Richard Pallardy, Freelance WriterMay 7, 20256 Min ReadBill Cheyrou via Alamy StockMark Houpt first discovered his technological talents while rewiring a computer lab in high school. He later entered the US Navy where he served as a cryptologist and then moved to the private sector, where he worked his way up from being a help desk tech to the C-suite. He now serves as CISO for DataBank. The company operates dozens of data centers nationwide. Here, he describes how he got into tech and offers his unique view of the current tech landscape in a conversation with InformationWeek. How did you start out in the tech space?  I was asked to pull cable and help build a computer lab in high school in the late 1980s. It was a typing lab designed for young ladies to learn how to be secretaries. We wanted to upgrade it to be more inclusive. I joined the Navy in 1991 and was a cryptologist for four and a half years. They sent us through what's called A School and C School -- intensive training on how to do our jobs. Once I got out, I still didn’t have a degree. I progressed in my career through certifications and hands-on learning. I got my master’s degree in information security and assurance. That was my first formal education. I continue to do certification and hands-on learning. What were your early roles in the private sector? Related:I went to work for a healthcare entity. I was on the help desk. HIPAA came out. They were up in the boardroom one day trying to figure out how to deal with that. Somebody mentioned that there was a kid down on the help desk who said that he used to do cryptography. They pulled me up to the boardroom to have a conversation. That re-engaged my technology and security career. Mark Houpt, DataBankI’ve always incorporated security into my roles, even when it wasn’t popular. I was a CTO at a university in Illinois, and we had collateral duty. We added my CISO title to that. That was important, because the Department of Education came out and started leveraging on a number of security requirements during that period of time. How did you land the CISO role?  I've been at DataBank for 10 years as the CISO. Technically, I started this portion of my career as CISO of a company called Edge Hosting, which was acquired by DataBank. I started there in January of 2015. Edge Hosting was acquired in 2017. I remained as the CISO of DataBank because they didn’t have one. We’ve grown the company from two data centers and 60 employees to 73 data centers and almost 1,000 employees.  The types of customers that we service are completely different. Ten years ago, we were servicing small mom-and-pop type companies that wanted to go to the cloud. Now we’re working with name brands, companies that are using co-location space. We’re selling entire data centers to one company. Related:Is the leadership aspect challenging? There is a narrative in the industry that tech skills and people skills don’t necessarily go hand in hand. I don’t find leading people to be difficult. It is just another skill set that is important if you want to move beyond being an average technologist into an upper-level technology position. If you want to be a good security architect, you have to be able to interact and work well with others. You have to be able to sit down with people who don’t know technology and speak their language in order to translate what they need into security. You need to be able to sit down and work with customers, most of whom don’t know anything about security or even about technology.  The Navy gave me a great start. As you increase in rank in the Navy, they make you become a people leader, whether you like it or not. Either you take the instruction and you alter your course, or you don’t. If you don’t, you don’t succeed.  So, leading people has not been difficult for me, but I have seen people over and over again who don’t refine their people skills. That always results in problems -- people being dictatorial and rubbing people wrong. It’s a skill that you have to refine and build. Leadership is not something you’re born with. It’s something you develop. Related:Do CISOs and other tech execs encounter challenges in communicating with their peers in the C-suite? I’d be lying to you if I said it wasn’t somewhat of a problem. I firmly believe that the breadth and depth of the problem is firmly on the shoulders of the CISO. Are they capable of creating a sense of urgency and a sense of need for the business?  If I don’t understand the importance of risk and balancing that between the business and the security needs, then I’m failing my company in doing so. I took it upon myself to get an education on how to deal with finances. If you want to succeed as a CISO in a larger-scale business, that’s what you have to do. What are some of the challenges facing a CISO today? Are there things in the industry that need to change? We’ve been following a mindset of don’t ever let a crisis go to waste in order to get more people, in order to get more technology. Every time there would be just the slightest bit of ransomware that hit the corporation, we would take full advantage of that. The challenge we're dealing with right now is security fatigue. We have to change how we deliver our message -- how it’s going to help the business. The other thing is that CISOs have to realize that we can do security on a budget. We could do it really well if we just implemented good security hygiene. What is going well? How have you seen things evolve in the C-suite? I think people have finally started to get security hygiene. Security awareness is no longer just drudgery -- it’s starting to take root in a lot of corporations that security is everybody’s responsibility. Secondly, our federal government is starting to finally give us resources. CISA is really reaching out and assisting the average business -- they have employed people to act as advisors to small and medium sized businesses. They’ll do an assessment -- tell them what type of protections they’re lacking and how to correct it.  About the AuthorRichard PallardyFreelance WriterRichard Pallardy is a freelance writer based in Chicago. He has written for such publications as Vice, Discover, Science Magazine, and the Encyclopedia Britannica.See more from Richard PallardyReportsMore ReportsNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also Like