What security leaders said, week 2

January 5, 2026 to January 11, 2026 · 2 entries from 2 leaders

Grouped by topic: a week needs at least three entries before we draw up themes. Every person here is someone our record names as the current holder of a top security seat; role and company come from our record.

Other subjects

2 entries on other subjects in security leadership.

January 7, 2026· Podcast appearance, CyberWire Daily
Deepen Desai, EVP, Chief Security Officer at Zscaler
On cyberattacks targeting the automotive industry
Cyberattack in the fast lane.
Listen at CyberWire Daily ↗
January 6, 2026· Podcast appearance, CISO Series Podcast
Leslie Nielsen, Chief Information Security Officer at Mimecast
On automation amplifying security scaling mistakes
Imagine Scaling Mistakes 5x Faster. Thank You, Automation! (LIVE in NY)
Our take
The CISO of Mimecast, in the seat since September and previously SVP and CISO at Klaviyo, joined a live CISO Series Podcast recording in New York. The episode covers automating dysfunction, leading without dominating, unglamorous wins and code without comprehension. We read the first topic as the one that matters most to programmes this year: automation does not repair a process, it repeats it at speed, so a muddled triage queue or a vague ownership model simply produces bad outcomes faster and in greater volume. Our advice is to document the manual workflow, name its owner and set a measure of what good looks like before any tooling is added, and to keep a human checkpoint on steps that touch access or customer data until the output has earned trust. Code without comprehension deserves the same discipline now that generated code reaches production quickly, because a team that cannot explain what shipped cannot defend or patch it. Reviewers should be able to state what a change does and why, not merely that tests passed. The unglamorous wins theme is a useful counterweight, since boring fixes such as asset inventory and clean offboarding usually pay back more than a new platform, and they are the processes worth getting right before anything is automated. Watch whether boards begin asking for the process behind an automation rather than the headline gain from it.
Listen at CISO Series Podcast ↗