Episode 36 – Strategic Security: AI, Leadership & the Future

Welcome to Executive Checkpoint, the live podcast for security professionals. Each week, we explore industry trends, challenges, and insights with leading experts. This is your insider access to the minds driving change in our industry.

Welcome to Executive Checkpoint, where security professionals gather insight to navigate the ever-evolving world of physical and cybersecurity. I'm your host, Tino Urbina, and today I have the unique pleasure to have my colleague and friend, Brittany Galy. She's the Suisuite strategist, AI advocate, and a champion for women in security. Her work sits at the intersection of innovation, ethics, and executive leadership. We'll explore her journey, her views on AI, uh, and its role in security, and how she's helping shape the future of the industry.

So thank you, Tino.

Great having you. We've been talking about this for a minute, and, um, we have been so many conversations, right? Mm-hmm.

So many. Well, and a lot's changed in even 6 months, right? Throughout the world and through the organizations and the globe and everything else. So it's So the faster, the faster I think we keep talking about this, the better, because lots changing.

Yeah, it's on a daily basis. But, you know, you have a great background and you sat as the former president for Women in Security. So you have a very high profile. However, a few or some of our viewers might not know your journey or where you come from. So tell us a little bit about Brittany. Who were you before security? And currently, what's What's your—

Yeah, so I— so a couple of things happened to me young, early on in my career, as I, I kind of blended and, and I'll say crossed over industries in security tech. And, um, what that allowed me to do is really see a lens of the security technology that didn't, didn't exist, right? And so running a software company with, um, the team that I had when I first entered the security industry years and years and years ago was pretty eye-opening of what the tech space was like versus security space. And so that allowed me to kind of, like I said, not only run, you know, a software piece of this to enlighten— I should say this— on what holes and gaps there were in the security space, but also understand, you know, how to make fast, efficient progress. And that was the biggest thing that I, that I wanted to do was how do we educate our security teams and our security companies on how to catch up in the world, right? Um, full circle, I guess, you know, 11 years later, here I am in the tech space again. Um, but, and then through that, I also had, um, the chairmanship, I should say, for the Global Women in Security Community for ASIS, which was, um, an amazing passion pleasure project of mine for 7+ years.

Mm-hmm.

And that's a great community that's really I'll say we'll put gasoline on it. And it's really taken off in the last, you know, few years. And it's, it's been incredible to watch. So that was something that was really close to home. And then now, like I said, I'm kind of back in the tech space. And it's really, I mean, I would say one of the most exciting times, you know, as far as industry has it, you know, with AI and everything that's going on. It's pretty incredible to not only just watch but be part of these teams that are taking global organizations with AI through not only just their own clients, but also through their own transformation. And that's really my secret sauce is how do we transform the organization to adopt AI and get our workforce to adopt AI in a very productive, efficient manner so that that way we can use it faster and better.

Got it. Yeah. And I, you know what, and this is the sense of urgency that we always, you both, we both connect with. And it's like, I see that there was a book from John Kotter that talks about leading change.

Yeah.

And at the time, this is back in the '80s. So at the time, it was, you know, they were managing change and coping with change. So when he comes in with leading change, he was identifying when it happens and the 8 steps to move organizations in that transformation. Today, that's a luxury, right?

Yeah.

To me, what you're doing in your professional consulting side is saying we are in the change.

Yeah, we are in the change. And I've said before, like, you know, AI is a really good buzzword in the sense of what we have to do, but it really is build, buy, or get run over. And a lot of organizations, I mean, I even looked it up the other day, 71% of organizations are using AI. And as between, and even more interesting is that 75%, 73% of all people in those organizations are using AI compared to 33% 12 months ago. So we've gone 40% of our orgs have started using AI that weren't using it 12 months ago.

Wow.

That's huge adoption, right? That's huge transformation. That's what we knew was going to happen with this was accelerated growth exponentially. And now the goal is of the C-suite is really to say, okay, but now I can prove my ROI, which was phase 2, right? Phase 1 is get the adoption happening, get it to learn, get it to understand. And then phase 2 is use it to my advantage, my competitive advantage for my competitors, but also how do I prove ROI internally with efficiency, workforce upskilling, so on and so forth. And that's really the meat and bones of the transformation piece that I, like I said, I love to focus on because it's everywhere. There's, there's no company right now that says I shouldn't use AI, right?

Right. And the question is, how do you do it ethically? How do you do it minimizing risk? And how do you do it where the adoption is there to make it a good, you know, ROI? Get the regular, right? I do want to go back a little bit on time with your experience in the industry. What was it you mentioned earlier that you've seen the industry change and there was the speed on which organizations learn the new technology is important? What was it in your career that you identified this potential, this problem, and make a flip, said, you know what, I'm going to change this? So obviously you're passionate about it.

So yeah, so there was kind of two, two things in there. One was that I was in, you know, I was tasked with increasing revenue for a mobile app company when before mobile apps were a thing. So you had— we had to convince— and, and I was having the same conversation with somebody else who's launching their new, new tech security tech product too, is that 90% of sales is really in the security space is really education. Education on what they're missing, education on what they don't have, and education on why they need it, right? And taking that approach, it was my responsibility to say, I need to educate the security space on why they need to start using a mobile app, right?

Mm-hmm.

Imagine that. And that is talking to a brick wall sometimes, right? And so, you learn very quickly through many conversations what works and what doesn't work for each audience. And that was the kind of the interesting part that I got to see is I got to, I got to hand in hand watch the security industry go from a very platform-based, I'll say, maintenance management perspective to a very mobile-based maintenance management perspective. And that was, of course, where the world was headed. We knew it, right? We knew everybody was going to have a phone in their hand and we knew everybody was going to have a mobile app. So that was my, my luck, I will say. The second piece is, so leading right into conversation about what we were just talking about, the second piece is now watching that same user population go into, okay, well now I need to use my third arm, which is my, you know, angelic AI, and also get the job done in a more efficient manner with the tool sets that I have, right? And the Google Glasses and the watches and everything else. And that's kind of the interesting part is where is the consumer base? next move, and then where is the security-based and the technology-based teams' next move? To me, it's really about getting AI in your mobile apps and getting AI into your mobile phones and getting AI into a place where it's now learning not just what you're doing on your computer, on your platforms, and inside your orgs, but from a consumer perspective, how is it helping you do your day-to-day jobs, life, and everything else. And that's really like, to me, there's 2 steps, right? There's the platform AI version and then there's the mobile version of the consumables. And, and of course, you know, like I said, you know, 71% of organizations are using AI now. It's already, it's already on its, its way.

Yeah. And, and you know what, you, you deal through this transformation, of course, with the executive, executive level and C-suite. So you describe AI as a leadership catalyst, not just as a tool.

Yep.

Can you unpack that a little?

Yeah. So, and again, I, I personally love the idea that there's been so much adoption. There was a lot of people I felt like upfront that were hesitant to adopt, right? But again, now they've realized, okay, you know, we're gonna get run over if we don't. What, what I love to do with the C-suite, and this is kind of any organization that I work with, is the strategy session is my favorite. And the reason is, is because It's very clearly defined now how you can map AI ROI to your internal initiatives. What I'm finding is, is that, and I always say this too, the best leaders have a roadmap and share their roadmap. And by that, I mean with their own teams internally.

Yeah.

There's a lot of leaders out there that don't have a roadmap. And those are the ones we're trying to help, right? Those are the ones we're saying, look, you need a plan. Even if it's a 6-month plan or a 3-month plan, it doesn't matter. Have a plan. And then take that plan and again, go back to how does AI help me get there faster, better, and more efficiently? And that's the strategy sessions that I'm doing right now that are again really helping because I'm backing software and ERP systems and all kinds of things into, okay, this is really the business outcome we're supposed to get in 12 months. Here's the technology that we have on hand. How can AI help me? And then what technology do we need to buy, build, or like I said, you know, even get rid of because it's, you know, archaic and technical debt.

Right. So, you know, there is some misconceptions that play a role in this decision making and, you know, implementation and even coming up with a plan. What are those misconceptions that you see in security circles?

Misconceptions, I'll say things that worry me, maybe, maybe we say it like that. Things that worry me, things that worry me are we're moving too slow. It's a constant driver of security. The security industry as a whole is that we— they're slow to adopt. And the reason is, is because they're not technology experts. And very rarely does the CIO and CSO cross over into the same role. That's generally not the same person. And you generally very, very rarely do you find CSOs that are just as cyber savvy as they are physical savvy. There is a very small group, right?

Mm-hmm.

And I wish we could duplicate that, meaning I wish we could take that 3% or 5% or whatever those— that, that role is of those people that can cross over. And I wish we could, as, as again, these generations come up forward, is they can cross over technical and physical much better. And that's one of the things that worries me is we're, we're kind of in this, in the C, in the C-suite, we're saying, okay, you know, you're, you're qualified as a CSO, but you know, normally we're going to focus 70 or 80% on cyber. You can't have that, right? So I'm worried that some of the physicality of the, you know, CSO role is getting lost and/or vice versa. The cybersecurity side is lost on the physical CSO.

Yeah, that's picking cat or dog, unlike you said. And, you know, I think there's also organizational, you know, organizational tension. when you have to navigate the innovation and ethical responsibility.

Yeah.

Because, you know, in that decision, I think there's a little bit of paralysis in the C-suite because there is that risk and ethical consequences for making a decision. So how do you make that decision? What are the steps that you offer to your C-suite folks to consider when they're making that key decision to move in one direction or another, or just Move, because like you said, yeah, tick-tock, tick-tock, right?

Well, and I think it's, I think it's enabling security and confidence, right? Is that there's a lot of people that went second with this AI race. There's a lot of people that went third with this AI race, and that's totally fine. But you have to keep moving, and you have to— the, the world now is moving exponentially. It's like, you know, again, a technical industrial revolution. You have to move swiftly, even if it's in the wrong direction. and you realize later. Um, the worst thing you could do is stay stagnant. And I mean that from a competitor perspective, right, from revenues, but also the fact that you quite literally— and I was having this conversation actually with another transformation, um, artist, Whitney Johnson. I don't know if you know her, but she is incredible. Um, I just did a podcast with her, and she is so enlightening on her— how she views people and their adoption methodology for anything technical is a very— like, she has called it the S-curve, and it's incredible to watch how she, how she came up with that. But one of the key statements in there is how quickly is your workforce adopting, right? Your tech, your, your, your software is your software. You can do an upgrade, you can do, you know, a migration, you can do all these kinds of things. You can do a plugin and add AI all day long, Copilot, everything else. My— the bigger question is, how fast can you get your workforce to adopt, use, and improve over the course of time?

Right.

And a lot of that, and I would say 95% of that drive, that efficiency manager is driven from top down, which is basically a C-suite or an executive, a CEO saying, guys, I need you to learn and use this tool from now on, starting this day. and you need to self-learn, right? That, that is where, like I said, you're, you're seeing a definition in leadership right now of who's driving and who's sitting back and letting the world take over. And that, that is very interesting to me, is to see that the leaders lead and the leaders— or there's, there's other people that just sit there and say, well, I'm going to wait, wait for somebody else to go first, right?

Yeah. And you know what, that, that leans really well in the next— my next question, because How do you personally grant, you know, the human leadership while working with disruptive tech?

Yeah, right.

You know, it's how do you do that and how do you do it effectively? So now we, we, we need to add one more person to the list of the podcast. I, I'm very curious now that you're this far.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think we have a few conversations, but never in depth. So, yep, that's a good one.

Incredible.

All right. Well, so Your leadership efforts in empowering women in security, still a great mission from you. What are your current views of where we are as an industry, especially with— I feel like we need more professionals, but definitely more women. So, yeah, I'm a father of 3 girls, so always.

Yeah, you are. I can tell because you have really good EQ. No, I was going to say, So he— and it was funny, I was just having dinner with a friend last night, and this was something her and I were talking about, was that if we don't keep the gasoline going in women in security, it will eventually fizzle out, right? Our job as leaders in this industry is to keep gasoline on that fire. And the reason is, is because we're at an inflection point of whether women are staying in the industry versus leaving. And that is from the analyst level all the way up to the senior security manager, to the directors, to the CSOs, is I'm, I'm finding that there's a lot of women in security out there that are tired and sick and just get honestly worn out of the fight up the hill, right?

Right.

And so one ask to the industry is that if we can do everything we can to keep the women in the security industry that we have, right, and keep pumping them up, Um, because again, if you don't put gasoline on the fire, it's eventually just gonna fizzle out. And that's what's— that's what's— that's what I don't want to happen. Um, we've done an amazing job of, I'll say, even 5-timing our, our community over the last couple years globally. And it's really taken hold in a lot of countries, countries you wouldn't even expect, like Nigeria and Libya and Saudi Arabia and all of these places. And a lot of that's come from, you know, changes in the world and changes in I'll say political leadership and that driving force. But again, people are— people get distracted. They get distracted with work, their jobs, and everything else. So my ask again is that we keep the, um, I'll say pumping up of our women in security going, and we keep supporting them to actually get promoted within the industry, stay promoted, and then of course raise up the ladder as fast as they can. Because—

Yeah.

We're still at only about 18% women in security in the whole industry. There's another— that's not much more, but that's way better than it was at 12%, right?

Yeah.

I mean, this is what I'm saying, like, it's so much better. But then again, I go back to it exponentially quantifies itself once we get that ball rolling. So once we get up to 30%, I mean, think about the industry as not— I wouldn't say equal, Right? But think about an industry that has at least 30% of females in it compared to the 12% that it used to have, right? The mindset will shift. The help, right, for these global projects and these global initiatives and everything else, the mind, it will, it will, I'll say, I should say this, the snowball will create itself, I think, in security.

Yeah. And I will say that it's surprising, honestly. I thought it will be higher, than that because you see it, but that perception needs to shift on, again, a little bit of urgency to identify that, yes, we need more professionals. And, um, you know, someone was asking me, uh, what do you think makes the difference between a man and a woman leader? And I think the word that defines it is empathy.

Yeah.

We're so different in that aspect. So what would empathy look like at a C-level in high-stakes industries like the security industry.

Yeah, I was just thinking about this with regards actually to a client the other day of, you know, like, how do you describe what a good leader looks like versus, you know, a non-good leader, let's call it. And I remember thinking to myself, like, the best leaders in the room generally have the highest EQ, meaning they're not running technology, they're not running physical assets, they're not running anything, they're managing people. Right? 80%— 80 to 90% of their job every day is to say, how do I get this group of humans underneath me to, to run and row in the same direction towards a common goal? And that is when you see the executives, that's who they are. They're generally pretty well liked, right? They're good people. They generally have a good gut to go off of, which is something I've always complimented the security industry on. is that they were— we're a group and a collective of really actual guts. You know, our gut check is pretty, pretty solid because we have to be, right? It's in that security space. And one of the things there is that, that, that human or those soft skills traits, those characteristics are generally what drive excellent leaders versus non-excellent leaders. And I think as we kind of, like I said, wrap ourselves into this AI world and we start getting really efficient, which isn't happening now, but it will. That's kind of the next phase is super efficiency. Once we start getting there, you're going to start seeing the real leaders climb faster and higher. And as they start managing teams, the teams will filter themselves out with people with higher EQs.

Hmm.

Because I, and I heard this actually, I heard this at an industry conference Constellation Research did a great conference, and there's a bunch of C-suite there. And one of the panels, the guy said, he said, you know, I am more interested— or they asked him, how, who are you hiring right now that AI is completely embedded inside? And this was a huge company, we all know who it is. He said, you know, who are you hiring now that AI is in the workforce? And he said, I'm hiring generalists, not specialists anymore. I can hire a guy that knows 20% about these 5 things all day, I will hire that guy over the person that knows 80% over these 2 things. And same thing with their— and then the second question was, well, is that— that's, you know, your managerial level. What about the analysts and everything below it? And he said same thing. He said, we don't want specialists anymore. We want generalists because we have the toolset to teach them the specialties. And we were cross-training so many people now because training's easier. Right. Transformation is now easier with these, with this toolset we have. We are— it's easier for us to cross-train a group of humans across topics than it is to, you know, have one person do one thing or whatever. That, that idea is gone, which I thought was really fascinating because that again talks about the future of workforces going forward.

Yeah. You know, I saw that years ago. If there's one company that I know for a fact that people still retire from is AT&T. You know, people, and you know what, if you ever deal with them as a customer or, you know, yeah, uh, I've known AT&T as a customer for, I don't know, 20 years. And the person that was in a certain leadership position, they move them to marketing and then from marketing to the field and then retail. And then they put them back in a different caliber of leadership on the same vertical than they were before, but they have full circle. So imagine now with AI, It's fundamentally shifted to if you know everything about the industry or not everything, but you're a generalist, you have a better shot. Let me ask you a question, bringing it back to you. What do you feel is going to be your legacy? What do you want your legacy professionally to be? And maybe a little bit, and this ties into your personal, when you think about your legacy, what is that for you?

Well, that is a great question. I wish everybody would ask everybody that question. Wonderful question, Tino. Um, I want— if I was to say the legacy, right, every person you meet— I have a, I have a daily goal that I've stuck to for years and years and years. The daily goal is that I will make one person smile authentically. So I spend— go through your day, you meet lots of people, whether it's at the grocery store, the post office, at work, whatever it is, but you have made one person smile each day. That was my— that's my goal.

I love it.

What, what it does though, it's called micro-segmentation. I— my— one of my former leaders gave me this book and it was called Micro-Segmentation. It was brilliant. I'll send it to you actually. And it was exactly that. It's taking your entire 24 hours that you're alive on the planet And, and taking 5 seconds and saying, I'm, I'm doing a thoughtless act for the right reason, right? Well, what happens is you end up taking that 5 seconds, turns into 50 seconds, and then 5 minutes, and then 5 hours, and then 5 times. And you end up making a lot of people smile each day without even thinking about it, right? But a micro movement would move your entire day over a course of time. to be a better human and a better person. And I think that if I was to leave the world with something, is that, you know, I tried to make the world be kinder to each other and be more compassionate and look at each other's different perspectives. That's— that would be the goal. And the reason, again, this— this is why Women in Security Full Circle is so important to me, is because it's a perspective in the industry that hasn't really been heard before that I wish the rest of the industry would just look at and perceive and say, there's a lot of compassion here, right? We, we, we can help that portion of the industry if we just, you know, give it a little compassion and a little support.

Well, am I glad that I asked you that? You put this out in the world, and you know what, it's gonna impact someone that is listening.

I hope so.

Thank you. Thank you.

That was a great answer.

I am taking notes on that one. You do that well. So we, every time we get together, we always get a good laugh. And we always talk about something very important, relevant. And I think in our conversations, we always talk about what is key in most organizations or industries, which is leadership.

Yeah.

And we've been in the industry, I feel, long enough to feel that there might be some shifts that need to occur. If you were to redesign security leadership from the ground up, where would you start?

Um, I mean, my— again, my thing is leaders lead naturally, right? And leaders, the, the exceptional leaders, love to learn. Meaning even if they're at the top, they're still learning every day. They're learning from the people around them and below them that are likely smarter than them in a lot of ways.

Sure.

And they just happen to be the one at the top that says, I can manage these humans, but these— all these people are much smarter than me in their way. Um, But I personally, if I could make impact from an industry perspective, it would be that upskilling your workforce should be the primary, or I should say this, a top 2 initiative for your next 24 months. And I mean that in a sense is the tech is gonna be there naturally. The tech will be there. The tech's there now, a lot of it. People just, you know, it's too expensive for some to buy and purchase and try out and test and everything. Everything else, right? The tech, the technology, the software—it's all there. There, there are all corners of the world where most things have already been identified, used, and created. Hence why we're going to Mars, right? I mean, space is really the next frontier, and I mean that in this not a Star Trek way. I mean that in a sense of we have outgrown Earth, and it's time. It's for a lot of people and a lot of companies. It's okay. Well, now what's the next footprint in space I'm going to have? Because I need to compete again in some way, shape, or form with my other. Telecom is a great example of that, right? They're becoming a— they're, they're having to deal with space out of a naturalization effort of progress, right?

Right.

And I think, and I think that's, that's the thing, is that we've outgrown the physicality of, of objects, hardware, software, and everything else. Our goal as humanity is really to figure out how to bring the humans along, right? And, and I, I was looking up something the other day and it said that, you know, there's 8.4 billion people on the planet right now. 8.4 billion, right? Only 32% of those people use AI, which is, which I actually thought was pretty high.

Right.

I actually, I was thinking about, yeah, you've got third world countries and you've got, you know, countries that are, you know, private internet in some cases, right? I was actually surprised about how high that was, but imagine what that metric is 12 months from now, right?

12 months. Yeah, that's correct. Another year or 2 years like we used to describe tech.

Is it, is it half of those 8.4 billion people are using AI? And in which case, okay, great, you know, that's, that's wonderful, but are we leveraging it for good things? There's, I mean, there's all these, and I'll, I'll give this example because I thought it was Incredible. Tino, you'll, you'll love this because we think the same. But, um, they have all these AI videos, you know, that you can create instantly, right, about anything. And one of these, one of these channels was creating AI videos of what if the world was clean.

Oh wow.

What if there was no garbage? And what it was doing was it was taking pictures of places that were run down and filled with garbage, and it was saying Okay, I run a video of a bunch of people cleaning this up, what it would look like and what it could look like, what it could look like if it was cleaned up and structurally sound or whatever it is. And that was one of the best uses of it I've seen yet for humanity, right?

Right.

So we're stuck in corporate world saying, okay, great, Copilot and, you know, ChatGPT and Gemini are great for my corporate, you know, documents that I need to create. But how are we leveraging AI to actually make humanity and the globe better? And that's where I'd love to see impact and transformation.

Yeah, you know, I feel that the excitement of AI that I hear you share is that we, we're, we're still looking too base level, right? That the goal— and I mean, I love this because Mars to me, you know, being an interplanetary um, bunch is, is really, is really the ultimate goal, right? So to get there, we're gonna need more than our intelligence, right? It's always the, you are what you are because of your best thinking. Well, we need better thinking, right?

Right. So we need better, we need better thinking, and we need to push the limits on how we're helping versus just doing, right? We've gotten into this as professionals is just a lot of doing, because we needed to do, do this, right? One thing is, is how are we helping? That's, that's kind of where we're, where we're headed next, I feel.

Yeah. And, you know, so let me ask you, you think the industry is truly ready for the kind of leadership that you're suggesting?

I don't think it has a choice.

I like it. You gotta do it.

Yeah, I don't think it has a choice because like I said, to me, it's almost weeding itself out cross-industry regardless of which industry you're in right now. Is that, like I said, that's tech and the software is the tech and the software, the hardware is the hardware, the financial systems are the financial systems, crypto's crypto. It is what it is right now. And so, you know, again, software products are software products, markets are markets, stocks are stocks. Like it is, it's already defined. Now it's up to, okay, but how, how are the leaders— how are the leaders actually leading the humans to the progress? And it's all going to be very virtual. I mean, it's all going to be— it's all going to happen around us, on our— between our computers and our mobile phones. It's— and what we're experiencing around us, it's all going to be very virtual. And I think the leaders will lead— again, good leaders you will see a lot of And the bad leaders will fade off into the distance.

Yeah, I think that, um, there is no choice is 100% true, but there is an opportunity for those folks that have been thinking about it to move the needle in the right direction. We, you know, I love scuba diving and sailing, and I tell people, look, 2-degree movement in the right direction puts you closer to the right path. And exponentially over time, you're going to be way ahead of someone who's not taking advantage. So they'll be gone, right? You got it. Leo Des talks about that all the time, the previous 30 years versus the next 30 years. And he's so true, except in my opinion, we're not talking about 30 years. At the speed we're going, it's way less to make that drastic change. Well, Brittany, I knew this was going to happen. This has been way too fast. We could continue talking for another hour.

We really could.

Which we'll do in the next time we hang out. Uh, but again, thank you for taking the time to join us. If someone wants to get in touch with you to have these conversations in a deeper or professional for consultancy, why not? Or just to get in touch with you, what's the easiest way to reach you?

I would say LinkedIn. LinkedIn is kind of our professional diary right now. If anybody has any questions or like I said, ever wants to help the impactful transformation movement around the globe, always reach out, connect with me, and I look forward to meeting you.

Absolutely. Well, thank you again for sharing your view of the future, your passion for the industry, and for helping the women in this industry get closer to, to be empowered and successful.

So absolutely, onwards and upwards. Let's go.

That's right. Until next time, for our audience to stay informed, stay secure, and we'll see you in the next Checkpoint.