How (and Why) CISOs Evaluate Vendors Before Taking Any First Meeting

When a CISO starts evaluating a new product, they start evaluating the people they’re going to work with and only then evaluate the vendor from a technological perspective.

Because at the end of the day they do business with people, not just with products.

Building brand awareness and trust is very important. Why would you give access to your financial accounts if there’s no trust?

Brutally honest insights from May Brooks, CISO, Founder and Chairwoman of the Board of Helena Cybersecurity Awareness.

In this episode, Dani Woolf had a conversation with May about her challenges, goals, what vendors do that piss her off, and the alternatives.

We also covered:

• What May does from a day-to-day basis as a cybersecurity expert and what’s her ultimate goal.
  
• What is May’s one bleeding neck challenge right now as the deputy CISO?
  
• What is the ultimate goal May’s trying to achieve as a security practitioner?
  
• What are ways that May evaluates people within a potential vendor?
  
• What are differences or anomalies salespeople and marketers can learn from in order to stand out in CISOs’ eyes.
  
• How would a salesperson or marketer understand a CISO’s priorities best? What would be the way to extract that data not under an NDA?
  
• Why is building brand awareness and trust so important in cybersecurity?
  
• Cardinal rules security vendors, marketers, and sales teams are breaking these days. 

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