Malcom Harkins Talks about Ethical and Legal Obligations of the CISO

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TechSpective Podcast Episode 100

This is a milestone podcast–the 100th episode. Triple digits. In honor of the 100th episode, I invited the guest who helped launch the whole thing with Episode 001–Malcolm Harkins. Malcolm was CISO at Intel at one time, and served as Chief Security and Trust Officer at Cylance among many other roles. As it happens, Malcolm and I are now coworkers as well. Malcolm is the Chief Security and Trust Officer at Epiphany Systems, where I manage marketing.

He is also an independent board member and advisor to several organizations, and an executive coach to CISOs and others in a wide variety of information risk roles.  Malcolm engages in a wide variety of peer outreach activities to drive improvements across the world in the understanding of cyber risks and best practices to manage and mitigate those risks. Key areas of focus include the ethics around technology risk, social responsibility, total cost of controls, and driving more industry accountability.

In other words, Malcolm has a track record of success and years of wisdom and insight to bring to the table for a conversation on the role of a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and the ethical and legal implications of it. Our chat was particularly relevant in the wake of recent events like Peiter “Mudge” Zatko becoming a whistleblower about issues at Twitter–where he lead security until being let go earlier this year, and the potentially precedent-setting trial of former Uber CISO Joe Sullivan for his role in covering up a 2016 data breach.

Check out the full episode for more about the CISO role and Malcolm’s perspective on the ethical and legal responsibilities that come with it.

The podcast itself is audio-only, but the video of our conversation is also available on YouTube if you prefer:

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