Hal Wing, the Cybersecurity Manager at Centuri, joins host Megan Garza to talk about common cybersecurity misconceptions and emerging technologies.
Hal Wing, the Cybersecurity Manager at Centuri, joins host Megan Garza to talk about common cybersecurity misconceptions and emerging technologies.
Speed Data: Hal Wing
[00:00:00]
Hal Wing: some of the fundamentals of cyber security, you know, don't click on the phishing email that, that, that, that held true 20 years ago.
It holds true now, you know, Welcome to Speed Data. Quick conversations with cybersecurity leaders. I'm your host, Megan Garza. I'm excited to chat today with Hal Wing, the manager of cybersecurity for Century Group, an infrastructure services company that helps power millions of homes and businesses across the United States and Canada.
Megan Garza: Welcome to the show, Hal. Hal's skillset includes compliance program development for regulations such as PCI, SOX, and HIPAA. And he's well versed in business information and technology. Hal also has impressive military chops, skilled in electronic warfare operations, and can speak English, Russian, and Thai. Very cool.
Hal Wing: it's been a [00:01:00] while, but yeah, I, I, I enjoyed my time in the military immensely. I learned a lot.
Megan Garza: And I hear that when you're not thinking about your cybersecurity program, you spend your free time as an amateur coffee roaster. Or, pseudo coffee snob, in your words.
Hal Wing: Absolutely.
Megan Garza: So you have been in tech for over 20 years now. How has the threat landscape changed since you began your career?
Hal Wing: it's really about the capabilities. I think that that have changed cyber security and have driven a lot of, frankly, a lot of the, Career paths that you have now, you know, 20 years ago when I was kind of getting started in technology and not really sure where I wanted to land, , a much smaller playing field, I guess you could say than it is now. The capabilities that are available now, you know, you can make careers out of out of a single platform trying to go into the cyber security world now is almost daunting because, You know, cybersecurity is the umbrella for it all, [00:02:00] whether it's hardware or software or network that, you know, it's the whole enchilada.
Megan Garza: And moving from the past to the future, what do you predict to be the biggest shift in cybersecurity?
Hal Wing: advancing technology, advancing capabilities, uh, you look at things like quantum computing. You look at AI. I mean, AI is already kind of changing the landscape and we're just early in the adoption as with any new platform, any new capability. We're still figuring out all the wonderful things that we can do with it.
Right? You know, and how we can apply this to to make our lives better in the world. You know, the lives of those around us better. unfortunately, not everybody is so altruistic. And so you will also have that, group of individuals who leverage that technology to more nefarious terms. Uh,
Megan Garza: when working in cybersecurity? ,
Hal Wing: cyber security is a team sport, right? I'm one person in, in a, in a [00:03:00] large company and I have, you know, 15, 000 employees who are going on doing the, things that they need to do in their lives to fulfill their business requirements and meet their, you know, meet the demands of their, uh, roles, and it.
It's varying levels of, technical capability and technological understanding. You know, my industry is construction industry. and so, you know, we've got folks who, don't spend their time like I do on a laptop. Right? Um, and so, even those folks don't need to be. Aware of some of the, some of the fundamentals of cyber security, you know, don't click on the phishing email that, that, that, that held true 20 years ago.
It holds true now, you know, so is a team sport and as a cyber security practitioner, you need to be working as kind of holistically in the business as you can, I found that it's better to approach, challenges in the cybersecurity profession from a [00:04:00] position of how do we find a solution to the problem that you're presenting?
Not. No, you can't do that kind of a mode. And, you know, sometimes it's like, no, you can't do that, here's what we can do to help you achieve the outcome. You know, just maybe it's not what you're trying to do is wrong. It's the way you're trying to do it. And, and so Building a team that is willing to engage you to look for solutions rather than avoid you and come up with a solution on their own that may or may not be secure.
Yeah, you know, it's, want to foster that engagement as a cyber security professional because you can't do it all on your own and you can't know everything that everybody else is doing your enterprise.
Megan Garza: right. Yeah, I've had other folks call it the Department of No, and they're trying to change that. So it's not necessarily Department of No, but like you said, maybe doing it a different way that's a little bit more secure.
Hal Wing: Absolutely. [00:05:00] Uh,
Megan Garza: energy networks across North America, I would imagine your role comes with some pressure. What is the hardest thing about your role?
Hal Wing: so I'd say the hardest thing about my role is just ensuring that, I've. Dotted all the I's and crossed all the T's in terms of the requirements that I need to meet from a compliance perspective. and, you know, from just a general security perspective, do we have the fundamentals in place and in a distributed environment with limited resources?
And that's hard to do. fall back to security as a team sport. And so I'm really heavily reliant upon my colleagues. and so culture is really important. And, if your organization is, One that that fundamentally operates out of transparency and willingness to collaborate and corroborate, then, you know, you're in a really good position.
So, for me, personally, I'm in a really good position. Um, not everybody enjoys that, the benefit [00:06:00] of that. And I, wish everybody the best to be able to find that in their lives. I like to lean into into some of the challenges and embrace, those areas where, you know, maybe I don't have all the answers.
Because there's always new stuff, right? There's always new technology. There are new capabilities. There are new things coming down the road.
So, uh, While it is pressure, it is not negative pressure. It is a pressure to, to understand a pressure to. educate, uh, to be educated, to learn, and to come up with a better mousetrap in the, at the end of the day.
Megan Garza: Yeah, I like that analogy. And so embracing those challenges, is that what you enjoy the most about your role? Or
Hal Wing: Oh
yeah. Just embracing the challenges and really my team, uh, working with the people that I work with and, In figuring out better ways to do the things that we do that, at the end of the day, improve our service delivery as an organization to our customers, right? my [00:07:00] customers are not only.
Our customers in terms of external customers, my customers are my colleagues, my, the employees and, you know, that that's kind of the way I approach it. And that is the culture that this organization fosters. And I feel that's a great place for me to excel. and I look for those kinds of positive attributes in my work environment.
Megan Garza: What advice can you give security leaders on getting buy in from the C suite or board members on the importance of cybersecurity?
Hal Wing: it's interesting in this day and age, I think getting the buy in is less challenging. I think board buy in is, is, Just table stakes, if you will, with changes in SEC requirements and reporting expectations and, legislation around privacy and all, you know, you cannot not be invested in cyber security as, certainly as a publicly traded company. You have to be able to to distill down really what is important, for their consumption and [00:08:00] and really What are the questions that that you absolutely, positively have to have answered?
and you have to be able to, to communicate that in such a way that it speaks to business impact, uh, and, ultimately dollars and cents. And that's, that's not an easy thing, right?
So, it takes time and, A willingness to bridge that gap between here's all the technical stuff that we're doing and here's the dollars that that we're spending. But what is that getting us in return helping the board understand what that looks
Megan Garza: I like how you talked about, you have to distill it down to what they would understand, which is how does this impact the business? How does this impact the bottom line? And what are the consequences if we don't do this?
Hal Wing: Yeah, and, and scaling it to, business speak, you know, you know, we can sit and talk about firewalls and the need for, you know, new Zuni drives and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, the eyes [00:09:00] start glazing over it's like, okay, I've totally done nobody any service here.
What matters from the business perspective? And so being able to, as a cybersecurity practitioner, really understand your business and what are the, primary drivers of risk? you know, what are your key sources of revenue? What are the risks to that revenue? And, and how do you quantify that, that It's challenging, but that's really where you're going to start getting, champions for a cause that is security minded.
Megan Garza: I agree. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. How I enjoyed having you. If you're interested in being a guest on speed data, you can visit Veronis. com slash speed, hyphen data. Thank you again. How
Hal Wing: Thanks. You too.