Intelligent CISO Issue 11 | Page 51

COVER STORY nd-user r, C Mike Webber, CISO at BlackBerry, talks to us about how to build a strong security culture, the cyber-risk that comes with IoT and the biggest challenges faced by cybersecurity professionals today. “G “We live in that risk spectrum, you need to be able to retain good judgement under pressure, so test your comfort zone, put yourself out there a bit and build your resilience because in the CISO role you’re going to encounter those stressful situations and you need to continue to be able to think and communicate clearly in those times,” he said. At BlackBerry, Webber is responsible for managing corporate information technology and technology services that are provided to BlackBerry customers globally. And though it might not be an obvious link, Webber credits his education in | Issue 11 at Bla ckB e rr y BUILDING A STRONG SECURITY CULTURE et comfortable with being uncomfortable.” That is the message to aspiring CISOs from Mike Webber, Chief Information Security Officer at BlackBerry. www.intelligentciso.com IS O geology with preparing him for some of the challenges his future role was set to bring. On his journey into info security “Geology as a discipline combines all sciences and it teaches you to draw on a very wide array of information and techniques. It teaches you structured ways of thinking and drives a very wide range of curiosity,” he says. “And my view is that cybersecurity is actually very similar. It combines all the IT disciplines, certainly requires thought processes and information analysis to bring together seemingly unrelated facts. So I feel that, strange as it might seem, an original education in geology and the way you go about thinking about things and bringing a lot of different information across from seemingly unrelated areas was actually a great preparation for working in cybersecurity.” 51