PRO+ Premium Content/Information Security
Access your Pro+ Content below.
From the White House to IBM Watson technology with Phyllis Schneck
This article is part of the Information Security issue of November 2017, Vol. 19, No. 9
Phyllis Schneck is a managing director at Promontory Financial Group, the regulatory consulting company IBM acquired in 2016. Schneck joined Promontory in early 2017 after working for the Obama administration. She was formerly deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity and communications in the Department of Homeland Security's National Protection and Programs Directorate, where she focused on work with private companies. Prior to that position, she was a vice president and CTO at McAfee. Marcus Ranum caught up with Schneck to talk about her early years in computer science, space odyssey with her influential father, who worked for NASA, and why understanding fundamental algorithms -- think IBM Watson technology -- may be in your future. How did you get pulled into the technical track? Phyllis Schneck: My dad was a NASA computer scientist. My earliest memories are that he did operating systems for the Apollo. We were living in New York, and his office was at the Goddard Space Studies Institute above Tom's diner. He would bring home ...
Features in this issue
-
Are security operations centers doing enough?
SOCs are maturing, but organizations facing the increased threat landscape understand that improving their effectiveness must be a priority in the year ahead.
-
Transitioning to the role of CISO: Dr. Alissa Johnson
Serving as White House deputy CIO prepared Johnson for her CISO role: "When we let the culture in a company or agency drive security governance or innovation, that's a problem."
Columns in this issue
-
Are companies with a SOC team less likely to get breached?
Information security operations centers are “growing up,” according to one study. But, with staffing shortages and manual collection of data, performance metrics are hard to get.
-
From the White House to IBM Watson technology with Phyllis Schneck
The managing director at Promontory Financial Group, now part of IBM, talks about supercomputers, cryptography applications and her start in computer science.