Redefining CyberSecurity

Bridging the Cybersecurity Divide Between the Haves and Have-Nots: Lessons from Australia’s CISO Community | A Conversation with Andrew Morgan | Redefining CyberSecurity with Sean Martin⬥GUEST⬥ Andrew Morgan, Chief Information Security Officer | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmorgancism/ ⬥HOST⬥ Host: Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imsmartin/ | Website: https://www.seanmartin.com ⬥EPISODE NOTES⬥ The cybersecurity community has long recognized an uncomfortable truth: the gap between well-resourced enterprises and underfunded organizations keeps widening. This divide isn’t just about money; it’s about survivability. When a small business, school, or healthcare provider is hit with a major breach, the likelihood of permanent closure is exponentially higher than for a large enterprise. As host of the Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast, I’ve seen this imbalance repeatedly — and the conversation with Andrew Morgan underscores why it persists and what can be done about it. The Problem: Structural Imbalance Large enterprises operate with defined budgets, mature governance, and integrated security operations centers. They can afford redundancy, talent, and tooling. Meanwhile, small and mid-sized organizations are often left with fragmented controls, minimal staff, and reliance on external vendors or managed providers. The result is a “have and have not” world. The “haves” can detect, contain, and recover. The “have nots” often cannot. When they are compromised, the impact isn’t just reputational — it can mean financial collapse or service disruption that directly affects communities. The Hidden Costs of Complexity Even when smaller organizations invest in technology, they often fall into the trap of overtooling without strategy. Multiple, overlapping systems create noise, false confidence, and operational fatigue. Morgan describes this as a symptom of viewing cybersecurity as a subset of IT rather than as a business enabler. Simplification is key. A rationalized platform approach — even if not best-of-breed — can deliver better visibility and sustainability than a patchwork of disconnected tools. The goal should not be perfection; it should be proportionate protection aligned with business risk. The Solution: Culture, Collaboration, and Continuity Cyber resilience starts with people and culture. As Morgan puts it, programs must be driven by culture, informed by risk, and delivered through people, process, and technology. Security can’t succeed in isolation from the organization’s purpose or its people. The Australian CISO Tribe provides a real-world model for collaboration. Its members share threat intelligence, peer validation, and practical experiences — a living example of collective defense in action. Whether formalized or ad-hoc, these networks give security leaders context, community, and shared strength. Getting Back to Basics Practical resilience isn’t glamorous. It’s about getting the basics right — consistent patching, logging, phishing-resistant authentication, verified backups, and tested recovery plans. It’s about ensuring that, if everything fails, you can still get back up. When security becomes a business-as-usual practice rather than a project, organizations begin to move from reactive defense to proactive resilience. The Takeaway Bridging the cybersecurity divide doesn’t require endless budgets. It requires prioritization, simplification, and partnership. The “have nots” may never mirror enterprise scale, but they can adopt enterprise discipline — and that can make all the difference between temporary disruption and permanent failure. ⬥RESOURCES⬥ Inspiring Post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrewmorgancism_last-night-i-was-fortunate-enough-to-spend-activity-7383972144507994112-V3Zr/ ⬥ADDITIONAL INFORMATION⬥ ✨ More Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast: 🎧 https://www.seanmartin.com/redefining-cybersecurity-podcast Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast on YouTube: 📺 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnYu0psdcllS9aVGdiakVss9u7xgYDKYq 📝 The Future of Cybersecurity Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7108625890296614912/ Contact Sean Martin to request to be a guest on an episode of Redefining CyberSecurity: https://www.seanmartin.com/contact ⬥KEYWORDS⬥ sean martin, andrew morgan, australia, ciso, risk, resilience, cybersecurity, business continuity, governance, compliance, redefining cybersecurity, cybersecurity podcast, redefining cybersecurity podcast Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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First CISO Charged by SEC: Tim Brown on Trust, Context, and Leading Through Crisis - Interview with Tim Brown | AISA CyberCon Melbourne 2025 Coverage | On Location with Sean Martin and Marco CiappelliFirst CISO Charged by SEC: Tim Brown on Trust, Context, and Leading Through Crisis - Interview with Tim Brown | AISA CyberCon Melbourne 2025 Coverage | On Location with Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli AISA CyberCon Melbourne | October 15-17, 2025 Tim Brown's job changed overnight. December 11th, he was the CISO at SolarWinds managing security operations. December 12th, he was leading the response to one of the most scrutinized cybersecurity incidents in history. Connecting from New York and Florence to Melbourne, Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli caught up with their longtime friend ahead of his keynote at AISA CyberCon. The conversation reveals what actually happens when a CISO faces the unthinkable—and why the relationships you build before crisis hits determine whether you survive it. Tim became the first CISO ever charged by the SEC, a distinction nobody wants but one that shaped his mission: if sharing his experience helps even one security leader prepare better, then the entire saga becomes worthwhile. He's candid about the settlement process still underway, the emotional weight of having strangers ask for selfies, and the mental toll that landed him in a Zurich hospital with a heart attack the week his SEC charges were announced. "For them to hear something and hear the context—to hear us taking six months off development, 400 engineers focused completely on security for six months in pure focus—when you say it with emotion, it conveys the real cost," Tim explained. Written communication failed during the incident. People needed to talk, to hear, to feel the weight of decisions being made in real time. What saved SolarWinds wasn't just technical capability. It was implicit trust. The war room team operated without second-guessing each other. The CIO handled deployment and investigation. Engineering figured out how the build system was compromised. Marketing and legal managed their domains. Tim didn't waste cycles checking their work because trust was already built. "If we didn't have that, we would've been second-guessing what other people did," he said. That trust came from relationships established long before December 2020, from a culture where people knew their roles and respected each other's expertise. Now Tim's focused on mentoring the next generation through the RSA Conference CSO Bootcamp, helping aspiring CISOs and security leaders at smaller companies build the knowledge, community, and relationships they'll need when—not if—their own December 12th arrives. He tailors every talk to his audience, never delivering the same speech twice. Context matters in crisis, but it matters in communication too. Australia played a significant role during SolarWinds' incident response, with the Australian government partnering closely in January 2021. Tim hadn't been back in a decade, making his return to Melbourne for CyberCon particularly meaningful. He's there to share lessons earned the hardest way possible, and to remind security leaders that stress management, safe spaces, and knowing when to compartmentalize aren't luxuries—they're survival skills. His keynote covers the different stages of incident response, how culture drives crisis outcomes, and why the teams that step up matter more than the ones that run away. For anyone leading security teams, Tim's message is clear: build trust now, before you need it. AISA CyberCon Melbourne runs October 15-17, 2025 Coverage provided by ITSPmagazine GUEST: Tim Brown, CISO at SolarWinds | On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-brown-ciso/ HOSTS: Sean Martin, Co-Founder, ITSPmagazine and Studio C60 | Website: https://www.seanmartin.com Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder, ITSPmagazine and Studio C60 | Website: https://www.marcociappelli.com Catch all of our event coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/technology-and-cybersecurity-conference-coverage Want to share an Event Briefing as part of our event coverage? Learn More 👉 https://itspm.ag/evtcovbrf Want Sean and Marco to be part of your event or conference? Let Us Know 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/contact-us Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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