{"id":143270,"date":"2022-10-25T10:58:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T14:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/blog\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T20:18:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T00:18:41","slug":"ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/fr\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/","title":{"rendered":"EP 14 – Humanizing Cybersecurity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being a Chief Information Security Officer is a tough job. CISOs are on the front lines, protecting against the unknown day after day, week after week. It’s no wonder mental health issues such as depression and anxiety are surging in our industry. There are a lot of things that need to change, but on a positive note, this once-taboo subject is starting to get the attention it so desperately deserves. This is in part thanks to security leaders like Kirsten Davies, CISO at Unilever, stepping forward. On today\u2019s episode, host David Puner talks with Davies about some of her passions, including the humanization of the teams in our cybersecurity community. She’s equally passionate about being an innovative cyber protector and finding solutions to the multitude of challenges high-level CISOs face on a daily basis. The timing of the episode is apropos because October is both Cybersecurity Awareness Month and Depression and Mental Health Awareness and Screening Month. Time to elevate this critical conversation, advocate against stigma, and bring awareness to the various resources available to those who need them.<\/p>\n

[00:00:00.120] – David Puner
\nYou’re listening to the Trust Issues podcast. I’m David Puner, a senior editorial manager at CyberArk, a
\nglobal leader in identity security.
\n[00:00:23.650] – David Puner
\nIt may go without saying, but I’ll say it. Being a chief information security officer, CISO, is a tough job.
\nHigh-profile tough. CISOs are on the frontlines protecting against the TBD unknown, day after day,
\nweek after week, month after month. Threats are relentless. Work is unpredictable. Staff shortages
\ncontinue to fuel a vicious cycle of burnout. On top of it all, the buck stops with the CISO. When things
\ngo wrong, they’re positioned as being the throat to choke, as Forbes recently put it. It’s no wonder
\nmental health issues such as depression and anxiety are surging in our industry.
\n[00:01:03.130] – David Puner
\nThere’s a lot of things that need to change, but fortunately, this once-taboo subject is starting to get
\nthe attention it so desperately deserves thanks to security leaders who are stepping forward. Their
\npersonal stories help humanize the cybersecurity team. They acknowledge that despite the sleepless
\nnights and heroic efforts, protectors of digital space are indeed human. As the stakes continuously
\ngrow higher, so too does the need for true support, empathy, and action.
\n[00:01:34.940] – David Puner
\nThis October is not only Cybersecurity Awareness Month, but also National Depression and Mental
\nHealth Screening Month, a time to elevate this critical conversation, advocate against stigma, and
\nbring awareness to the various resources available to those who need them. I’m honored today to
\nhost Trust Issues alongside our guest, Kirsten Davies, who’s the CISO for Unilever and passionate
\nabout humanizing the teams in our cybersecurity community.
\n[00:02:00.860] – David Puner
\nUnilever is, of course, a huge company with hundreds of brands and products beneath its umbrella.
\nTo try to wrap your head around the potential scope of being its CISO is daunting, to say the least. As
\nKirsten tells it, the responsibility and accountability in the CISO role are enormous, and burnout and
\nstress are at a crisis level. She feels this acutely. We get into that and lots of other things that are on
\nthe mind of a big-time CISO with the same number of hours and minutes in her day that we all have.
\n[00:02:31.100] – David Puner
\nIt was great to get the opportunity to talk with Kirsten. Her candor is admirable and her shoes are
\nlarge. Here’s our conversation.
\n[00:02:53.100] – David Puner
\nYou are the CISO for Unilever, which is a massive global consumer packaged goods company with
\nover 400 consumer goods brands and 148,000 employees. Some of the brands I’m sure people are
\nfamiliar with. Overly familiar with Hellmann’s, Ben & Jerry’s, Dove, Seventh Generation, Vaseline. There
\nare so many. To dive in and just start out broad, what does your role as Unilever CISO encompass,
\nand what’s a typical day look like for you if there is such a thing?
\n[00:03:28.920] – Kirsten Davies
\nThat’s a great question. I wonder if you can ask any CISO what their typical day is. It varies. I think it’s
\none of the things that we love about the work is that there are new challenges that emerge every day.
\nGreat company. We produce 50% of the world’s ice cream. That’s a heck of a lot of smiles. I’m telling
\nyou, that’s a heck of a lot of smiles all around the world. The remit for the program is end-to-end
\ncybersecurity risk for the organization. That includes the typical that you would expect. It’s the
\nmanaged technology estate, the managed IT estate as it used to be known, but it goes much further
\nthan that as well. We see risk in a very broad, holistic way at Unilever. So it’s everything from the
\nregulatory and compliance challenges that we have globally from our footprints in over 180 countries
\nglobally to the operational resilience of things like our core network, yes, but also our factories,
\ndistribution centers, R&D, all of that kind of a thing.
\n[00:04:34.620] – Kirsten Davies
\nWe also look at information protection and information security as one would expect that we would.
\nWe look at the security and resilience of all of our technology touchpoints, all of our digital
\ninteractions from our factories to our technology, traditional IT as well. Then finally, probably
\nsomething that we’ll double-click into a little bit more in a bit is the culture. It’s the capability, yes, of
\nmy team, of the cybersecurity team, the core team itself, but also the security mindset of the
\norganization because that is critical from an enterprise cybersecurity risk perspective that the culture
\nembraces cybersecurity, cyber safety as part of their responsibilities.
\n[00:05:25.590] – David Puner
\nHow big is your team? You’ve been with the company now for about a year or so. How have things
\nchanged since you’ve arrived?
\n[00:05:35.790] – Kirsten Davies
\nYeah, I sure have. I actually just celebrated my one-year anniversary, I think it was a week ago.
\n[00:05:40.440] – David Puner
\nCongratulations.
\n[00:05:41.430] – Kirsten Davies
\nThank you. Yes. Made it. It’s been such a unique challenge coming out of COVID, the lockdownlockdown
\nglobally of COVID into this new emerging world of how do we do these things in hybrid
\nmode. How do we approach cybersecurity and how do we do business, right? There’s a lot of
\ncompanies that are still figuring this out. While I don’t publish the numbers of my team and have
\nnever done so, I’d say that it’s really an interesting conversation to have to say what are the things that
\nwe’re focused on and what has changed since I’ve been on board.
\n[00:06:25.800] – Kirsten Davies
\nDue credit and respect to my predecessors in this role. Nobody has an easy job as a CISO these days.
\nNo one does. At no organization is this job easy. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, as it were,
\nthat have been evolving and managing and elevating the security posture of this organization. I’ve
\npicked up a bit where some of them have left off and some really great work that they were able to
\naccomplish in their tenures here.
\n[00:07:03.000] – Kirsten Davies
\nWe’re evolving right now. I’m reorganizing the team to reflect the broader remit that we have now that
\nI’m on board to reflect the rise of the CISO, as we call it, which is essentially I don’t sit inside of IT. My
\nteam sits alongside of IT. We sit alongside supply chain, we sit alongside the data office, and we work
\nand partner and influence and solution engineer alongside all of these teams. There’s been a
\nfundamental shift, I would say, during my tenure here, and that has matched, as it should, the shift in
\nour organization, too.
\n[00:07:48.780] – Kirsten Davies
\nIt’s public knowledge that we’re undergoing a massive transition at Unilever, where we have the focus
\nof five, the power of one, focus of five being the five different business groups that we have that are
\nend-to-end global. Ice cream being one of them, right? Health and well-being and nutrition, things like
\nthat. We’ve we’ve necessarily needed to not only respond to that change but also partner in and
\nenable that change for Unilever to ensure the success of our business colleagues and us as a whole
\nas Unilever.
\n[00:08:21.890] – David Puner
\nOrganizational change, that’s something that isn’t necessarily new to you. You’ve worked in some
\nother companies that people out there may have heard of like Estee Lauder, Barclays, Hewlett-
\nPackard, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte. Big names, long list. How is organizational change something
\nthat’s been a hallmark to your career and what have you learned along the way that you’re putting into
\nplace now?
\n[00:08:48.140] – Kirsten Davies
\nI read an amazing series of books quite some time ago, Built to Last, and the subsequent book to that
\nwas Built to Change. What’s happened, and I’m sure you’ve seen this and your audience has seen this
\nover time, is that companies who have designed themselves for steadfastness and, quote-unquote,
\n\u00ab\u00a0security\u00a0\u00bb or foundational stability in the market, aka Kodak, have been left behind in a lot of the
\nchanges that we have seen globally speaking, from the rapid pace of technology innovation to rapid
\ndigitization of everything. Everything is connected now, right? To changing consumer habits and
\nbuying patterns, to changes in the workforce where we have five generations in the workforce right
\nnow. First time in history that that’s ever happened short of being in small ma and pa companies,
\nright? And so the hallmark of my career has been change. I am a change manager. I’m a change
\ninstigator, as it were, and I’m a change influencer.
\n[00:09:59.990] – Kirsten Davies
\nI think that we constantly, especially in the cybersecurity industry, but also in business, of course, but
\nwe’re speaking today about cybersecurity, we need to be evolving. Why? The threats are evolving. The
\nthreat actors are evolving. The technology that they’re using to attack is evolving. The velocity and the
\nrapid pace with which the change has come on the attackers’ side needs to be met with a dynamic
\nworkforce, a dynamic technical capability, and a dynamic culture in order for us to even just respond
\nin kind, let alone get ahead of these things.
\n[00:10:42.290] – Kirsten Davies
\nThat’s been part of it, too. We want to have these wonderful, challenging environments for our teams
\nbecause people get bored, right? Nobody wants to stare at a screen anymore and look for alerts.
\nPeople just get bored and there’s fatigue in all of this, and so we need to be shifting and really just
\ninserting dynamism into our organization, into the processes that are there in order to just inject this
\nability to be agile and to innovate all of the time.
\n[00:11:18.080] – David Puner
\nDo you think that it’s possible to be a successful CISO if you’re not a change instigator? Really like
\nthat term, by the way.
\n[00:11:26.720] – Kirsten Davies
\nWell, I’m not going to make a commentary on my colleagues for that. I think for me to be a successful
\nCISO, I need to be able to embrace change very closely. Often, as has been the hallmark of my career,
\nI’ve been brought in to change things for whatever reason.
\n[00:11:47.690] – Kirsten Davies
\nWe were transforming the Global Information Security Program at Siemens, 335,000 employees,
\ndouble that in business partner connections at the time, right? Enormous ask. There were 26 people
\nthat had the title of CISO across Siemens when I came on board and was supporting and helping and
\nleading and serving that organization.
\n[00:12:06.620] – Kirsten Davies
\nLikewise, when I went to Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, they were right in the middle of the split. The
\nlargest business split in the history of business at the time was the HPE-HPI split, right? Having
\nstayed on the HPE side, which is what I was hired to come in and do, we were needing to restrategize.
\nWhat did cybersecurity look like for the enterprise side, being a service delivery partner to Inc as it
\nwas standing up for the printers and personal devices?
\n[00:12:39.350] – Kirsten Davies
\nA very dear friend of mine is the CISO there now who we exchanged\u2026 Almost I feel like we changed
\nseats from Siemens to HP and all of that kind of a thing and she’s the CISO now at HP Inc.
\n[00:12:51.550] – Kirsten Davies
\nIt’s been a hallmark of my career, which is we need to do things differently and we don’t always have
\nthe answers from the very beginning. But it’s an evolution as the change happens. I think that
\neverybody has a little piece of the solution, and so it’s also about bringing in all of those threads of
\nlogic, the threads of analysis, the threads of insight, and bringing those things together to make
\nsomething that’s much more holistic and dynamic than it was before we started.
\n[00:13:21.010] – David Puner
\nIn order to do that, you need people who come from various backgrounds that can look at things
\nthrough different filters. Obviously, one of the things we hear about a lot, we talk about a lot within the
\nindustry is the talent shortage, the skills gap. How are you navigating that? How are you getting
\ncreative when it comes to hiring and finding cyber talent?
\n[00:13:43.180] – Kirsten Davies
\nYeah, also one of the things I’m very passionate about, not having grown up in IT, not having been
\ndyed in the wool architecture.
\n[00:13:57.310] – David Puner
\nDid I read somewhere that you wanted to be a spy at some point?
\n[00:14:00.430] – Kirsten Davies
\nYes, I did. Now I just work against the bad guys. But maybe it’s the same thing at the end of the day.
\nI’m not sure. I actually was a professional musician, singer-songwriter for a while, and there’s other
\ninterviews that I’ve done that talk about that career progression. But the bottom line premise for me
\nhas been anybody can get into this field if they have the right training, number one, and number two,
\nthe right opportunity, and number three, yes, coaching, mentoring. There’s such a broader risk
\nlandscape now in cybersecurity than just the deep technical aspects that will always be a core of
\nwhat we do.
\n[00:14:42.430] – Kirsten Davies
\nBut when it comes to a talent perspective, that’s also been one of the hypotheses turned proven facts
\nthat I’ve pursued, which is anybody can get into this career and be successful at it. There’s a number
\nof companies that are doing this now.
\n[00:14:59.140] – Kirsten Davies
\nWe’re working with an amazing organization out of Nigeria that is working with women between the
\nages of, I think it’s 16 to 27 and developing some just amazing talent right in Nigeria. We’re working
\nwith them. There’s another company in the United States that’s taken an approach to developing rural
\ntalent based upon some tax input, some mayoral things, government things in the state, and then
\nretraining veterans and nurses and educators to be doing cybersecurity. Likewise, I built a pilot
\nprogram in South Africa when I was with Barclays, with the support of the bank, with the support of
\nthe South African governments and Rhodes University to create an incubation function, as it were to
\ndevelop some entry-level cybersecurity talent from people who are going to be losing their jobs due to
\nautomation.
\n[00:16:01.120] – Kirsten Davies
\nI believe wholeheartedly this can be done. We need to be doing this at scale. That’s one of the things
\nas an industry, I really feel that that we as executives in the industry really need to embrace this and
\ntackle this. I’m doing my part. I’ve proven the model could work. I didn’t start in tech, and yet here I am,
\nand so I really feel like anybody can do this with the right opportunities, training, mentoring, all of that.
\n[00:16:28.270] – David Puner
\nEntry level would be the key.
\n[00:16:30.160] – Kirsten Davies
\nYeah, no, it’s true. It’s true. I think one of the challenges is there’s a multifocal challenge that we have.
\nBudgets are infamously constrained in cybersecurity and I hate to lean on budgets, but the budget
\nunlock is such an important thing. For every dollar that we get, we need to have a multiplier effect on
\nthe dollar, the pound, the euro that we have to spend on cybersecurity. We have often then been really
\nfunneled into a pathway that says we have to hire the most experienced person that we possibly can
\nafford because we need them to hit the ground running. That’s always been the case. Well, guess
\nwhat? We’ve created this monster of an environment where people hop from job to job based upon
\npay, right? They hop job to job based on other things as well. But it’s the organizations that can afford
\nto pay higher rates for cybersecurity will poach and I don’t blame them and at the same time I’m like,
\n\u00ab\u00a0Stop, just stop.\u00a0\u00bb Right?
\n[00:17:43.210] – Kirsten Davies
\nI get it. We have a high competition factor for pay. We have, therefore, a high competition factor for
\npeople with experience. Because if you’re expecting the people to be able to hit the ground running,
\nguess what we’re not doing? We’re not investing in entry-level talent. We’re not investing in businessside
\ntalent that only requires a little bit of contextual cyber education.
\n[00:18:10.640] – Kirsten Davies
\nFor example, having people from in manufacturing, hiring people in from the supply chain side.
\nThey’re engineers. They understand it. They just need to understand MITRE attack, threat pathways.
\nThey need to understand the cyber side of it, and that can be a multiplier effect for their
\nunderstanding of how a manufacturing belt works, how the robotics arms work, how driverless cars
\nwork in the sense of moving inventory around.
\n[00:18:46.770] – Kirsten Davies
\nI think we need to be much more creative around that. The problems of it have been around budget,
\nfilled with headcount approvals, filled with shortage of talent in the market. I believe that we as the
\nbiggies, the bigger organizations, we really need to be addressing this and start investing in and
\nrecruiting in the startup, right, the entry-level talent. I know that there’s a lot of organizations that are
\ndoing it, which is good. We needed to be doing this 10 years ago, but we’re getting there.
\n[00:19:27.990] – David Puner
\nGreat. Thank you for that. Moving on to a different subject, sort of. All of them are related, of course,
\nthough. You speak quite a bit about personal resilience. How is that particularly pertinent to the CISO
\nrole right now?
\n[00:19:43.590] – Kirsten Davies
\nIt’s a topic that’s very near and dear to my heart. With the advent of the global pandemic and the
\nlockdowns and everybody having to necessarily have an all hands on deck approach to provisioning
\nIT, provisioning access. How do we get people working in different ways? Some companies are
\ndigitally native, and I think that they came out of that much more rapidly and they were able to get to a
\nBAU much more rapidly than other companies were able to do so. What I’ve seen has been the
\nhallmark, though, is a couple of things. In 2016, there was a study that came out that named the
\nnumber out of four CISOs that are abusing alcohol and prescription medication in order to deal with
\nthe level of stress of the day. That was in 2016. That was pre-COVID. I think it was one out of four.
\nSomebody asked me about that and they said, \u00ab\u00a0What do you think of this?\u00a0\u00bb And I said, \u00ab\u00a0That’s all? I
\nthink it’s actually more than that,\u00a0\u00bb tongue-in-cheek but literally.
\n[00:20:50.190] – Kirsten Davies
\nPre-COVID, we knew that we already had an issue with this, that the stress levels and the
\nresponsibility and the accountability in this role are enormous. You feel a bit like Atlas with the weight
\nof the world on your shoulders at times. Then you add COVID into this, and a lot of us as the CISOs
\nwere the tip of the point of the spear when it came to really driving availability and resilience. We were
\npartnering with our CIO organizations. We were working with our business partners globally. We were
\ncaretaking people, caretaking any number of outages and stress factors that were there.
\n[00:21:29.700] – Kirsten Davies
\nWhen the businesses that we serve were able to get to a little bit of a level of exhale and find a
\nrhythm, what I witnessed was nobody was taking care of the cyber security teams, and the CISOs who
\nhad been the tip of the point of the spear for so long were now at crisis levels of adrenaline, crisis
\nlevels of stress, really overwhelming levels of feeling responsible and accountable. It’s that fight or
\nflight mentality, right, that we go through.
\n[00:22:07.320] – Kirsten Davies
\nPost-COVID now, which I, fingers crossed, say that we’re in a post-COVID world. To a certain extent
\nwe are. I see teams working just as hard as they were during that crisis. The hours that we put in as
\nCISOs are unsustainable. The hours our teams are putting in, completely unsustainable. Yet the
\nattacks still come because the threat actors are still out there, right? Everything is still there. I talk
\nabout this a bit, and I’ve been public about it because I feel like sometimes it’s a bit of a taboo topic to
\ntalk about mental health and mental resilience and personal resilience. But I’ll tell you what, there are
\nsome folks out there who are really struggling and we need the support of one another. We need to be
\nable to talk about this much more openly.
\n[00:23:05.870] – David Puner
\nWhat do you think is key to a solution?
\n[00:23:08.510] – Kirsten Davies
\nThere’s a couple of things, and I think that’s a great question. I think we all need to discover what that
\nlooks like for us individually and for our teams as leaders. Transparency is key. I personally had to
\nhave a conversation with my team when I was going through some health challenges. And then my
\nmom has been going through some health challenges and I had to be transparent with my team and
\ngo, \u00ab\u00a0You know what? I’m having some challenges here in my personal life and it’s going to bleed over
\ninto my professional life.\u00a0\u00bb Not because I’m weak, not because I can’t manage or I can’t handle it. Just
\nbecause we can’t, post-COVID, separate our personal lives from our professional lives anymore.
\nEverything’s merged. I’m on the podcast with you from my home office.
\n[00:24:01.490] – David Puner
\nWhich is in Nashville, I should point out.
\n[00:24:02.840] – Kirsten Davies
\nWhich is in Nashville, Tennessee, and my job is in London, right? So it’s impossible anymore to
\nseparate those two things. I think there’s there’s an amount of self-awareness and transparency that’s
\nneeded with our teams. I think that that also creates a pathway for our teams to be honest with us
\nand to let us know when they’re struggling. Even just with the visibility, it creates an opportunity for
\ndiscussion, for solution, for even just empathy. Empathy because we’re all going through something.
\nWe’re human. We’re all going through something right now.
\n[00:24:41.660] – Kirsten Davies
\nI think that’s key right there. I think we need to model the behavior\u2026 This goes with the transparency.
\nWe need to model the behavior that we expect of our teams, which is difficult in a global environment.
\nI’m emailing at very odd hours for a team that’s\u2026 some of my team sitting in India. But we need to
\nmodel the behavior that gives them permission to be human, which is family first, right? Take your
\nvacations. If I’m emailing you on an off hour, I don’t expect your response until you’re actually back in
\noffice or back on, quote-unquote, \u00ab\u00a0normal\u00a0\u00bb office hours. I think just those simple keys are super
\nhelpful to it. I think honestly, we need to lean into and get support from our HR business partners as
\nwell, because we’re seeing that this is really a challenge for big corporates and big organizations and
\npeople. We’re human. We’re human first. We’re workers later, right? We’re human first, and we need
\nsupport for the human experience that we’ve all gone through.
\n[00:25:50.990] – David Puner
\nA bio of yours, I’ve read, says you design and lead holistic digital trust programs. You, of course, had
\nus at trust. But what does this mean and how does trust factor into what you do?
\n[00:26:05.360] – Kirsten Davies
\nThat’s a great question. Trust is at the core of everything that we need, both in human interactions, in
\ndigital interactions, right, and in corporate legislative, every interaction. The depth that we build that
\ntrust is going to equal the lengths to which we will excel in relationships, in corporate initiatives, and
\nthings like that. Let me give you a specific example. Statistically, it has been shown that consumers
\nwill leave their favorite company, favorite brand, favorite product if they lose trust in that. Some of
\nthat is the safety of the product, right? So the ingredients and things like that. Some of it is in, well,
\nhow I interacted as a consumer with that company. If there’s a data breach on an e-commerce
\nplatform, right, statistically, it’s shown that the measure with which consumers lose the trust in the
\norganization or in the product is the level with which they will vote with their feet, as we say. Stay or
\nleave, right?
\n[00:27:24.410] – Kirsten Davies
\nOne of the things I love about Unilever is our commitment to product safety, product quality, and the
\nsafety of our colleagues in factories. Right? We have leveraged that to be also the way in which we
\ntalk about cyber safety and the trust that we build in all of our interactions. Digital interactions, data
\nflows, handshakes of applications themselves or OT environment, things like that. Some of the things,
\nthey won’t be aware of, the things that are happening behind the scenes, but that’s what we want to
\nbuild in every interaction we have with regulators, with shareholders, with consumers, with our
\ncustomer bases, with each other as colleagues as well. We want to be able to and we should be able
\nto trust that our interactions are secure, that they are risk managed, right, that privacy data is kept
\nprivate, things like that.
\n[00:28:21.770] – Kirsten Davies
\nIs there a such thing as 100%? No. No, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that is our job is to build
\ntrust everywhere we go. That positively directly impacts the reputation of the organizations that we
\nserve. Everyone has a responsibility to ensure that the organization remains cyber safe, and that
\ncovers email phishing, to vishing, smishing, to factories, to infrastructure, to everything, data
\neverywhere, right? That is super, super important for organizations to embrace. It’s not the CISO’s job
\nor the CISO’s program job to do everything security. It’s everyone’s job. Everyone’s job.
\n[00:29:15.080] – Kirsten Davies
\nFor sure. From a cultural standpoint, which is something you had mentioned earlier on in the
\ndiscussion, how far have things come along since you’ve joined the organization?
\n[00:29:27.200] – Kirsten Davies
\nYeah, the team has done a great job. Again, standing on the shoulders of giants that came before me.
\nOne of the things I walked into in the role was quite a strong awareness and training area that we’ve
\nsimply just made stronger now, right? We’ve done more. We have an amazing campaign we’re about
\nready to launch. I cannot tell you what it is, but I am so super excited. We’re leveraging some of our
\nbrand names. It’s an internal cyber awareness campaign. We’ve got the-
\n[00:29:58.100] – David Puner
\nDoes it involve ice cream?
\n[00:30:00.140] – Kirsten Davies
\nIt does, actually, it does. We got permission from the brands to use their brands. We’ve got
\npermission from some different folks, corporate comms and from our PR teams to do some pretty
\nunconventional things because things aren’t always what they seem.
\n[00:30:19.620] – David Puner
\nSounds fantastic. Looking forward to having you back on again so we can hear how that went and get
\nall the details about it. We’ll have to talk to you a little bit about your passion projects. You’ve got
\nmany of them. Are there any in particular right now that you’re feeling particularly passionate about?
\n[00:30:33.800] – Kirsten Davies
\nI’m particularly passionate about fighting cancer. My mom has been stricken by it and I am
\nparticularly passionate about this. I’ve been involved with the Breast Cancer Research Foundation
\nsince being at Estee Lauder companies. As a matter of fact, shortly there’s the Tech Day of Pink that
\nthe CIO there started as his passion project, which I love. People and companies around the world are
\ncommitting their technology teams to wearing pink on a specific day. I’m also involved locally in
\nNashville with the Nashville Wine Auction that is wine and cancer research. I love it. It’s a great
\ncompany of worlds for me that’s there. But we do a lot of some great foundations here in Nashville
\nthat we support, not the least of which is the St. Jude Children’s Hospital, the Vanderbilt research
\ncommunity that’s there.
\n[00:31:32.450] – Kirsten Davies
\nSecondly, as things would have it, I’ve been blessed to be placed in a leadership position as a woman
\nin a field where there are not a lot of women in my role, right? I never saw myself as a female CISO or
\na female practitioner. I’m just a practitioner. However, I think that when you sit in this chair, when one
\nsits in this chair, and when one has the rare opportunity to kind of lift your head up and look around a
\nlittle bit, I have become increasingly passionate about women in not just in this field, but women in
\ntechnology and opportunities for women around the world.
\n[00:32:23.280] – Kirsten Davies
\nI’ve partnered in with Nomi Network, which is in India, and we adopt a whole village of women and
\nprovide for them education and opportunities for raising their own income, right, and providing them
\nan opportunity that’s outside of some of the crime and stuff that happens in underdeveloped areas of
\nthe world. Which leads secondly, to I’m super, super passionate about fighting human trafficking. I’m
\na direct sponsor and partner with A21. There’s many organizations out there, but I think you can kind
\nof see the theme of opportunities that I’ve had, even with my background, which would not have led
\nme to a technology field or a CISO career.
\n[00:33:14.490] – Kirsten Davies
\nOpportunities that I had as a woman, even though I didn’t see myself as being the female X, right, the
\nfemale fill-in-the-blank, I’ve taken upon that as just there’s a responsibility and there’s a weight that
\ncomes with that. That it’s an honor to be able to carry that weight and to do the best that I can to
\nmake a difference in women’s lives around the world. Women and girls and people in general, yes, but
\nwomen and girls especially.
\n[00:33:44.010] – David Puner
\nYou had mentioned coffee before we started recording, and I can imagine that plays a very significant
\nrole in your day-to-day. We appreciate you being caffeinated today and talking with us.
\n[00:33:56.760] – Kirsten Davies
\nThank you for having me. What a pleasure to be on this. Thank you so much.
\n[00:34:12.270] – David Puner
\nThanks for listening to today’s episode of Trust Issues. We’d love to hear from you. If you have a
\nquestion, comment, constructive comment preferably, but it’s up to you, or an episode suggestion,
\nplease drop us an email at trustissues@cyberark.com. And make sure you’re following us wherever
\nyou listen to podcasts.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":214332,"template":"","class_list":["post-143270","podcast","type-podcast","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEP 14 - Humanizing Cybersecurity | CyberArk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"EP 14 - Humanizing Cybersecurity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Being a Chief Information Security Officer is a tough job. CISOs are on the front lines, protecting against the unknown day after day, week after week. It’s no wonder mental health issues such as depression...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"CyberArk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CyberArk\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-04-10T00:18:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/cnR3b3JrLmpwZw-2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@CyberArk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Dur\u00e9e de lecture estim\u00e9e\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"26 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/\",\"name\":\"EP 14 - Humanizing Cybersecurity | CyberArk\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/cnR3b3JrLmpwZw-2.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-10-25T14:58:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-04-10T00:18:41+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"fr-FR\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"fr-FR\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/cnR3b3JrLmpwZw-2.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/cnR3b3JrLmpwZw-2.jpg\",\"width\":1400,\"height\":1400},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"EP 14 – Humanizing Cybersecurity\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/\",\"name\":\"CyberArk\",\"description\":\"\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"fr-FR\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#organization\",\"name\":\"CyberArk Software\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"fr-FR\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/cyberark-logo-dark.svg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/cyberark-logo-dark.svg\",\"width\":\"1024\",\"height\":\"1024\",\"caption\":\"CyberArk Software\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CyberArk\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/CyberArk\",\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/cyber-ark-software\/\"]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"EP 14 - Humanizing Cybersecurity | CyberArk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/","og_locale":"fr_FR","og_type":"article","og_title":"EP 14 - Humanizing Cybersecurity","og_description":"Being a Chief Information Security Officer is a tough job. CISOs are on the front lines, protecting against the unknown day after day, week after week. It’s no wonder mental health issues such as depression...","og_url":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/","og_site_name":"CyberArk","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CyberArk\/","article_modified_time":"2026-04-10T00:18:41+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1400,"height":1400,"url":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/cnR3b3JrLmpwZw-2.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_site":"@CyberArk","twitter_misc":{"Dur\u00e9e de lecture estim\u00e9e":"26 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/","url":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/","name":"EP 14 - Humanizing Cybersecurity | CyberArk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/cnR3b3JrLmpwZw-2.jpg","datePublished":"2022-10-25T14:58:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-04-10T00:18:41+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"fr-FR","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"fr-FR","@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/cnR3b3JrLmpwZw-2.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/cnR3b3JrLmpwZw-2.jpg","width":1400,"height":1400},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/podcasts\/ep-14-humanizing-cybersecurity\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"EP 14 – Humanizing Cybersecurity"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/","name":"CyberArk","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"fr-FR"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#organization","name":"CyberArk Software","url":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"fr-FR","@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/cyberark-logo-dark.svg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/cyberark-logo-dark.svg","width":"1024","height":"1024","caption":"CyberArk Software"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CyberArk\/","https:\/\/x.com\/CyberArk","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/cyber-ark-software\/"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/podcast\/143270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/podcast"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/podcast"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberark.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}