security person. Everyone has something to contribute, from recognising a phishing email to secure coding practices and a secure development life cycle in the product team. That is why security has to be part of the whole culture.

The ethics we don’t talk about

Security professionals should do what they believe is right and rarely compromise on it. If you have a confirmed data breach and management tells you to keep it quiet, you face an ethical decision about whom you are there to protect, the users or the management, and as a security professional your role is bigger than your job description.

Spend most of your energy educating people. When you raise awareness, you get more support and build ambassadors across the company. That makes your life easier and gets you to your goals much faster.

A plasma ball in my home office

My favourite piece of retro technology is a plasma ball. Nikola Tesla invented it in the 1890s for his experiments, and in the end we got a fun toy out of it. I have one in my home office, and every child who comes in puts a hand on it first and asks what it is. With my background in electrical engineering, Tesla’s experiments never stop being fun. He came from our part of the world, and we like to bring him into every topic.

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