The CIO Evolution: Recent Episodes
Zscaler, Inc
The CIO Evolution, a CXO REvolutionaries podcast sponsored by Zscaler CIOs are a special breed of executive: the Swiss Army Knife of leaders. They lead the innovation agenda and use technology to power the capabilities that deliver business outcomes. This podcast covers the art and science of business transformation and the tools CIOs use: cloud, mobile, AI, zero trust. More importantly, it investigates the true essence of digital leadership.
Cyber defense has been an "infinite game" played on an uneven field, but deception can give the good guys the upper hand. Zscaler VP & CISO Sam Curry makes a compelling case for derailing even the most sophisticated hackers with unpredictable, hostile networks.
Sanjit Ganguli, Vice President of Transformation Strategy & Field CTO at Zscaler, joins the show to discuss his coauthored authoritative zero trust monograph, the first of its kind for CXOs.
If you have ever wondered what a business value assessment (BVA) can do for your IT projects, you are in luck. Gary Symes, director of value creation at Zscaler, joins the show to walk us through how it's done, detailing the work of the Value Creation team. He covers when it makes sense to build the economic rationale for transformation projects, what is needed from a client point of view, pinpointing important value drivers, industry-level observations, and lessons learned for IT leaders based on hundreds of BVAs performed every year.
Recorded in New York City at CXO Summit Live on October 25th, this episode welcomes back Dan Shelton, field CTO at Zscaler, to dive into challenges and solutions shared by CXOs, including: - Protecting your assets when users are everywhere, and business systems reside in multiple places - Educating the business on segmentation, risk, and zero trust - Simplifying policy and access to improve the end-user experience
This year, M&A will likely fall short of a record-breaking 2021, but will finish as one of the strongest markets of the past two decades. There will be some winners, but most deals will fall short of envisioned outcomes. IT leaders and corporate strategists can discover a winning formula by harnessing the cloud and digital transformation to accelerate the tech side of integrations or divestitures. Guest Stephen Singh, Global VP, M&A/Divestiture and ITO leader Zscaler delivers the latest on the market state and what corporate boards and IT leaders need to know about zero trust.
The responsibilities of security executives are morphing in response to macro global developments. Meanwhile, growing cyber risk and complex regulations are elevating the profile of CISOs and redefining their relationship with CIOs and the rest of the organization. CXO REvolutionary, board advisor, and former bp CISO Simon Hodgkinson and VP, Global Transformation Strategy Christoph Heidler cover the implications and share guidance for cyber and IT execs.
The global economy is in new territory with high inflation, supply shocks, and a tight labor market. CIOs and technology buyers already tied up in pandemic-led disruption now have a lot more to consider in the wake of a possible recession. CXO REvolutionary and former CIO of the State of Wisconsin David Cagigal is no stranger to leading successfully through economic volatility. In this episode, he shares timely views on cybersecurity decisions in the current climate with guest host Christopher Jablonski, Director, CXO REvolutionaries and Community at Zscaler.
Host Phil Armstrong welcomes Kevin Dawson, President and CEO of ISA Cybersecurity, and Sean Cordero, CISO - Americas at Zscaler to discuss how the cat-and-mouse game of cybersecurity can lead to CIOs rushing from point to point solutions trying to lock down their organizations. They cover the fallibility of third-party risk assessments, an unwillingness of cyber-insurers to cover ransomware attacks, market confusion surrounding the "acts of war" clauses and designation, talent acquisition, and more.
Once you have a zero trust architecture in place, it can enable cyber security capabilities that will be commonplace in the future. In this episode, host Phil Armstrong welcomes guests Maneesh Sahu, director, OT network and security transformation, Zscaler, and Bil Harmer, operating partner, Craft Ventures, to explore the latest technologies that can help IT leaders support their digital aspirations. Learn about securing the supply chain by minimizing supplier risk and integrating third-party identities, advances and challenges in device identity, and IOT, and how to embrace DevOpsSec and the no-code and low-code development trend while staying on top of their challenges.
On January 26th the Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President, issued Memorandum M-22-09. The memorandum outlines an approach for delivering a zero trust architecture and capability for FYE 2024 with specific milestones defined for the next 30 and 60 days. In this episode, host Phil Armstrong, President & CEO of Macanthium Ventures Inc. and CXO REvolutionary welcomes the former CIO of the State of Wisconsin, David Cagigal, and Zscaler Public Sector Chief Technologist Hansang Bae to analyze the memo, including the short-term deliverables and what it will really take to succeed with a uniform cybersecurity strategy for federal agencies.
In this tell-all episode, host Rohit Adlaka and guests Karl Hoods, chief digital and information officer at BEIS, and Christoph Heidler, VP of global transformation strategy & CIO-EMEA at Zscaler, discuss the changes afoot for CIOs to deliver growth, digitalization, and efficiency while maintaining resilience and agility. With customer and employee expectations only increasing, cyber threats multiplying, and competition growing fiercer, how do technology leaders cope with a milieu of seemingly impossible digital complexity? Listen in for answers with insights into:
- Managing accelerated change across the IT landscape
- Driving a fantastic user experience
- Integrating security transformation
- Aligning closer to corporate boards
- Attracting talent and promoting the CIO function
Host Rohit Adlakha and guest Claudia May Del Pozo explore advancements in AI through the lens of Latin America, including regional challenges, public-private cooperation, and how women leaders and experts in humanities can partner with technologists to create more equitable outcomes.
C Minds is a women-led action tank that works in the intersection of new technologies, society, and the environment, with a strong focus in Latin America. It achieves this by designing digital policies and ethical frameworks and deploying initiatives that harness artificial intelligence (“AI”) to advance sustainable development goals.
Guest host, Rohit Adlakha, a CXO Revolutionary and former Chief Digital & Information Officer and Global Head, Wipro HOLMES™ welcomes Zscaler pros Howie Xu, VP of ML/AI, and Ken Urquhart, Global Vice-President, 5G to explore AI, trust, and cybersecurity and the top concerns within, such as ethics, bias, and fairness. AI is poised to redefine the basis of knowledge, revealing insights and truths that go beyond the scope of human intelligence. Are we ready?
Organizations are in a tech arms race to meet shifting customer demands, deliver on business imperatives, and avoid disruption. C-level leaders and board of directors across every industry and subsector are turning to the cloud and the secure internet to deliver on new and compelling value propositions for customers.
In episode 5, Zscaler board member Andy Brown shares his perspectives on how enterprise leaders must communicate technology transformation to the board in the language of the business.
The conversation is a tour de force well-suited as the season finale. Listen now for significant insights and observations about the state of business technology, including:
- The hybridization of every sub-vertical in the world is––companies that had no real reason to be in the digital computing space before do now
- The limitations of a "lift and shift" strategy to the cloud
- How companies can become more customer-centric vs. product-centric and the role of digitalization in that evolution
- Why CEOs have become the leaders of the move to the digital
- CIOs can help the executive committee and the board think much more broadly about what the role of the company is in customer's lives
- Risk doesn't just apply to cyber threats, but also to the disruption of business models
Episode 4 contains an incredible set of insights, including:
- The required security capabilities for modern digital enterprises and how there is no such thing as "nice-to-haves"
- What has worked and not worked when it came to operationalizing the transformation journey
- How designing experiences that build brand credibility relies on secure transactions that are frictionless
- How zero trust can be applied to other parts of enterprise infrastructures and use cases beyond work-from-anywhere
- The best cyber leaders might be proven non-cybersecurity executives who knows the business better than anyone in security, but can still get the security job done
The hybrid work environment is the new work environment forcing us to, among many things, rethink network infrastructure and security. In this episode of The CIO Evolution, host and CXO REvolutionary Les Ottolenghi, and Kevin Schwarz, Director of Transformation at Zscaler, challenge the very meaning of network security in a cloud-based world and explore how the industry is looking to zero trust as the solution for the new paradigm since old answers for new problems won't make the cut as we plunge into future.
Listen to the conversation to learn about:
- Why the idea of the network as we traditionally know it has changed, rendering "network security" obsolete
- The traffic visibility challenge with a close look at how to handle Microsoft 365
- Why user-to-app connections are the simplest, fastest, and most secure and deliver on new user expectations
- The skills CXOs need in the new normal, post-covid-19 world
- A "security and trust as a service" mindset
In this episode of the CIO Evolution podcast, moderator and CIO Les Ottolenghi talks with former BMW CIO Klaus Straub and former financial industry CISO John Meakin about how digital transformation, innovation, and security require alignment between the CIO and CISO, especially when it comes to governance, compliance, and risk.
Listen to the conversation to learn about:
- The value proposition of zero trust for CIOs and CISOs
- How CIOs and CISOs can collaborate to enable the business
- The relationship between governance, compliance, and risk management and hot it fits into the CIO/CISO relationship
- The role of zero trust to drive innovation
- The exciting disruption ahead for the auto industry
In this first episode of The CIO Evolution podcast, moderator and CIO Les Ottolenghi talks with former Great-West Life CIO Phil Armstrong and Zscaler Sr. Dir. of Transformation Strategy Dan Shelton about what Zero Trust really means and how it helps connect the dots for digital transformation at large enterprises.
Listen to the conversation for insights into:
- What is working and not working in cybersecurity and the strategic role in plays in transformation enablement
- The true meaning and purpose of zero trust and how it helps CXOs and tech leaders overcome a "perfect storm" of requirements and constraints
- The challenges that companies face when attempting to implement a Zero Trust architecture
- Starting a zero trust deployment