A CISO Shares How C | CISO Transformed His Business Perspective & Career-Byron Beasley | EC-Council

Byron Beasley is a Cybersecurity Engineering/Architecture Manager at SAIC in the U.S. who earned a C|CISO certification. In his current role, he wears multiple hats and describes C|CISO as a holistic program that covers technical aspects and the business perspective that has helped him prepare for the CISO role. He adds, “C|CISO gives you an overall understanding of program management and strategic oversight, or helps you develop thinking abilities in that direction.” C|CISO benefited him in gaining a thorough understanding of cybersecurity grounds, the Internet of Everything (IoE) perspectives, governance, risk management, compliance, and more.

Byron has more than 20 years of experience working as a senior IT leader and cybersecurity professional. He has demonstrated expertise in orchestrating technical consulting teams and spearheading programmatic, high-performance technology and information security solutions supporting large-scale, mission-critical IT programs. In this video, he discusses key takeaways from his C|CISO journey and experience with EC-Council.

Testimonial Transcript

1. Tell us about your current role and how you got there.
-My name is Byron Beasley. I’m here to share my journey for the C|CISO certification.
-I currently work for a very large systems integrator. We support customers in the federal civilian space, Department of Defense, and civilian agencies.
-I am a cybersecurity engineering manager for the internal insight of the company. Largely, I manage the cloud security offerings that we provide to most of our customers, and I am the chief architect in that realm.
-I have performed roles as a strategic advisor, managing entire Information System Security Management Solutions.
-I have been a technology enthusiast all my life. I have a background as an information assurance director, senior technical director for IT, and in managing security operations in the IT security realm.

2.You are a CISSP. Why did you pursue the CCISO after the CISSP?
-While working as a CISSP for 5-6 years, I recognized that I was kind of still in the realm of the technologist wasn't moving in the direction that I wanted it to go in. I was looking more towards holistically looking at organizations, I wanted to ensure that I understood from the top-down:
-What makes organizations tick?
-What are their business drivers?
-What are their cyber drivers?
-What are their interests from a business perspective?

So, I made it a point to become well-rounded. In doing so I discovered the C|CISO certification. And I discovered that the C|CISO covers many of those rounds that I was just referring to cover your project management didn't necessarily want to do a PMP.
But I did want the project management and the program management acumen as a complement to the rest of my skill set.
It also covered many of the technical documents that I didn't want to specifically leave my technological savviness or my acumen on the table, I wanted to continue to use that as well.
I also wanted to understand more of the connotations of the business and what drives the stakeholders in any business. I think this is C|CISO certification, and the training there has prepared me well for this new dynamic.

3.How C|CISO is different from CISSP?
I think they are complementary. The major differences are:
-When you’re in the technical realm, especially in the federal space, CISSP is pretty much where you want to be in terms of technology. In terms of understanding business, CISSP gives you a full understanding of the security landscape.
-I believe the C|CISO helps you gain program management and strategic oversight skills or begin to think in that direction.

4.Can you share some success stories of your application of the C|CISO body of knowledge at work?
-Recalling a few of the roles that I served as a systems integrator on contract, I can say that it helped me polish my strategic thinking abilities regarding the projects I was involved in internally and externally.
-I was able to drive and achieve a top-down approach for processes that needed improvement from a holistic perspective.
-I was also able to drive the transition from on-premises environments to the cloud for one or two organizations utilizing three major cloud providers: Google, Amazon, and Azure.

5.Did the C|CISO impact you positively in your career?
While C|CISO has helped me with financial gains in terms of raises and incentives over the years, I have benefited from the C|CISO program in a much broader way.
-I gained a comprehensive knowledge of cybersecurity, the IA perspective, governance, risk management, and GRC governance risk and compliance.
-I understood the security engineering and operations realm well and have also been helping my juniors, who have begun their cybersecurity journey.
-I believe that my C|CISO journey has been an enriching one, where I have truly been able to give back to the community.

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