Cyber CEOs Decoded Podcast Season 2 Episode 2

Marc van Zadelhoff: Welcome to Cyber CEO’s Decoded, where we speak with the CEOs from established security giants, to up and coming disruptors, getting the inside track on what makes a cybersecurity company tick. I’m your host Marc van Zadelhoff, the CEO of Devo and today my guest is Deidre Diamond, a well known entrepreneur in the cyber community, CEO and founder of CyberSN. And CyberSN is a talent matching company that connects cybersecurity professionals to jobs that are a perfect fit. She’s also the founder of Secure Diversity, a not-for-profit organization that specializes in addressing the cybersecurity diversity gap, which we’ve talked about before on this podcast. Deidre, welcome to the show.

Deidre Diamond: Great to be here.

Marc van Zadelhoff: As everybody can probably expect based on that intro, today we’re going to focus a little bit on your background obviously and your story, which I’m excited to get to know. We both are in the New England area, but we’ve only met virtually. So, I’m excited to get to know more about your background, but we will focus on talent and where and how to find it and hire it. And also towards the end, Deidre and I will talk a little bit about Black Hat, where Devo and CyberSN are going to collaborate to help people think about their careers and how to change careers in cybersecurity. So first I do want to step back, because I always just, I love humans, right, and you are one of them and you’re a CEO of a cyber company, and I want to know how you kind of got there. So we’re going to step right back to, where you from? Where did you grow up?

Deidre Diamond: Yeah, I grew up in Orange County, California, specifically Irvine in my high school, college days.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Very nice and today you’re in a cabin in New Hampshire, I think.

Deidre Diamond: Long story now that I’m 52 of how that all happened, so yes my summer, actually, you know, here quite a bit up in the lake region of New Hampshire; it’s a beautiful place.

Marc van Zadelhoff: So growing up out in California, what’s the first meaningful job you had?

Deidre Diamond: So this is fascinating and people never expect it. So, at 15 I was able to get into a program to become a manicurist through the high school program and at 16 I got my license. My step-father was a hairdresser; my mother was a LA City school teacher, commuted. And they have hair salons, so at 16 I was able to start making, and this is in the ’80s, $65 an hour, because that’s what it was for a full set of nails back then. There was no, you know, sort of business of that other than, you know, that, bigger dollars. And so, yeah I did manicuring acrylic nails through high school, college, and my first year in my career. Until my boss was like, what are you doing?

Marc van Zadelhoff: I don’t know, $65 bucks an hour is crazy money and I, you know, whenever I talk about this on the show, I was a caddie. And I would probably tell people I made $65 a round, but the round was four hours, and I was carrying two bags, so that, you got me completely.

Deidre Diamond: So acrylics were harder and it took time and you had to like make it from scratch, you know, like being an artist. But, still, oh yeah, it was bank; I mean I did it for the first year out of college until I gave it up. You know, I think I would allude it to probably my friends that were working as bartenders.

Marc van Zadelhoff: But not at $65 bucks an hour or two hours.

Deidre Diamond: Depending on where, yeah, yeah, depending on where. But, yeah you’re right, I mean I had, trust me I know, I was rolling in the dough thanks to that. And I certainly didn’t want to give it up. I definitely didn’t want to be a manicurist. You know, the interesting piece is this, I’m number seven in my family and my parents never really even talked to me about college, meanwhile my brother’s going to Yale, he was older me, other ones were, you know, working at my other brothers, my dad’s company. And they thought well, you’re just making so much money, when I look back, I say, how come you didn’t encourage me to go to college, like you were making so much money and you, you know, love what you’re doing, I’m like, I loved it because I was making money, not because I want to do it for the rest of my life, thank goodness.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah, wow, I was a baby of only two so, very different. I saw that you graduated as a criminal justice major from Cal State Fullerton. So, any influence in your life that had or that you ended up kind of a little bit fighting cyber crime later?

Deidre Diamond: Totally, totally, I mean, out of college I wasn’t able to figure out how to utilize it. You know, I did social work for a little bit and found that really not my thing because nobody wanted me to hold them accountable. And I couldn’t be in a system where you couldn’t do that. It took me a while to find the cyber community and find my way, but I was going to be a criminal attorney, 2007 when I became the first VP of Sales at Rapid7, it was like finding my home. I’m a protector and smart and driven, you know, and they liked me and so joining forces with you all has been great for me.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah, that was just a mission to it, right, I mean know that when I was at IBM years ago and we were forming this division I had many non-security people coming into IBM security, because we were growing so quickly. We just sort of hiring from within and I remember, particular one long-term IBM colleague just said, he got into the division and just felt there was a mission and a purpose. And like a religion, I remember he said, it was like a religion of cyber. And I guess from criminal justice into cyber it’s a very similar mission.

Deidre Diamond: You know, purpose is one of the best feelings of life. It’s really what keeps us young and strong. So, for me it was great, I mean I love servicing tech in general, but it’s not the– it wasn’t the same as protecting, you know, like protectors is our community.

Marc van Zadelhoff: So, you talked about Rapid7, but just taking a step first, you in 1994, which must have been, because we are basically the same age, your first job out of college you spent quite a bit of time in staffing and recruiting at Stride and Associates. So that’s how you started. Did they recruit on campus and you kind of, and that was in California?

Deidre Diamond: So I did social work for three months, it’s not on my resume because I got let go because I was writing up all the people. So, but anyhow, yes. And then I went to Stride, which is now Motion Recruitment. They’re almost a billion dollar agency. And those founders found me in Orange County and they had wrote up a little ad in the paper that said, can you think on their feet and the agency was small at the time, I was number 18 or 19, three little offices. And that was my first job. And I was with them for 21 years, but 13 years at Motion. And we built it to $89 million in five years of me walking in, it was sort of the end of that last recession that was, you know, coming out and I came in and everybody, everything just took off. And we built 36 offices in five years and 500 recruiters and trained and developed people from scratch and just built a very successful business. Clearly, it’s super successful still today. And it was the baseline of everything I have today.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah. And you must have had like, I mean, at that time I was, myself getting into strategy consulting here in Harvard Square and I remember just, you must have like me had some mentors and people that really, you know, you must look back and be like, wow, those people really showed me the way. Because when you’re, I mean you’re 21, 22 years old, you didn’t figure all this out by yourself, right?

Deidre Diamond: No, they were, those guys and the few people that they had already built for a few years before I got there. And those people are still running Motion today. It’s really powerful story that we all were trained and developed in, which is that you pay it forward, you train and develop people, you care for your people and you give them skills. And they did and they trained me from the minute I walked in, you know, for a solid good, you know, five years of training. And then I took over and ran things and did all of that for others. And consistently have and, you know, as I grew under them and became vice president of Rapid7 and then CEO of another software company they owned, it was, you know, less about teaching and more about working together, you know, and other ways not being operational for them. And so, yeah, there is no way I would be sitting here without that kind of a program. And that’s why I do what I do is, you know, helping organizations figure out how to do that for themselves too, never mind the matching.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Right. Every head of talent and talent acquisition I’ve had, including the one that we have here is a fantastic guy. They all seem to have skill sets fairly close to some of my sales leaders. And you as well pivoted from this role at Stride, or Motion over to Rapid7, but you went into a sales role. So does that confirm my suspicion that those skill sets are a little bit transferable and why did you make that jump into vice-president of sales at Rapid7, 2007 to 2011 you were there?

Deidre Diamond: Yeah, totally. Sales is the same as, you know, like recruiting, getting people to listen to you, getting people to, you know, take your solutions and implement them is sales. And so, when I was asked to become Rapid7’s VP of sale, it was because I was operating at a $19,000 ASP in five days. And I was running machines of doing good business and solving problems for clients with that kind of a turn and it was literally printing cash. This was before the digital era. And everybody’s running full [phonetic] dusk, but anyhow, so I took that model into Rapid7 and we were the first to build that out. And that inside sales model and we were selling up to 250,000 on the phone. So yeah, it was, I left because I wanted opportunity. There was others at the, you know, running things and I wanted more, as we all did and that’s what we did. We would grow other businesses, so we would transfer people between companies. This was my shot to do that and I am so glad I did it.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Wow, that is awesome. And do you still keep up with some of the folks that are there? Cory and the team and?

Deidre Diamond: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Cory came in two years after me to be the first VP of marketing. And that’s, you know, how far back we go. And so we worked side-by-side for the last two years that I was there and he was certainly instrumental with the work that we did with HD Moore and Metasploit coming in. And that was beneficial, yeah, yeah, I absolutely.

Marc van Zadelhoff: So then you got your first, I believe then your first CEO job in 2011 running a percussion software.

Deidre Diamond: Yeah. Yeah, that was hard. That was really hard, it was a restart; I’d never done a restart. The first few company I was number 18 or number 19 and just excelled and grew hundreds of people underneath me. So this was a restart content management, it was hard and learned a ton. And, yet didn’t have a lot of passion for it. You know, after three years and neither did the marketplace, you know, content management has kind of sailed.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah, yeah.

Deidre Diamond: So anyhow, yeah I took a sabbatical and thought about what I wanted to do. I bought a camper, a 42-foot camper that– and hauled something, I didn’t drive it. But, and, you know, drove around the national parks for six months thinking, you know, what do I want to do next and I just, I loved both my recruiting time. I mean, solving those problems for clients, being such a, you know, great agency for clients, and I loved my cyber people and I thought, you know what? I’m going to put these two together. And so, after being out of staffing for ten years, I got back in it, which is a whole ‘nother story of what I discovered and all that, left staffing for ten years and came back nine years ago.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah and I want switch around the order a little bit. Tell us about getting– starting CyberSN. I think, we just start there, because it was around 2014 you started that. Tell us, what was the, but it was like you said, you were in a camper, you’re thinking about life and I took six months off before this job. And those are powerful moments that I encourage other people to take if you can do it. It’s super helpful. But so you started CyberSN. Tell us about it and why you started it?

Deidre Diamond: Yeah. I chewed so much gum on that sabbatical by the way, that I can never chew gum again. Can you imagine, going from talking all day to like not talking. I found myself chewing. Isn’t that fascinating? Chewing the gum and I chewed as much, I can never chew it again. So, yeah, lot of thinking going on while chewing that gum and lot of people just calling too, right? You know, wanting to do things. And so I started talking to people and when I did, I went to Black Hat actually and really realized while I was at Black Hat how many people were talking to me about their pain of finding talent. I was there thinking I would do another software company because I was already doing that. And, you know, not that I didn’t like the staffing, but it just wasn’t on the top of my mind as much as software was. And then I realized, you know what? Nobody’s servicing these people, all my friends are like, tell me how they’re struggling in their roles because, you know, they don’t have people and I thought that’s ridiculous. Let me get into– let me see if I can solve this. So, that’s how it happened. And, you know, lucky enough to have had lots of people that I’ve worked with that have enjoyed me. And wanted to come work with me again. And so, in fact first person, Dawn Saenz is with me today and, you know, a lot of tenure here and certainly, you know, we’re a tech company, we’re not a staffing firm.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Well yeah and you guys I think that the secret sauce is you kind of came out with a taxonomy for both sides of the equation right, for the person and the job. And then are able to do some matching, that’s the core, well I don’t know if the core, but that’s at the core right?

Deidre Diamond: It is at the core because the– well the matching is the same for both– the taxonomy is the same for both the professional and employer. But the noise in the market, the reason job searching is broken is because people have to talk to each other and sometimes talk to each other more than once and talk to multiple people before we even know if it’s a possible fit. And we’re in 2023 and it’s literally a vulnerability in itself how this all is happening. And so, yeah, that’s where the noise is. That’s where the problem is and we built a platform that solves that. Now we’re onto scale and when I mean solve, we offer five people and we do a placement. Like that’s not, you know, that’s it.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah, the ratios are totally different, yeah, exactly.

Deidre Diamond: And it’s not just the taxonomy that we match on or it wouldn’t work it’s. You know, that’s one thing a common language for cybersecurity jobs, that’s one thing. And our taxonomy is respected by nice, it’s in their path works, right, like it’s legit. That’s one thing, you also have to match on location, you have to match on money, you have to match– money is one of the hardest things, right? And so when I say five, I’m talking qualified and interested. Because the money, the location, the job, any degree matching, it’s all been done. And, you know, as professionals, which we all are, we can do that ourselves. You know, meaning, you can self-select a job when all that data is put in front of you. So, you know, part of the problem we’ve all had is we’ve sort of taken that away from when you could look at the newspaper. And know if it was a job that you were qualified and interested in. Nowadays you look at a job, you don’t know if you’re qualified and interested. There’s no data there. We even put money in the print jobs, you know, ads back in the day. You don’t even see any ads today. Everybody’s playing to negotiate.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Well so, so if I take a step back then to maybe this whole where we’re at today with talent and maybe I’ll start on a personal level and I don’t know if it’s the recession but, I get a lot of invitations on LinkedIn as I’m sure you do, but I think it seems like half the invitations now are from people in the town space looking to connect to me because they want to offer me, you know, a very talented person in the Midwest who’s hit last eight quarters and would be perfect for Devo and it just seems like, you know, it seems like they have nothing to do right now or something. Like is there a huge, you know, supply, demand misalignment that’s why they’re all spending their time on LinkedIn? What’s the current state of this market?

Deidre Diamond: Yeah. When a recession hits that means two things. It means companies are going to layoff and/or put jobs on hold, new jobs. Right, like any new planning of jobs. So, when those two things happen, recruiters are going to be hit. What do you need recruiters for if you’re putting jobs on hold and/or laying off. Probably don’t need as many as you have, so they’re always the first to go in that situation. Right now, we’ve got a bit of a double whammy happening, which is myself and lots of people out there have been trying to get rid of recruiters. Meaning replace them with call it AI, call it, you know, job matching platform, call it whatever we want. But that whole, you know, problem is something that people have been looking at for a while. And so I think organizations are playing with those things too. Because it’s not that you can replace– once you have qualified and interested, you still need somebody to manage the qualified and interested to close. The interviews, the feedback, the supporting the problems that come up and solving them during the process, and negotiations, and offers, and all that, you still need what could be called a recruiter in somebody’s firm. Could be called HR, whatever it is, you still need that person, but what you don’t need or want is the matching. Now people– so people are playing with that and figuring that out. But, there’s no question that recruiters were first.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah, got it. Okay.

Deidre Diamond: Yeah.

Marc van Zadelhoff: That explains it.

Deidre Diamond: And the other thing to keep in mind is that in recessions perm goes down. Like perm placements, FTEs, excuse me my slang.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Permanents, got it.

Deidre Diamond: FTE work goes way down and contract work goes up. So that’s also what’s happening is that, anybody that was doing perm and even for my own agency, right, we see the same thing in, you know. So when perm goes down, that hits recruiters that are doing perm placements, FTE placements.

Marc van Zadelhoff: So you have a lot of data based on the scale of your platform. Walk us through just some of the trends and roles that are out there. You know, where’s the biggest supply demand by quantity, by mismatch?

Deidre Diamond: Yeah this is one of my funnest things to talk about these days, because this data is just under a year in my fingertips. So just about a year ago we started hosting and posting all jobs that are posted in the last 45 days and you can find them at CyberSN. And we organized them and matched them to profiles that professionals have. And so it makes an easier experience. They’re not all in our taxonomy yet, but there’s a full plan to make that happen in motion right now. And when they’re in taxonomy, it’ll be even better. But, for now that data gives me so much information. So, of course, I started to see this economic downturn last June. I felt it instantly then and again having been in many recessions sort of know the signs in staffing. And so the data shows exactly what all of us felt when things, you know, sort of came to a halt, when they started to go back up a little, when they dropped again, right? Remember the end last year is when it, you know, October it hit us hard, right? Hit everybody hard. We saw it in June, it hit in October and then Q4 was slow and low, right? And then people came out of January, February everything kind of started to go up again, and then we saw it drop again, right? And so, you know, all of that shows in the job posting data because the postings are 45 days or less. So we see that roles that are compliance oriented are staying steady. They’re not drops. The drops are roles that are less compliance oriented. So, for instance, we see the CISO roles staying steady. And yet you see a lot of disruption, but it’s not– it doesn’t mean that people aren’t looking for that.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Right, they’re back filling.

Deidre Diamond: Yeah and they’re, yeah and they’re moving. You know, a little bit more, maybe because the company wants it versus the professional. At the end of the day, the amount of job postings that are out there are staying steady. They’re not following the drops as the economy did. Whereas other roles are, I think one of the more interesting ones for me is IAM engineers.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah.

Deidre Diamond: Like that’s, the others I really get, like analysts, if you’ve got ten of them you can lose, you know, two of them, you think you can lose two of them and it’ll be okay, or four of them and it’ll be okay, you know. But like IAM, why would that be affected?

Marc van Zadelhoff: Maybe you’re seeing that going up or going down?

Deidre Diamond: Down.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Down.

Deidre Diamond: Like you see it match the economy. So what I’m saying is that those roles that are dropping at the same time the economy is dropped, you know, changing its motion. So, it’s been a yo-yo at those roles but, you know, we know we were in a shortage. The problem is this. The, yes people are, you know, holding, laying off, doing certain things, but we already had a broken system. And so it’s just that now more professionals are having to deal with that broken system than ever. And they’re really seeing how broken it is. And so it feels terrible for them.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Right, yeah.

Deidre Diamond: You know, if job searching and not having success doing it and talking to people that there’s no fit, or, you know, never mind the ghosting and the talking to recruiters that don’t know security and, you know, I mean, it’s terrible.

Marc van Zadelhoff: So, do you, where’s your spidey sense on the second half of the year? Do you think it’s soft landing, do you think it’s– where do you see it?

Deidre Diamond: I think it’s going to be status quo. Like what, I think summer is summer and people are taking a little bit of time to, I mean because they know the rest of this year is going to be do more with less, or at least survive. You know. Meaning it’s not going to be new hires, or getting relief or any of that. I do think that all will come with strategy preparation for that and like we all, you know, everybody’s sort of knows their landscape grader now with time to think and, you know, figure out what’s their next move. So I think that we’ll stay status quo and I think Q4 people are going to start really, you know, either implementing a plan or, you know, getting ready to kick it off in the beginning of the year. Because we’ve been, people are literally, this started last June. People have been holding together less resources; you can’t do that for too long. I think we’re going to see breaches, because you do more with less like.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah. Well, especially if you’re getting rid of those IAM engineers, I mean all joking aside, I think it’s one of the most pervasive attack vectors is the breaching the identity, so anyway. Deidre you have among many distinctions you, you’re a pioneer as a female in the cybersecurity space. And obviously it’s an experience I can share with you, I don’t share experiences with you, but you are rare in that you’ve been a founder, a CEO and highly accomplished in many different roles so. Give us that perspective. Where are we on, you know, inclusiveness and belonging of females? Where was it when you entered and where is it now? And how has it impacted your trajectory?

Deidre Diamond: Yeah, this is a real important conversation for me. It was, you know, I think I can speak for a lot of folks my age where we didn’t really realize, you know, that there was more of a problem than we knew. For me, growing up in my family I was treated equal. Of course, running into those guys that I worked for, for 21 years it really was an equal playing field. And I competed against men and we, vice versa and we were pretty much 50/50 all the time. Like, so I didn’t really get it until I founded CyberSN and people are like, well how did you do that? And I’m like, what do you mean? What? I’m coming, you know, I’m also from Irvine, you know, it’s like you didn’t see that. And so, that made me think and I realized, I started looking at the numbers, I was horrified. And so, where are we today? We’ve got a lot work to do. I’m not going to pretend that the numbers are somehow great; they’re not. And I say pretend because I think that people want to think that things are better and I want people to think we’ve got a lot of work to do. Because I get the phone calls, my firms get the phone calls; I’m the Founder of Secure Diversity. People are struggling; women are struggling to get the support. That being said, there’s a lot of women out there that have taken these mentorship roles, men too, like programs that are out there. Weasis, diversity, data security, cyberjutsu, like the list goes on. Sorry that, you know, we don’t have time to list everybody, but my point is there’s programs, men are involved, so it’s happening but it just, it’s just now getting, you know, scale enough to make a difference. Like we’re just entering that.

Marc van Zadelhoff: And as a percentage, do you know off the top of your head a percentage representation now of females in the cyber space?

Deidre Diamond: Problem is like you can’t just put the percentage, it’s like of what roles, you know.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Right.

Deidre Diamond: You know. And what is considered cybersecurity, like there’s 45 job functions. And so, in leadership it’s still less than 10%. Yeah, it’s, right? And nothing matters to me other than that because we won’t move the needle if we don’t have more people, more women at the top showing, you know, being role models, working with men, showing how it all can be done for men and for women. It’s actually, I started a SANS cohort last year, putting women in executive SANS programs because that’s where I see the bottleneck is right now. So, we’re going to nail it all of us together, it’s taking a hell of a lot longer than I want. And I do think that we need more men, we’re asking now to be co-conspiracors, not —

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah.

Deidre Diamond: — allies. Like, to really stand up where you see the inequality and other than that we’re good to go, you know.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah. My mom was telling a story of when she was, different space, an executive admin, but it was only in the ’70s and, you know, she was telling the common to get cat called as she was walking across the work floor, right, that was a reminder to me of how recent those days were.

Deidre Diamond: Well, you know, I was just speaking with a CEO of another company who was sharing that her daughter’s now just got her first job outside of, you know, college in tech. It’s not the cat call, you know, in the room, it’s the text, it’s the email, it’s still going on.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Deidre Diamond: She’s like, I thought it was over, I didn’t even think it could, so that’s what I’m saying, like.

Marc van Zadelhoff: But I think that’s my question for you is that, one is, obviously we’re starting with a, you know, we’re behind on the pool of females coming into and in. Versus other tech, because I had this at IBM where our IBM security division, we made a lot of strides on bringing in women and other, you know, diverse populations over the time I was there. But it was still generally lagging behind other divisions of IBM in other sectors of IT. So you can only see a microcosm within IBM that cyber was just, it was harder, it was behind so. One is the pool, but two it’s the environment once you get in. So when, do you think, you know, we got to work on the pool, got to work on the pool up to the leaders. But do you think it is less friendly? I mean, texting and, you know, women getting hit on at work through text and whatever, is that worse in cyber or is that just across all IT?

Deidre Diamond: I think it’s the world, I wish I could say it is this technology and, yeah, and I love the sincerity of the question. It is mind boggling, right, so when you think about it it’s like, how could it be and like you want to pigeonhole it to something. It’s really society even the professional society. You know, I found myself saying to people lately it’s like, didn’t we all go from the playground to work, you know what I mean? Like it’s like if it, meaning, it’s like if it happened there it’s happening other places, it’s happening all around us, it’s amazing and we don’t even know because who wants to say anything? So that’s the challenge and that’s why I’m saying the co-conspiracy call is like, hey, you need men to say something when they see it, because we need that support.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah, the allyship.

Deidre Diamond: Secure Diversity I founded, you know, not too long after people asking me how’d you do it, like what’s the secret? And then I realized that I represent under the 1%, not just founding, you know, CEO of a tech company, but self-funded. You know, used my money from being in this business and playing the game that brings in the big money. And so that’s super rare, right, stock option, money in tech, making it work, right, all that stuff; never mind the big incomes. And there’s two things I’m really proud of, one is the Day Of Shecurity event, the conference, excuse me, that we hold, it’s been five years now. It’s both digital and in-person. You know, many countries, not just the US, it’s been free, it’s 1,100 women, you know, on a regular basis digitally. So, a very powerful way to give the stage to women without pay-for-play sponsorship and then also show these jobs and do workshops for other women, as well as women that want to come in, so. And certainly, you know, under-representative genders now. So, super proud of that, the SANS cohort and just supporting the community in general.

Marc van Zadelhoff: That’s awesome, that’s awesome. Well I want to draw to a close, keep going on forever but, Devo and CyberSN at Black Hat. So, we’re doing some things together at the booth, some career counseling, I thought you could give folks a quick overview of that and then we’ll draw this to a close.

Deidre Diamond: Totally. Well, brilliant idea, this Knowledge Bar. You know, like people want to talk shop, people want to get better at what they’re doing and going to these conferences and having that offered at your booth is wonderful. So we’ve got Knowledge Bar, we’ve got SMEs in the space of careers of SOC analysts and we’ve got a book. We’ve got lots of things that, Devo has worked really hard, as well as CyberSN to put together and it’s going to be awesome.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Yeah so we have a career guide and we have consultations for folks, one-on-one career consultations. Are you doing some of those, or your team members?

Deidre Diamond: So I’m committed to a couple hours, I’m locked up in a Mandalay Bay suite basically Wednesday and Thursday. But I set aside two hours, otherwise I’ve got my managing directors that are SMEs, been with me minimally six years, the rest are probably eight or nine. So, yeah, all the players are in town. And so we’re going to be there.

Marc van Zadelhoff: And for the SOC career guide you wrote a chapter, what was your chapter about?

Deidre Diamond: So my chapter was a lot about, you know, emotional intelligence skills and communication skills, which is just huge for any role in business that really to excel and grow and develop, we must own those skills.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Well, Deidre you mentioned the word purpose in the beginning, we didn’t spend a lot of time on it, but I think it’s a word that I’m passionate about. Because I think it’s, if you have it then you keep yourself out of trouble as my mom would say. You seem to have an amazing purpose and role here in the cyber space, so thanks for everything you’re doing. Thanks for all the tips and walking us through your background and really excited to collaborate with you at Black Hat. So thanks for coming on the podcast.

Deidre Diamond: Ditto, thanks for the interest and taking the time as well Marc, really appreciate you and Devo.

Marc van Zadelhoff: Cool and thanks to our audience for listening and be sure to tune in for the next episode of Cyber CEOs Decoded. Thanks very much, take care.