Q&A with Expert Insights

My second interview with Mirren McDade, Senior Journalist & Content Writer at Expert Insights for the their ongoing series interviewing cybersecurity professionals to bring you their unique insights into cybersecurity today, the challenges they are facing and the realities of what it takes to defend complex global environments

Synopsis

The conversation covered some of the issues most important to security leaders today, from the rapidly expanding world of human, machine, and AI-agent identities to the need for CISOs to have real authority, executive sponsorship, and a meaningful relationship with the board. We also discussed why the fundamentals of cybersecurity, asset visibility, least privilege, MFA, logging, vulnerability management, and incident response. all remain critical even as organizations rush toward agentic AI. One of the themes emphasized throughout is that a security breach should not automatically be viewed as a failure of the CISO; mature security programs should be measured by how effectively they identify, contain, recover from, and learn from incidents. The discussion also touches on CISO liability, the first 90 days in a new CISO role, evaluating whether an organization has properly structured the security function, and the importance of building security programs around measurable business risk rather than compliance alone.