Information security is not a siloed practice where you can rest purely on technical skills. —Jeremy Capell
We are delighted to welcome Everbridge’s New Chief Information Security Officer Jeremy Capell. An immigrant from South Africa, recognized internationally as an acclaimed resilience leader, Jeremy was key in developing the African cyber resilience industry, resulting in his receiving the 2017 London-based award for the African Industry Personality.
Everbridge Technology Blog co-editor John Maeda sat down for a brief interview with Jeremy to hear what’s on his mind.
I believe the role of a CISO is shifting from securing information to building digital trust across the customer journey and within the employees.
Everbridge Technology Blog: How did you get started in the cyber resilience world?
Jeremy Capell: I started my career in resilience in the post-apartheid era in South Africa, which saw an emergence of novel cyber and other operational attacks to organizations and communities across the African continent. It was a time where communities, government and the private sector needed to come together to create a more resilient future.
ETB: What advice do you give to new folks who have joined the infosec industry and are just starting out?
JC: Information security is not a siloed practice where you can rest purely on technical skills. It is a fundamental component of enterprise resilience and therefore, a successful practitioner must build a deep understanding of the business and acquire the soft skills needed to partner with the business.
ETB: What are the key trends that you see as vital to the CISO in 2022?
JC: Firstly, I believe the role of a CISO is shifting from securing information to building digital trust across the customer journey and within the employees. Customers and employees now want to know that they can trust an organization to do the “right thing”. This includes protection of information, maintaining availability and being resilient through crises.
From a CISO perspective, this trust needs to be embedded into the fabric of the organization, particularly with the distributed workforce and the evolution of engineering / development utilizing containers, microservices and community-developed code.
There will be an explosion of IoT devices as low latency high bandwidth airwaves evolve.
ETB: Looking back five years ago, what were the biggest trends that you thought would be around today — that simply vanished?
JC: One big risk back in the day was portable media. Everyone had USBs and hard drives for videos, photos, and work content. In most cases these devices were never encrypted and posed a significant issue if lost or stolen. Now today, I do not believe that there is even a need to enable these devices on a PC or Mac.
ETB: Looking five years ahead, what do you predict they will be? Specifically, how do you think the CISO’s job might change or evolve?
JC: Looking forward, I believe that we will need to figure out how to securely govern and integrate into online digital financial systems, community interest groups and marketplaces as these digital communities evolve and function globally. I also believe that there will be an explosion of IoT devices as low latency high bandwidth airwaves evolve.
ETB: Thank you for taking the time, Jeremy. Welcome to Everbridge!
About Jeremy
An immigrant from South Africa, recognized internationally as an acclaimed resilience leader, Jeremy was key in developing the African cyber resilience industry, resulting in his receiving the 2017 London-based award for the African Industry Personality. Additionally, Jeremy led three separate teams to win the “Team of the Year” award from the global Business Continuity Institute, and he was the youngest person in Africa to receive the London Based business continuity Institute certification.
Passionate about helping the U.S. regain the title as leaders in the global telco technology race, Jeremy recently lunged at the challenge of building a world-first wireless security team who built a next-gen capability to protect the U.S.’ first and only fully virtualized 5G network. An industry thought leader, Jeremy has published whitepapers and been asked to speak at many global and local conferences. He is also a co-inventor on two patents designed to enable control and security for U.S. government 5G use cases.
About Everbridge
Everbridge is hiring! We have many engineering positions now open and available across the world — come join us at Everbridge to help keep people safe and organizations running. Faster.
About Everbridge
Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG) is a global software company that provides enterprise software applications that automate and accelerate organizations’ operational response to critical events in order to Keep People Safe and Organizations Running™. During public safety threats such as active shooter situations, terrorist attacks or severe weather conditions, as well as critical business events including IT outages, cyber-attacks or other incidents such as product recalls or supply-chain interruptions, over 6,000 global customers rely on the Company’s Critical Event Management Platform to quickly and reliably aggregate and assess threat data, locate people at risk and responders able to assist, automate the execution of pre-defined communications processes through the secure delivery to over 100 different communication modalities, and track progress on executing response plans. Everbridge serves 8 of the 10 largest U.S. cities, 9 of the 10 largest U.S.-based investment banks, 47 of the 50 busiest North American airports, 9 of the 10 largest global consulting firms, 8 of the 10 largest global automakers, 9 of the 10 largest U.S.-based health care providers, and 7 of the 10 largest technology companies in the world. Everbridge is based in Boston with additional offices in 20 cities around the globe. For more information visit www.everbridge.com
