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In this insightful conversation, the speakers delve into the intricate world of cybersecurity, focusing on the challenges of data protection, business alignment, and effective communication with organizational leaders. The discussion highlights the importance of understanding where data resides and building relationships with business leaders to demonstrate the value of cybersecurity in supporting overall business strategy.

Here is the verbatim discussion:

There there's as you as you mentioned there's all this data whether it's on individuals hard drives  i once saw a chief legal officer that put all of his important documents on his hard drive uh we had to have a disaster recovery business continuity discussion about how fragile his hard drive is um we have data everywhere in this industry and data leakage protection there's solutions and tools that say they'll discover thing but who has access is actually easy once you know where the data is most systems you can right click and look and see who has access but you can't right click on something you don't know where it lives building those relationships with those leaders to show that you have value to their business strategy not a security value not a dlp value not a intellectual uh property leakage value but that you're supporting the business once you're successful in getting the business leader to recognize that you are a business leader then they want to learn about security for their business value where i made mistakes in the past as i came in as the security expert and demanded the business leaders do the security things and i was so  right you have like so many acronyms and nobody cares for those right so so how to bring in uh business alignment how how to change our language because a lot of times i hear the ciso saying oh those guys don't understand security and and stuff like that and i think um it's very unfair to expect them to learn security they do what they do very well it's probably important for us to communicate it to them in the right way so matt what are some of your tactics and strategies to convert  i try to recognize being humble and seeking to understand listening to understand it's very easy to listen to a conversation and take notes of what you're going to respond to or listen for where the speaker is making a mistake so that you're prepared to show how you're smarter than you're the smartest guy in the room um that that just doesn't work so um i i really believe that going in and asking questions seeking to understand taking notes actual listen to what they're there for in my current environment uh at ntt research i am surrounded by folks that have no less than two phds most of the people have more than two phds in completely different subject matter cardiology and and physics like totally different um people and these guys are true geniuses that i work with um i have a lot to learn from them and and the the thing every every monday night i sit down with uh several researchers and i learn two to three new topics or papers that are being written and it's hard for me i think i'm a smart guy.