A Cybersecurity Survival Guide for Small Businesses

Kip, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me, Steve.

I'm really excited to share some information that I hope your audience will benefit from.

Great, we're excited to hear it.

And maybe before we get there, maybe let's set the table a little bit.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your career and what you're doing today.

Yeah, happy to do it.

So I've been working in this, what we call cybersecurity now, for a while.

It started when I was in the Air Force.

way, way back in 1992.

And I was a captain in the Air Force.

I worked on some top secret weapons development programs.

And so that's how I learned how to do data security and system security.

It was required.

in order for me to go to work every day, to open the big door to the vault and, you know, kind of step into that.

More recently, after I left the Air Force, I was the Chief Information Security Officer at a regional property and casualty insurance company called Pemco, based here in Seattle.

And in 2015, I founded my own company called Cyber Risk Opportunities.

And then I've written a couple of books.

So one of them is called Fire Doesn't Innovate.

And that book treats cyber as a business risk.

So I wrote it for senior decision makers who need to understand what is this cyber stuff that everybody keeps talking about? And more importantly, what do I do about it or how should I think about it? So there's that.

And then I have another book coming out this fall.

It's called Gears Don't Guess.

And the whole point of that book is to help the same audience answer the question, what do I do about AI? You know, is it OK? Is it not OK? When is it OK? When is it not OK? And so, yeah, so I guess.

You know, if I have a superpower at work, it's helping non-technical leaders understand this sometimes very technical cybersecurity stuff.

Kip, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me, Steve.

I'm really excited to share some information that I hope your audience will benefit from.

Great, we're excited to hear it.

And maybe before we get there, maybe let's set the table a little bit.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your career and what you're doing today.

Yeah, happy to do it.

So I've been working in this, what we call cybersecurity now, for a while.

It started when I was in the Air Force.

way, way back in 1992.

And I was a captain in the Air Force.

I worked on some top secret weapons development programs.

And so that's how I learned how to do data security and system security.

It was required.

in order for me to go to work every day, to open the big door to the vault and, you know, kind of step into that.

More recently, after I left the Air Force, I was the Chief Information Security Officer at a regional property and casualty insurance company called Pemco, based here in Seattle.

And in 2015, I founded my own company called Cyber Risk Opportunities.

And then I've written a couple of books.

So one of them is called Fire Doesn't Innovate.

And that book treats cyber as a business risk.

So I wrote it for senior decision makers who need to understand what is this cyber stuff that everybody keeps talking about? And more importantly, what do I do about it or how should I think about it? So there's that.

And then I have another book coming out this fall.

It's called Gears Don't Guess.

And the whole point of that book is to help the same audience answer the question, what do I do about AI? You know, is it OK? Is it not OK? When is it OK? When is it not OK? And so, yeah, so I guess.

You know, if I have a superpower at work, it's helping non-technical leaders understand this sometimes very technical cybersecurity stuff.