Achieving Security Nirvana with Gary Harbison VP, Global CISO at Bayer

This episode features an interview with Gary Harbison VP, Global CISO at Bayer. Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the Life Science fields of healthcare and agriculture with a market cap of $53.5B. Gary has over 19 years of experience in the Information Security domain (21 years of overall IT experience) that includes roles at multiple global fortune 500 companies, as well as public sector experience with the US Department of Defense.

On this episode, Gary delves into where he thinks the largest gaps in security are today, what he believes will be a major issue in the future that nobody is currently aware of, and why he analogizes security leaders to car brakes. 

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“I would say that more than anything, I think people look at security as we exist to stop things. And while yes, we do want to stop attacks from happening and such, but in much the same way that having brakes on a car enables you to go faster, having a good security team that is able to assess and balance risk and bring forward solutions that allow you to take the right risks in a responsible way, can actually help the company move faster and help achieve business goals. So looking at it as we’re here to say no, or to stop things, we’re actually here to help figure out a way to say yes in a responsible way, and that can actually help the business move faster.” — Gary Harbison

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Episode Timestamps:

*(3:17) - How Gary got into security 

*(4:42) - Gary’s current role at Bayer

*(5:40) - Segment: Taboo Topics

*(5:40) - What outsiders get wrong about security

*(7:40) - The fasting growing risk in security today 

*(9:15) - How to do drive real-time risk assessment

*(9:28) - Segment: Deep Dive

*(28:52) - How Gary keeps up with security and gets better at his job

*(31:27) - What Gary would tell his younger CSO-self

*(33:30) - Segment: The Future

*(33:43) - What nobody is talking about right now that will be a major issue in the future

*(35:22) - What CSOs need to invest in for the future

*(36:49) - Segments: Quick Hits

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Links

Connect with Gary Harbison on LinkedIn

Jason Clark’s LinkedIn

www.netskope.com