Building at the Intersection of Social Skills and Security Infrastructure

Julie Cullivan, Chief Technology Officer and Chief People Officer at ForeScout Technologies, and Atticus Tysen, SVP, Chief Information Security Officer, and Chief Information Officer of Intuit, discuss where security infrastructure and social infrastructure intersect, how driving digital transformation takes cultural buy-in, and how a Zero Trust strategy helps them keep their company and their customers secure. 

Key Takeaways

• What we view as “soft skills” or “social skills” are really catalytic skills that drive connections between coworkers, forge alliances between departments, and make teams more productive. CIOs have to build infrastructure to support those skills. 
• The idea of building a secure perimeter around a physical location is fading in the age of remote work. Instead, CIOs are focused on securing their infrastructure to keep valuable information protected whether an employee is working from their kitchen or corporate HQ. 
• Companies can’t afford to kick their adoption of Zero Trust architecture down the road, even if they’re undergoing constant change. The debate is more centered around how you should adopt the architecture, rather than when. 

Key Quotes

• “You have to extend your thinking to realize that the large portion of your corporation’s infrastructure is now in people’s homes, and it’s only as secure as that infrastructure is.”  – Atticus
• “The larger the organization and the more legacy there is in place,  the more it’s about working through planning so that you don’t break something. In the end, we all have to keep the business running at the same time we’re rearchitecting.” – Julie
• “Security is a team sport as well. You have to have a strong culture of trusting your employees and enabling them to move fast and to produce great experiences for customers and great products.” – Atticus
• “What I’m most focused on is really productivity and being thoughtful, not just about, people can get their work done, but are they able to do it in the most effective and productive way that they can?”  – Julie

Links

• Julie Cullivan LinkedIn
• Atticus Tysen LinkedIn
• ForeScout Technologies
• Intuit

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