Afni's Brent Deterding on deploying MFA for 10,000 employees and becoming "the Happy CISO"

The Future of Security Operations

In this week’s episode of The Future of Security Operations podcast, Thomas is joined by Brent Deterding. Brent has over 25 years of experience in security, both on the vendor side and now as a security leader. He spent a big part of his career with cloud-native security analytics platform SecureWorks, and he’s currently the CISO of Afni, a global provider of contact center solutions in the U.S., Philippines, and Mexico.

Brent and Thomas discuss:

- His unconventional path to becoming a CISO

- Building a security team with zero attrition

- Removing the burden of stress in incident response

- Strategies for risk prioritization

- Facing off against cybercriminal group Scattered Spider

- Why prioritization and leadership are among security's biggest challenges

- Being dubbed "the happy CISO" after reporting high levels of job satisfaction

- Brent's four security non-negotiables

- The right way to approach CISOs as a security vendor

- Measuring success when you're metrics-averse

- What the SOC will - and should - look like in five years

The Future of Security Operations is brought to you by Tines, the smart, secure workflow builder that powers some of the world’s most important workflows. https://www.tines.com/solutions/security

Where to find Brent Deterding:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brent-deterding/

Afni: https://www.afni.com/

Where to find Thomas Kinsella:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-kinsella/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/thomasksec

Tines: https://www.tines.com/

Resources mentioned:

How to connect with me as a vendor by Brent Deterding on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7146566282128076800/

In this episode:

[01:56] Brent's unconventional path to becoming a CISO

[04:10] Finding the right fit at Afni

[06:09] Separating his identity from his job and removing the burden of stress

[10:22] Why Brent sees risk prioritization and leadership as security's biggest challenges

[13:02] Brent's first steps as CISO at Afni including deploying MFA across 10,000 employees

[16:29] Going up against threat group Scattered Spider

[17:43] Brent's custom risk frameworks

[23:03] Measuring success as someone who's metrics-averse

[26:19] How Brent developed his unique leadership style

[29:13] Supporting his team to do their best work

[31:55] Brent's tips for security vendors

[36:07] Using AI for resilience and protection

[39:20] What security could and should look like in five years

[42:53] Connect with Brent