David Levine

The cybersecurity industry continues to focus almost exclusively on technology at the expense of dealing with the heart of cyberdefenses: the people. Yet the stress of expectations, limited resources, and detriments to well-being continues to cause havoc with the mental and physical health, productivity, and retention of the cybersecurity workforce.

Toxic leadership and poor or inadequate communication can fuel frustration, confusion, burnout, and a lack of trust in the cybersecurity organization. Learn the value of soft skills in this blog post.

Learn six key points to help CISOs develop more engaging presentations to communicate their security priorities and goals.

Learn a few of the most impactful takeaways from a full year of working with security and risk leaders as an executive partner at Forrester.

Last month, Forrester announced its inaugural Security & Risk Enterprise Leadership Award. As former CISOs, my Forrester colleague Brian Wrozek and I are sharing our thoughts about why you should apply. There are tangible benefits to you, your team, your organization, and the greater security community. You should apply — and apply now — for […]

Vulnerability management, like flossing, is not fun, exciting, or sexy, but we know that it’s a necessary component of good hygiene. There’s a ton of evidence and research to strongly substantiate its benefits, and yet we frequently struggle to do it despite clearly understanding the consequences — we certainly don’t want a root canal! Yet, […]

When Buy-In Goes Wrong — Perspectives From A Former CISO/CSO In my last blog, I talked about how “it takes a village” from the perspective of the job being bigger than any one person and the many benefits of being involved in the CISO community to leverage the collective power of a broad support base. […]

Lone Wolf Or Wolf Pack? Perspectives From A Former CISO/CSO One of the most valuable, important, and rewarding things I did during my tenure as a CISO/CSO was becoming involved in the CISO community. There are plenty of leaders who choose to go down the CISO path primarily on their own, and perhaps for some, […]

Perspectives From A Former CISO/CSO For my second blog in this series, I wanted to share my thoughts on one of my favorite subjects: third-party risk management (TPRM). More specifically, I’m going to primarily focus on the receiving side of the equation — i.e., responding to and dealing with external inquiries about your organization as […]

Forrester predicted that in 2023, a Global 500 firm will be exposed for burning out its cybersecurity employees. In 2022, we saw at a very practical level in Australia that weaknesses in our cyberdefenses can impact society at mass levels. Impacts of breaches at Optus, Medibank, EnergyAustralia, and MyDeal include fines, exposure of millions of […]

I’m kicking off my blog series, “Perspectives From A Former CISO,” with my thoughts on leadership. The series will pull from my experiences as a CISO and those of my peers. To be clear, I don’t purport to have the all the answers but did learn a thing to two during my tenure leading teams […]

I am excited to join Forrester as the newest executive partner (EP) working with our security and risk clients and bringing my experiences over the past almost-three decades to the table! The CISO continues to play an ever-increasing critical function within organizations not only charted to protect the company, and its clients, but as a […]