Hat tip to our pals at TripWire, who do a good job of leveraging the security community to generate interesting and entertaining content. They have a guy named David Spark who roams around the floor at trade shows like RSA and captures video. A recent video asked, What would you do if you became CISO?

Responses ranged from “fall off the wagon and drink heavily” to “ask for more budget” to “give myself a big-ass raise.” I definitely like that last one. But an ongoing theme involved updating your resume. That’s pretty funny. Who said security folks are pessimists?

Of course the first thought that entered my mind was to grab the hemlock. But after that faded I’d go buy some guy’s book on being a Pragmatic CSO (hint, hint).

I guess my advice is to forget almost everything you knew about technology. The position you’re now in is about persuasion and influence. It’s not about configuring firewalls or squeezing another $2-3 per device out of your endpoint protection vendor.

There are some entertaining responses in the video, so check it out and get a few laughs. Then get back to work. Things don’t protect themselves, do they?

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