In this episode, Dr. Rebecca Wynn sits down with Jane Frankland, expert in cyber leadership and diversity of background and experience, to discuss what’s missing in cybersecurity leadership today. They explore the challenges CISOs face in gaining influence, the struggle for a seat at the decision-making table, and the importance of building trust and long-term partnerships. Jane also shares insights on burnout and why aligning organizational values with actions is essential for lasting change.
Guest: Jane Frankland, Founder & CEO, KnewStart
Website: https://jane-frankland.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaneAFrankland/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JaneFrankland
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/JaneFranklandTV
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janefrankland
Host: Dr. Rebecca Wynn
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/rebecca-wynn
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Episode Description
In this episode of Soulful CXO, host Dr. Rebecca Wynn welcomes Jane Frankland, a leader in cybersecurity known for her expertise in leadership and promoting diversity of background and experience. They discuss the persistent challenges CISOs face in securing a seat at the leadership table and how effective communication and trust-building are key to lasting partnerships. Jane shares her insights on industry burnout, the need for leadership to align values with actions, and why fostering diverse perspectives helps cybersecurity teams navigate complex challenges.
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Resources
Roadmap for Assessing and Selecting Generative AI
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/roadmap-assessing-selecting-generative-ai-vendors-dr-rebecca-smc1c
Gartner Predicts Nearly Half of Cybersecurity Leaders Will Change Jobs by 2025
ISC2 Research Finds Some Progress, But More Needs to be Done to Support Women in Cybersecurity
https://www.isc2.org/insights/2024/04/women-in-cyber?queryID=f2012c7bc2d01bc0c30789b3ca6a640f
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Cybersecurity Leadership: The Ongoing Struggle for a Seat at the Table | A Conversation with Jane Frankland | The Soulful CXO Podcast with Dr. Rebecca Wynn
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Soulful CXO. I am your host, Dr. Rebecca Wynn. We are pleased to have with us Jane Frankland. .
She is a popular keynote speaker, board advisor, university guest lecturer, and she regularly shares her expertise and iconic world media outlets. She believes the world will only become safer, happier, and more prosperous when more women are in male dominated industries.
it's why she authored her bestselling book IN Security. Wikipedia and LinkedIn recognize her as a Top Voice and UNESCO has called her a trailblazing woman in technology. She is following her passion to make women in cyber security a standard, not an exception. Jane, it's great to see you again.
Welcome to the show.
Jane Frankland: Amazing. Thank you, Rebecca. I'm so happy to be here.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: Can you explain how you started out? when you first went to university, technology wasn't even on the radar how did that journey go?
Jane Frankland: Yeah, that's absolutely right. I was following my passion [00:01:00] which was art and design.
I have a degree in woven textile design. And, so what happened to me was my parents always said do what you love. Do what you're good at. And I was very arty. So that's what I chose to do and was doing really well as a designer.
Continued working as a designer for a little while, and got an agent selling work around the world I was showing in some amazing galleries but the money wasn't the money wasn't.
really coming in so for me, I was a single parent and I needed to make a decision. I needed to make a change and get a proper job.
I went straight into building a business in technology and specializing in security, information security, IT security, which is what it was called then. But that's really how how my career and my entry into cybersecurity happens.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: How did [00:02:00] you choose technology?
What leads you on that journey? Because there's a lot of different fields out there.
Jane Frankland: It was actually love. I got, a new boyfriend and found love he was in technology and said to me after I got this sales job I was doing really well I never saw myself as a salesperson because I'm an introvert and it was the last thing that I wanted to do.
But I didn't recognize I had been selling my artwork when I was tripping around the galleries saying you show my work that was selling. And when I did various other things in order to go in holiday with a boyfriend that was still selling. So I was good at solving problems and could sell.
when I met this, guy, he was in, in tech, he was director at a company, but he wanted to start a new company. he said shall we do this? I was looking for a new challenge. that's how it happened and how I said yes
I didn't know anything about technology. I would actually say I [00:03:00] was certainly at that time mega luddite I had all the tech that was handed down to me by, by my brother. I got into technology and the two areas that interested me were AI, which was far too new in 1997.
That was too new. the other was security and security was emerging security was feasible, you could build a business with security, or you certainly could lead with that in those days. You That's how I ended up doing what I do.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: Amazing. Cause if you think back there the late 1990s and 2000, cybersecurity is not the cybersecurity of 2023.
So how did you go about even starting to learn about a field that was very, young during that period
Jane Frankland: I really just did what I'd always done. I learned how to communicate. I learned the language some of the [00:04:00] terms and I served. I never pretended to be something I wasn't.
I listened well. I knew how to sell in a consultative manner. I knew what our companies. Strengths were, and I knew the vision that we had for the company. So I sold on that great customer service and what the client wanted.
I knew our market and what our clients wanted. So I just went out to serve. I didn't need to be technical. What I did need to do was to go and ask questions and get answers for my clients. And to be able to, make sure that they were getting a really high level of service because that's what my penetration testing company was all about we were highly flexible.
We were so good at what we did. And, for me, that's just how, I dealt with that.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: And what you brought up a few times [00:05:00] now is about really listening to the customer and trying to meet those needs.
How should we take more responsibility as cyber leaders? To do a better job, in getting those great partnerships that can be with us 3 years, 5 years and 7 years down the road versus 1 and done every year .
Jane Frankland: Yeah. It's got to be built on relationships, hasn't it? So it's the biggest kind of, because for me it, is all about the long term. It's not about the short term. And it is about building relationships.
, It's about knowing exactly what you want How can I be of service to you and how can I be of service to myself as well? So say if I was working with a client it was. I was evaluating them. Do I actually want to work with them as well as they were evaluating me?
And I think when it comes to vendors it has to be the same thing. It's got to be a win You've got to [00:06:00] be able to get the service that you require from that, vendor. And you've got to have, you've got to be in partnership with them. And I do see it in that way, it is about being in partnership and getting a win for, both parties.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: Yeah, for me, it's similar almost when you're interviewing a company, right? Finding out about the company, finding out about the roadmap, finding about what their strengths and their weaknesses are, and are they going to be adding value to you? Because that's what you need. And the same with when you're going ahead and you're looking for vendors for your company, what value you're going to get.
Add, are they adding into their company and are they going to be there for long term? I see them very close. Is that how you view them too? I tell people, I think they're along the same streams and people are failing to, do that on both ends, vendor management as well as career management.
Jane Frankland: Yeah. Trust comes into it,
do I trust [00:07:00] this company? Do I trust this salesperson and, team No trust is, everything. when I dealt with vendors through my consultancy, my, my first company in security and certainly as a pentesting company, a lot of those partnerships fell through due to trust.
Which was disappointing. And now, nowadays, when I'm working with vendors I can do so from an influencer perspective. So I want to be really clear on what that company does. What are their values? Do I believe them?
Do they have integrity? I need to make sure that their values align with mine. To really care about who they're serving and to deliver top notch service and to show integrity and to be trusted.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: I look at their churn ratio for security privacy or compliance teams. I see how quickly the executives are turning over. I think people [00:08:00] forget about that. It's not only about the product, is that company still going to be in business tomorrow the next day, or are they looking to be sold to another company?
so what areas do you look at during vendor management versus is it just going to be I need features benefits? Doesn't meet my dollar cost when we talk about those other intrinsic things. What should our audience be looking for?
Jane Frankland: They've got to look at those things. But the other thing that I naturally look at, I really want to see what their diversity because that's just so important to me.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: And another way is to look at what they're posting, like on LinkedIn, what things along those lines do they think is really important to them?
I think you can use LinkedIn or other posts and articles. Cause I found some companies I'm like, what you say to me in the sales meeting and what you're posting as a company does not line up and it doesn't line up with who we're presenting ourself as a company. I've had to drop those vendors.
Have you seen that as well too?
Jane Frankland: [00:09:00] Yeah, absolutely. It's like what you get often there's an awful lot of virtue signaling So there's nothing that beats asking around. So when it comes to your peers how have you found them? What's the quality of the service like?
What's the team like? Do they actually practice what they preach? So yeah, I always ask around.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: You mentioned about looking at diversity of the company and really the leadership as well too. There's some companies who think if you are not 40, you're not going to be hired, or if you don't have a college degree, we're not even going to look about how many years you've really put into the School of Hard Knocks and self education.
Jane Frankland: Yeah, absolutely. I'm not seeing it improve.
I'm, tired of us being in the same situation that we were when, I wrote my book and that was, I wrote that book in 2016, published in 2017. I'm, very frustrated because I don't see [00:10:00] much change I am seeing women being more visible, which is great.
That's fantastic. I am seeing them speaking out more. I'm seeing them writing more. So I'm seeing them doing more and being more visible, which is great for their careers, but I'm not seeing companies do anything at all.
If they are actually doing something, it will be getting a woman in to speak, and usually they're asking that woman to come in and speak for free,
the changes we need aren't happening, because other things are more important to them. most of the leaders are guys, and they are busy doing other things, and they're not all women, so they just, even when they've got daughters, and even when they believe in it, they don't, they can't ever know what it feels like to be a woman. Other priorities are just taking preference for them. And I don't blame them for that at all because the situation for us in cyber security is [00:11:00] really tough at the moment. It's so tough. The levels of burnout are absolutely huge.
I spoke to someone the other day, he was working his weekend, he was going to be have, he was going to have to travel on, Sunday. He'd had a heart attack earlier in the year. The company he was working at had hiring freezers. He was working in a small team, they'd lost four people, they couldn't recruit and they'd won more business.
So, so his working manor, that the hours were huge. And there was no solution. It's really tough out there
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: What do you think the solution is for burnout? we keep getting shifted left trying to become chief as part of the suite, then suite light.
And now we're pretty much allowed places where suite non existence. And they really want a security engineer or network engineer, or even desktop engineer to be a CISO. [00:12:00] And I find that one, I think more breaches are going to happen to that, but of course, they're going to get burned out. And then, like you said, If you end up having a seasoned CISO come in, then you find out I joined a job on time and then immediately they said we just let 17 of your people go and say what I didn't have those skill sets.
And then I had to pick up the slack. I think It's we're not getting positioned right as a viable department / and being critical it's going back to almost like 2015, all of a sudden, and attitudes.
Jane Frankland: It's almost like we've got the title, but
We don't have.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: Clout.
Jane Frankland: Yeah, absolutely. We don't. We're not getting that seat at the table. Which affects our jobs, doesn't it? Because those decisions are being made without us being there to influence anything. . And then we have to execute, but yeah, so it's really tough for C levels, for CISOs right now.
And [00:13:00] the only, way I think for change to occur is by CISOs actually doing two things. They can step up and they can learn to communicate more effectively And the other thing that they can do is push back. It's that not tolerating, which a lot of them are doing.
A lot of them are leaving. I read a piece from Gartner and it said 25 percent of CSOs would be leaving the industry in the next two years. Over 50% would be changing jobs
That didn't surprise me because the changing of jobs is consistent. they don't stay in a job very long
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: I think 25 is way understated, especially from all the interviews I've conducted this year is probably more around 43%.
And I think part of the reason for that is I call it The Great Bait and Switch. You go through the, interviews, speak with all the [00:14:00] leaders, get all the support.
Then you come in and then you're finding out that now they want you to be a security engineer or network engineer, or we want you to do the firewall. I'm not saying that you can't help out at points, but you're finding out that what you were thought you're going to be able to do strategically and tactically and being able to do hiring and stuff like that.
It's not there. And. That's, I think, reason why a lot of people are leaving too. We're finding that over and over again.. And I think part of the reason is when you look at SOC 2 and PCI and all stuff, they say, thou must have a person called CISO, but they're not defining that role.
And if they would start defining that role that would give us more teeth. How do you feel about that? About these regulations, stuff like that, supporting us. So then we're not the water down.
Jane Frankland: Absolutely. anything that can help us right now. We need help. support because we're not getting it So I think it's time to revolt.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: I wish we could strike [00:15:00] can we have a sisso strike? I don't want anybody's data to be breached but in concept.
Jane Frankland: I wish we had a union. A trade union where we had a body that could lobby for us because we really need it.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: I think the one thing that we can do and I do is. I walk away from a bad situation. I do go ahead and say no. When I find out that there is a bait and switch there is a company out there who will value you.
being able to say no, there is a better opportunity out there. if more people say no to the cut down in the industry, that would help But some argue I do need the paycheck.
Jane Frankland: Absolutely. that's why money, management comes in,
scribble a bit away for a rainy day for when you need it, because then it gives you options. The other thing that I see is. People who want to move into that CISO role, and they're prepared to take one of those lousy CISO jobs just to get the title, and then they'll [00:16:00] do it and then use it as a hopping stone to the next hopefully better CISO role.
it's tricky because aspiring CISOs might be prepared to do that and take it, which doesn't help existing CISOs who are not prepared to take that job with with the responsibilities and the way that it's, laid out. So it's difficult and I can't see how that, I can't see how that can change actually.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: More breaches are going to happen because they're hiring less experienced people. It's better to go ahead and hire a really experienced person than maybe bring a person who has the heart and soul and the background and stuff like that to be, to maybe be a deputy and train up.
Jane Frankland: Yeah quite frankly, I can't understand anyone wanting to be a CISO.
To me, it's like, why would you want to be a CISO? Oh my God, that's a tough gig. Talk about pressure. but some people, do and we need [00:17:00] them. go for it. it's, a hell of a job right now.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: So our time, unfortunately, is running short.
Jane, thank you for being on the show.
Jane Frankland: Thank you, Rebecca.