a16z Podcast

The Chief Security Officer In (and Out of) a Crisis

Joel de la Garza, Joe Sullivan, and Das Rush

Posted April 29, 2020

The Chief Security Officer (CSO/CISO) used to manage on-premise servers, but now, the information they need to secure has migrated to the cloud. And just as the surface area of that information has expanded, so has the responsibility of CSOs – especially in moving from technical IT to the boardroom.

So at our annual a16z Summit – which brings together C-suite leaders and invited experts from various organizations discussing tech trends and innovation at companies large and small – we sat down with longtime security leaders to discuss: How do the best CSOs prepare for and respond to a crisis, from redteaming to comms? What responsibility should cloud & SaaS vendors (not to mention the government) have in security and data breaches? And how is the role going to evolve in the next five years?

This episode was recorded in November 2019, and features a16z security operating partner Joel de la Garza, formerly CSO at Box, in conversation with Joe Sullivan, CSO at Cloudflare and former CISO at Facebook and Uber (where he has been involved in an ongoing crisis there around a prominent hack).

image: Unsplash | Alexey Soucho