This episode features an interview with René Waslo, Risk and Financial Advisory Principal at Deloitte & Touche. She works as a cyber professional within the Energy, Resources and Industrials sector. In this episode, René talks about zero trust, trends in security breaches, sustainability in cyber, and encouraging women to enter the cyber industry.
This episode features an interview with René Waslo, Risk and Financial Advisory Principal at Deloitte & Touche. She works as a cyber professional within the Energy, Resources and Industrials sector. In this episode, René talks about zero trust, trends in security breaches, sustainability in cyber, and encouraging women to enter the cyber industry.
Quotes
*“Even though it's cyber that we're talking about, it's about relationships. Because cyber is trust. It's building digital trust in your environment, your systems. IFor us to be able to do that for clients, they need to trust us as humans. So, it definitely does come back to the ability to build those relationships.”
*“In the past you connected automatically and two machines automatically trusted each other, or two companies automatically trusted each other. And right now we're saying you just can't trust. So create a new trusted connection every time you connect. Building out that entire infrastructure is pretty technical. It’s not going to be finished immediately, it's a journey. So we work through topics like zero trust.”
*“A couple of years ago, they said the average number of devices that an individual connected into was at least seven. We're moving into a world of artificial intelligence and blockchain and all sorts of other great technologies. And that's all going to just continue to increase our need for cyber security.”
Time Stamps
*[5:03] Building Digital Trust with Clients
*[9:15] Sustainability in Cybersecurity
*[10:47] The Growing Complexity of the Digital World
*[12:34] Cybersecurity as a Tech and Business Role
*[14:04] The Growing Sophistication of Cybersecurity Breaches
*[20:04] The Fast-Changing World of Cyber
*[24:47] Implementing Identity Access Management, Including Connected Products
*[26:25] The Explosion of Sensor Technology
*[28:17] Discerning Important Data amid the Noise
*[30:22] Choosing Your Specialty in Cybersecurity
*[35:04] Women in Cybersecurity
Links
Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn
Thanks to our friends
Truth Be Known is brought to you by Talend, a leader in data integration and data integrity, enabling every company to find clarity amidst the chaos. Talend Data Fabric brings together in a single platform all the necessary capabilities that ensure enterprise data is complete, clean, compliant, and readily available to everyone who needs it throughout the organization. Learn more at Talend.com
Lauren Vaccarello: How many devices are you connected to every day? Think about your phone, your computer, your speakers, your smart watch. Statistics show the average American is connected to more than 10 devices, and that number is growing.
By connecting to each device, you’re also trusting them to keep your information safe. And you’re taking a risk - there’s always a chance of a security breach. But there are ways to protect yourself from a breach, or lessen the severity of one. Today we’re talking with René Waslo about cybersecurity.
René is a Risk and Financial Advisory Principal at Deloitte, and she works specifically in the Energy, Resources and Industrial sector. She’s been at Deloitte for 24 years, and things have changed a lot in cyber since her early days.
So let’s talk about zero trust, sustainability, trends in cybersecurity and encouraging women to go into cyber. Without further ado, let’s get into it. Welcome to Truth Be Known.
Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Truth Be Known. We have a very exciting guest today. We have René Waslo, she's the Risk and Financial Advisory Principal at Deloitte. René, welcome to the show.
René Waslo: Thank you very much for having me, Lauren, so pleased to be here.
Lauren Vaccarello: We are very, very excited. We don't get to talk about cyber security nearly, nearly enough. Before we get to it, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
René Waslo: Oh, sure. Yes. In the U.S. Right now but I actually I'm born and bred in South Africa and I moved out to the United States probably now about, let me see it was in 1995 I think that I moved to the United States. So my accent is totally gone, I think. But yeah, I studied you know, IT and accounting in South Africa. I mean, there was no such thing as cyber degrees at the time. And the company that I was with back in 95, they actually asked me to come over to the U.S. In essence to come and help out one of our member firms here in the U.S. with cybersecurity as well. So I kinda sorta started doing IT control and security assurance work, and then sort of moved into this whole space of cyber as time went on. And it was just a great experience and just sort of never stopped, you know it was I did a lot of M&A work, mergers and acquisitions work, at one point. And with, with that, one of my clients were going through an acquisition. And obviously we had a lot of our M&A focused people doing the actual integration. And I asked the question, I said, well, what about cyber during the integration? And, and that's what I kind of sort of got started on focusing cyber in the, in the M&A space at sorta also started focusing on industry quite a bit more, which is really where I'm focused right now is that intersection between industry and cyber, which I find absolutely fascinating, but it's been, it's been a crazy good journey more than 30 years now that I've been in the space and, you know, a lot of people will say, well, 30 years ago there was no such thing as cyber. Right. And it's like, well, it was, it just had different names. Right. So but it's, it's been great.
Lauren Vaccarello: That's awesome. I mean, I can imagine how much cyber security has changed in the last 30 years.
René Waslo: Oh, yeah. I mean, if I, if I think about what we did back then versus what it is now, I mean, you know, and, and, and a lot of people will say, well, how do you keep up with it? Right. It's building blocks, right. Everything kind of just continues to build on top of each other. So even though it was a long time ago to that I got started you know, the good news is that nothing that you do in life ever is wasted. It's just, you know, part of a growth journey really.
Lauren Vaccarello: Oh, absolutely. It's sometimes I think back going, I remember it, sorry. I always, I was a bartender when I was, when I was 20,
René Waslo: So was I.
Lauren Vaccarello: There are things that there are things that I learned bartending that I thought would be completely useless. Like this doesn't matter, you know, you're a 20 year old bartender. That I still sort of apply to things that I do every day today. And you're a hundred percent, right. It's these weird building blocks of experiences that you don't know all of a sudden one day in the future, you're going to remember this and that's going to sort of make you part of who you are today.
René Waslo: All right. Absolutely. I mean, even, even bartending, I mean, it's relationships, right? It's it's meeting people, talking to people, talking to strangers, being able to build rapport. It's there's so much skill learned with everything you do. It's great.
Lauren Vaccarello: A hundred percent. That's exactly what I took away from, from the time that I had there. And I there's no other job that will ever teach you how to build rapport, how to build rapport quickly. And then also how to act under pressure because people are very cranky.
René Waslo: Oh, yes. Oh yes. So, no, it's a, it's definitely. And I I'd say our, our profession is no different. It's about, you know, even though it's cyber that we're talking about, it's, it's about relationships. Because, you know, cyber is trust it's you know, building digital trust in your, your environment, your systems. I mean, but for us to be able to do that for clients, they need to trust us as humans, as persons, right. As people. So it definitely does kind of come back to also the ability to be able to build those relationships.
Lauren Vaccarello: A hundred percent. And I know you, you do a lot with energy and the energy industry. I would love to learn more about what you're doing as a cyber professional within energy.
René Waslo: Yes. And so it's you know, we within Deloitte we actually focus as professionals we focused on a technical specialty, so in this case, cyber but then, you know, the other piece of what we do is we make sure that we're focused on an industry. And so in my case, it is energy resources and industrials. And, and really the purpose of that is, you know, while there are certain aspects of I'll call it a technical proficiency that you can say is agnostic to an industry you know, if I go out and talk to a client, they want to know that I understand their issues. Right. And, and I've gotta be able to take that agnostic, technical, something that we're talking about and make it really applicable to their world. And so being able to understand their industry and, and, and the trends that are happening in their industry, as well as the challenges that they're facing and knowing that, what they're facing is not unique, it probably was faced by somebody else that we just talked to a week ago or will be tomorrow. And we can come up with solutions that we can help them implement, or even foresee is really critical. So, so being able to speak the language of our clients is huge. And so, so we've placed a very big emphasis on not only being technically proficient, but also being industry proficient.
Lauren Vaccarello: And what kind of areas in cyber do you typically advise on within energy, resources and industrials?
René Waslo: Yeah. So personally I've a couple areas that I focus on, like strategy enterprise resource planning systems like SAP. And so. As well as identity access management. And then of course my clients all go through breaches as everybody does nowadays. Right. But you know, when I, when I kind of look at it from a global perspective and say, you know, what are our clients kind of struggling with right now? You know, or, or what not necessarily struggling with, sometimes it's struggling with, but most of the times it's what are they focused on in, in changing their environments. And, you know, a lot of them are have fantastic departments that have been working in this space for a very long time. And other cases, you know, it's new technologies that are coming out and they just don't have those skill sets in house. You know, we, we help them with some of the emerging trends. And so, so we focus a lot on things like digitization, which, you know, with the pandemic, it was coming. This just accelerated the move to digitization. And so that's an area that's, that's hugely focused on. We also, you know, kind of work a lot with them on zero trust. I mean, there's, there's so much I'll call it movement between what they're doing, the interaction with their suppliers and their customers, and, you know, the boundaries of a, of an organization and what they need to focus on from a cyber perspective has changed. So there's no boundary anymore. So we got to help them kind of with looking through that and, and helping them implement the right solutions for their specific situation.
Lauren Vaccarello: And then could you tell me more about zero trust?
René Waslo: Yeah. It's I mean, it's very simply put, it's kind of saying, you know, in the, in the past, you know, it, you kind of, sort of connected in and you automatically, you know, two machines automatically trusted each other or two companies automatically trusted each other. And right now we're saying, you know, you just can't trust. So create a new trusted connection every time there you connect. And so building out that entire infrastructure is a pretty technical, but it's a journey, you know, it's not a, you've got to do this right now and it's going to be three months of implementation and you're done. It's a journey cause there's a lot of topics related to it. But so, so we work through you know, topics like zero trust. And interestingly, nowadays I think you would know this as well. I mean the whole world is very heavily into sustainability as well. So that's an area that we focus on as well, even though there's maybe not a direct link to to cyber, there is you know, as companies are going through again, a journey for sustainability, cause also not something that happens overnight, right. The ability to be able to report correctly, even even assess your initial footprint and sustainability, and then to on a continuous basis, be able to report back on how sustainable you are. That's all reliant on data, right? And data, you need to be able to trust the data at the end of the day. So a big cyber component there as well.
Lauren Vaccarello: I don't know. You're completely, completely right. And then one of the things you were mentioning is even around with zero trust of every single time needing to re-establish every login. I can imagine with how many different systems there are today, and just as an individual user, not even as a one system to another, all of the different connection points that are happening and that this is ever, ever increasing. How much more complex do you see this world getting?
René Waslo: Oh, that's sort of a, I think going to be the never ending story for us right, in our worlds. Both from a personal perspective, as well as professional cause you're right. I mean, I think a couple of years ago, they said the average number of devices that an individual connected into was at least seven. And at the time I thought that's impossible and I started counting my personal connection, so devices, and it was more than seven. So, so, you know, it affects us as individuals, but certainly as organizations especially in the energy resources industrial space and this move to digitization and smart factories and smart grids and all those kinds of things, right. It, we start opening up that entire connection point to needing to have automated input from our suppliers all the way to being connected with our customers. And so that's not going to change. All it's going to do is it's going to continue to require organizations to know that their second and the third parties and the fourth parties that they do business with are all secure. And so, you know, the question is really going to be where do you, where do you put the ring around accountability for what you can do, from a cyber perspective? So it won't change. I mean, the world's not going to go backwards. It will go forward. So, I mean, we're moving into a world of artificial intelligence and blockchain and all sorts of other great technologies. And that's all going to just continue to increase our need for cyber security.
Lauren Vaccarello: Absolutely. And you, you mentioned this idea of having to sort of ring fence around, where does accountability start? Where, where do you see, where do you see the role of cybersecurity in a company beginning? And then how do you see artificial intelligence changing a lot of this?
René Waslo: Yeah. So let me, let me address, so that's a two-pronged question, right? So if I forget the second question by the end, just remind me. But the first one, you know, as it relates to the role of security or cybersecurity in an organization, it starts it started years ago being a very technical role. And, and, and you needed to know all the technologies to be able to implement, you know, the pieces. And it wasn't that complex compared to today's world. But what we're increasingly seeing now is that the role of the chief cyber security officer, chief information security officer is becoming a lot more business driven. And obviously they team up very closely with the chief information officer, the CIO and it's becoming business roles, not just technology roles. Because when you talk about things like digitization, when you talk about interaction with customers and, and you talk about things like how do you make the customer experience better? Right. As an example you don't want cybersecurity to be sort of a break on the pedal. He wanted to still be an accelerator, but with the right, you know, checks and balances built into the system. So being able to work through those discussions of what is needed, what are the critical points that any interaction will need and working through that to get to the right solution is very critical.
Lauren Vaccarello: And I'm sure you, you get this a lot. And with all the and sure you get this a lot with the breaches that are happening which feels like more and more. What do you, what are some of the biggest threats you see for cybersecurity or emerging threats that you're seeing?
René Waslo: Yes. And so, you know, breaches are interesting because they, they at the breaches of course are ever increasingly complex and well thought out. And it's not necessarily, you know, a single person doing attacks on, you know, these large multinational organizations, but very organized hacking groups or nation state. And you know, when we kind of think about breaches alone you know, they're complicated, but they tend to follow, once, once the, these new breaches come out, they tend to follow industry by industry. And so we've started seeing an incredible increase in the energy resources, industrial industry with breaches. And, you know, part of it is when we, when we think about it, you know, and how, how does it affect the consumer? It depends on the type of breach. It depends on the of organization that's been hacked. I mean, most, not most recently, but one of the recent ones, where was the colonial pipeline one, which you know, the company did everything of course that they could, but you know, it affected a lot of the east coast in terms of getting gas. And so a lot of people's day to day lives were affected to some extent. Was it debilitating to them? Probably not, but there was a perception that it was right. So it depends on the type of breach. I mean, as, as some of these breaches can have sort of, I'll say, move through the industry you know, it, it, it's gonna be a different effect from, from each type of company within that, within that industry. I will say though, that, you know, when we kind of look at some of the trends, I mean, breaches are here. They'll always be here. It's going to be about, it's not necessarily for organizations right now anymore about how well they defend, although they do need to defend very well.
Lauren Vaccarello: Yeah.
René Waslo: The response is really what I'm talking about. You know, it's going to be critical and they're going to have to do that well. What we're more focused on right now is to put them in a position where they don't necessarily get into the position of having a breach or minimize the risk of the breach. That's really what it is. And so there's a lot of technologies that we help them deploy. So I w I would say kind of that concept of putting them in a position to manage the risk of a breach the best way possible. That's one of the things that we're focused on, you know, as it relates to some of the, some of the other trends that we're seeing, I think digitization is here to continue and that'll continue to increase. And we're going to start seeing, you know, more use of, like we talked earlier about artificial intelligence analytics we're going to start seeing, like we talked about zero trust, a little bit more. Start seeing you know, the movement to cloud. So there's, there's, there's so much that this industry is, is working on you know, and then you couple that with these other precious like, you know, continuing to make money sustainability. Which, and, and I, I know I mentioned sustainability before, but for this industry, it's huge. Right. They're considered, you know, one of the biggest contributors to sustainability. However, you know, and I always find this fascinating cause people say, how did you get into ER&I, right. It's not necessarily one that you would say it's a natural fit or anything for you know, somebody to say, I'm going to focus on that space. But it's such an interesting and fascinating industry. And you know, when we talk about sustainability, I, I can't think of another industry that's doing more to help combat the problem than they are. So you know, we see a lot of trends and all these are influencers like sustainability influencer on some of the cyber trends. And so we'll, you know, obviously kind of deal with those as they come up. But, but just so much moving, moving in these industries and changing that it, it continues to stay fascinating.
Lauren Vaccarello: I mean, you, I think you hit the nail on the head with that. Is that how rapidly ER&I is, is changing and growing. And it's, it's funny or very, very tangential, right before I got on the podcast, I was talking to about getting solar panels put on my roof because...
René Waslo: there you go. It's the right thing to do, right?
Lauren Vaccarello: I was like, this is the right thing to do. And they were like, why do you want to do this? Because I have a new flat roof and I live in a city where I can and I'm, this is what I should be doing. I should be changing my consumption and just as a an individual consumer, but we need all of these clients that you're working with to keep evolving at a much faster pace so that you know, me and my little house can add some solar panels to the roof. And it's like, you have this incredibly evolving industry, plus the digitization of the entire industry, the D the digitalization of the manufacturing process. And then you have all of these threats, all of these cyber threats coming in at the same time that it's the it's gotta be a fascinating high paced high change, really, really interesting space to be in.
René Waslo: Oh, it's, it's absolutely exciting. And I tell you, I in, in the early part of my career, I focused very heavily on cyber only. And, and, you know, we talked about how do you kind of get to that intersection of the two. I happened to work, and although I worked on a number of different types of companies and different industries in the beginning, I, it somehow, I, it just seemed to naturally fall more into the energy resources, industrial type companies. And I think when I started really kind of talking to some industry experts and, and, and kind of just getting involved with how fascinating the industry was and that then that marriage of cyber and industry really mattered to me. And I could really say, okay, I get it. You know, this is, this is really the fun part. And so, you know, that's, I think when you're kind of focused on changing, changing businesses and you know, and you can see the change around you, that's when it gets really interesting. Instead of just being stuck in a technology. But I'll tell you cyber in and by itself as, as a profession, is, is, is, you know, we talk about how industry, you know, fascinating ER&I is. Cyber as a professional cyber, as a, an area to focus on is equally fascinating. I mean it changes constantly, right? I mean, so, you know, the things I focused on five, 10 years ago and the things I'm focusing on now and the things that we're going to be focusing on in the next 10 years or so is probably going to be different. And I can't necessarily say what they're going to be in 10 years. Is itgoing to be, you know, quantum computing and cyber, the cyber aspects related to quantum computing? That's not even 10 years away, that's around the corner, but you know, it's, it's going to continue to change and, and, and that keeps cyber as a, as a profession, just so fascinating.
Lauren Vaccarello: Oh, I, I can imagine. It's the, what did I read? I'm guessing this is directionally directionally, correct, but not a hundred percent. It's the, in the last 10 years we had basically like a hundred years of change and innovation in the last decade. And we need to basically assume that these innovation cycles are getting faster, more powerful and more condensed. So if you think about it that way, 10 years from now, just the whole world is going to look different. Five years from now, the whole world is going to look different. And you are talking about quantum computing and cyber. You're like, oh, that's around the corner. It's like, wait a second. This is around the corner? When did this happen?
René Waslo: You know, everything nowadays is around the corner, right? Cause we're living in hockey stick world. Everything just seems to, you know, that, that back-end hockey stick just seems to be increasingly escalating in its timeline. So absolutely.
Lauren Vaccarello: Completely it's from consumer technology to business technology, to, to cyber. And and you mentioned blockchain and AI, and I'm sitting here going, I remember when blockchain just started rolling out and this, this is new, but it's not, it's not new anymore.
René Waslo: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's it's not. And I mean, a lot of people kind of tend to think about blockchain as it's a financial services issue. You know, and it's not, it's, it's, it's really kind of being that integrated ledger and you can track inventory. You can, you know, do so many things. I mean, there's, there's food producers that I've tracked you know, I think it was lettuce back to the farmers through these integrated ledgers a couple of years ago. And that was how they kind of, sort of got started on blockchain. So there's so many applications, you know, that. It will continue. I think you know, five years from now, we're going to talk about blockchain as it's par for the course in any organization. Right.
Lauren Vaccarello: Yeah, and it really is going to be how quickly can organizations grow and adapt? And in the beginning of our conversation, you talked about the, you know, every companies were going digital and then COVID hit. I know that was your ten-year plan, but that is your 10 week plan right now, so how quickly can we, how quickly can we move on this? And I think there's a ton of accelerators happening right now.
René Waslo: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, but you know, even if you think about your own personal life, I mean I mean, how many of us do all of our banking online? Do a lot of our purchasing online. Right? A lot of our roles have become very digital and, you know, we don't even think twice about buying something online anymore.
Lauren Vaccarello: Oh, wait, I remodeled my entire house and pretty much everything I bought was bought through my phone or my computer, because I couldn't go to a store to buy this. So this, this is going to work, but it was could you imagine five years ago spending $10,000 for a home purchase on an app on your phone? You're like, that's insane. I would never do this.
René Waslo: But you're expecting inherent trust, right?
Lauren Vaccarello: Yup. Yup. And I bought all of my appliances through an app on my phone from someone I'd never met before, but that's how this works and you're completely right. Like, trust is at the center of it. And knowing that I have to trust the company I'm working with, the process for everything. And this is good, better either way. I also trust American Express so that if the purchase doesn't work, I may, and it's wrong, I can just call American Express and they'll just go and fight and give me my money back.
René Waslo: But you also had that inherent trust in cyber right there, because you, you, you kind of trust it that your information was secure through, throughout the entire process of the transaction.
Lauren Vaccarello: Completely. And it was, I am spending all of this money online, with companies I don't know, and I'm going to a website or to an app or whatever, and they're not going to steal my information. They're not going to steal my data. They're not going to steal my identity. And you're completely right. It is that inherent security behind everything that lets me go, I'm sure. It's fine. I'm sure I could spend this money with people. I don't know.
René Waslo: Yeah. And you know, you just talked about identity and that's why the concepts, even of implementing identity access management at organizations are so critical nowadays. It's been around for a while, but it's just gotten much more complicated and complex. Because you know, when we, when we implement it, you've got to be able to validate the identity of the people that work there, all the vendors. Now, all the suppliers, all the purchasers all the machines and in, in the ER&I world it's now even identities of products and connected products to each other because connected products is just going to become huge. I mean, it's already big, but it's, it's just going to continue to increase significantly to make sure that, you know, we've got a connected product security or inherent pro product security as well. So so yeah, it's, it's everywhere. Security is everywhere. Cyber is everywhere.
Lauren Vaccarello: I think the idea of the connected products is so, so fascinating. And if I think about in the ER&I space, everything across what we do, every piece of energy that and resources we interact with, and it's going to have sensor data that's pushing everything together to understand how, you know, these windmills are working and how windmills are generating power that's getting pushed to the grid and it's just fascinating. And what's going to happen if you're, if a sensor goes down and you're losing data? Then what's happening? And did it go down because there was a breach? Or did it go down because, I don't know, there was a storm? And I just, it is such an interesting, interesting, interesting concept, an idea that you're seeing every day.
René Waslo: It really is. And, you know that's actually been, you know, we were talking breaches earlier. That was one of the big trends in breaches that we saw was in the connected connected product space. But, and I think we'll continue to see breaches in that, in that section. I mean, but you know, like you said, you know, electricity meter is going to be a sensor out there. That's a connected product, you know. If you think about how many sensors there are in an electric vehicle, right? Or eventually in planes, or even in a manufacturing site, the more they digitize and become humanless, so to speak, right? It's all going to be about connected, connected sensors, connected products. And so, you know, the bigger, the focus on that. And that's, that's really an area that I'd say up until a couple of years ago, it's been around, of course, but up until a couple years ago you know, there was a lot of manual intervention still with this, but it's just operational technology or sensor technology has just exploded in the last couple of years. And then of course it's not just putting the security in, it's continuing to monitor those sensors. So, so that's, that's just a huge area for the ER&I industry
Lauren Vaccarello: No definitely. And I think about modern monitoring those sensors, and then also just the tremendous amount of data that's being produced from I, my scientific number of a kajillion sensors going everywhere, collecting all this data and what you're learning from this and trying to understand how things are working, make sure things are working, prevent security breaches. Make sure you trust all the data that's coming in is just fascinating.
René Waslo: Yeah. And understanding what data matters. Right.
Lauren Vaccarello: Exactly.
René Waslo: Which cause not, not all data is created equal just the same as nearly anything else. Right. But knowing what you need to be able to do, preventative maintenance on those sensors or on your shop floor or on your smart grid you know, that's going to be able to save companies a tremendous amount of data. If they can actually have the right data to do that preventative maintenance, a lot of them are doing that already now. But that will certainly increase, but you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's fascinating to see how much we've started looking at OT in the ER&I space not just for energy resource industrials, but if you think about it, it affects telecommunications. It affects your smart cities. It's going to be something that really just pushes all throughout our world.
Lauren Vaccarello: So lately. So I think about the, the job that you, you've had and what you're working on, and you must have to make incredible amounts of decisions every single day, working with hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of companies everything you've, you've done in your current role, what do you think the most difficult decision you've had to make is?
René Waslo: You know, it's and I think we've talked a little bit about this. It was that push and pull between cyber and industry, right? Cause I, I, I think it's so easy to go hundred percent into cyber because there's so much in it. Right. And it's fascinating. And, you know, we, we love being able to dive deep into every technology and come up with the trends and so forth that you can totally just be 100% cyber focused. Same with industry, right. Everything I just said, same applicability to, to industry. And so that push and pull is really hard. And so, you know that th that's an individual decision you have to make to say, yes, that's, you know, I want to, I want to be able to get that balance. Right. But it's also for, you know, when we kind of serve our clients and all of our people are, like I said, focused on both cyber as well as their respective industries. It's, it's a hard decision for anybody that kinda sort of comes up through the ranks, I'd say, to say now is a good time for me to change my focus a little bit, get, get to understand which aspect of cyber is the most fascinating to me and what I want to focus on personally, but also which industry do I find the most exciting that I personally want to focus on? You know? And so I think for every person it's a very individual choice. I mean, I happened to find my space. Somebody else is going to be absolutely passionate about healthcare and cyber or financial services and cyber. And, you know, there's no wrong answer because we need them all, right. So I think those are, it's a tough decision when you're, you're at a point in your life, you say, okay, what am I really, really interested as an individual? Right. And, and kind of finding that niche that is yours and yours only, and knowing you can make a difference in it, you know? So that was sort of a, a personal part of it. But I think that every, every professional I think in our space would go, would need to go through the same thing as well.
Lauren Vaccarello: Definitely. And then you, you mentioned a little bit about sort of the personal and the personal choices behind it. Outside of your, your current role, what's the most difficult decision you've had to make in your career?
René Waslo: Well, you know, I'm a, I'm a mother. And you know, when when you have children, it's, it's that same kind of push and pull that you need to think about, you know, when are you going to lean in more being a parent and a wife, and what are you going to lean in more to continue to be the professional in your chosen profession? Right. And where is that balance? And so, you know, so I think it's kind of a similar push and pull decision which is hard. I think, I think every woman that goes through this is, has got to make some of those tough decisions. Right. And it, and again, there's no right or wrong. Right. And, and frankly, it's, it's whether you're, you're you know, a woman with children or a woman with whatever other responsibilities, right? I think some of that push and pull is always going to be there. So I think, I think those are tough decisions that you have to make, but you gotta be comfortable with your choice. You gotta trust that you made the right decision and you don't look back, you know?
Lauren Vaccarello: I think that is excellent, excellent advice. Because it's so easy to always go back and say, what if I did this differently? And you know, what? There's, you can't. And be confident...
René Waslo: You do 20/20 vision.
Lauren Vaccarello: It's it would be so easy if we could, wouldn't it? Of, now that I know, now that I know how this worked out, if I would've turned left instead of right.
René Waslo: You know, it's it's funny. I'll never forget when my my youngest two are twins. They were probably about nine or 10. I did keep asking them the question. And I said, well, you know, do you want me to work less? Do you want me to get a different job? And they kept saying, no, no, you're fine. You know, and eventually a couple of years later, I said, you guys were always fine with me doing the job I do. Why was that? When, you know, you had a lot of your friends' parents were around a lot more and they said, mom, if you are around anymore, you would have driven us crazy. I was like, I was like, okay, well that, that answers a question at 10 years old, they're older than that, much older than that by now. But I was like, you know what? Your decisions are always the right ones.
Lauren Vaccarello: A hundreded percent. And the I read it a study that was parents today and moms today actually spend more time with their kids than moms in the fifties that were sort of stay at home. And it's, we just find more time somehow to work and to spend time with, to spend time with kids. And a lot of women did at a time where they were at...
René Waslo: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'll tell you as a, as a mom in cyber, you know it was, what was great was my kids always would tell their, their friends who would come over, don't do anything on your devices here. My mom is in cyber. She knows everything, right. And I never had any tracking tools on them, but they thought I knew everything because I was in cyber.
Lauren Vaccarello: And it's better that way. It is, it better of the, like, you, you know, not to go to this website, not to go to this place. Mom knows every single thing that you're doing. To Just a good kid.
René Waslo: It worked out. It worked out, that's for sure.
Lauren Vaccarello: I know you recently launched a women in cyber campaign. Can you tell me more about that?
René Waslo: Yes, it's so exciting. We're so excited about it. We actually have had, within Deloitte, we've had us a women in cyber campaign internally for many years. And we sort of recently decided to take it external as well, because you know, when we, when we, for a couple of different reasons. When we look at the numbers, right, I mean, in cyber, there's a projected to be about 145% need to just meet the current demand and, you know, that's a huge number. That's of one aspect of it. You know, the second is, is when we look at teams and, and any team in cyber is no different than that, right? I you need diversity of thinking. You need I mean, our, our, our clients are representative of, of, you know, a women in, in IT, and we need the same in, in cyber as well. And so we created this program Women in Cyber campaign, you know, it was created by us as women for women. And we want to encourage, you know, younger or younger professionals, even from you know, when they're in high school, deciding what they want to do one day, we want to encourage them to think about cyber and that we want them to see that, you know, you can be a cyber professional. You can be a cyber leader. And it's really trying to change that mindset, that this is not just for men, right? I mean, we talked about breaches. If you want to be a hacker, an ethical hacker you know, there's different skillsets involved in that and you know, the ethical hackers don't just consist of male teams. Right. And so, so let's meet that sort of face on, let's bring women along and let them realize that they can do these same jobs. Right. And they can do have the capabilities and skills to be successful in cyber as well.
Lauren Vaccarello: Oh you're a hundred percent right. And it's the multitasking and the creative thinking and the diversity of thought, I think is such an important perspective because if you are going to combat hackers, if you're going to be in the cyber, if you're going to be in cyber, we also have to realize that the people on the other side, whether it's individuals or designing the machines that are giving us all jobs in the cyberspace don't all look, sound, think, and act the same. So on the other side, if you want to be in cybersecurity, you're only going to be as effective as the diversity of your team who's thinking of all of the different angles and is coming up with ways to really sort of creatively analyze and protect.
René Waslo: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, it starts, it starts from you know, high school age and college age. And, you know, we want to try to keep you know, the number of women that are interested in cyber we want to keep the, you know, those numbers up. And continue to work at, at colleges and encourage women to move into this space of cyber and become cyber professionals. And, you know, through through the Women in Cyber program, we want to celebrate what women have achieved so far, right. And show them that there are role models out there. There are women that have done well in the world of cyber and they can be that as well.
Lauren Vaccarello: I love that. What other, how else can we inspire young women to explore opportunities in cyber and stem fields? What more can we do?
René Waslo: Continue to push them into the field. You know, there's, there's a huge gap, as I said, and, you know, I think by the end of 2021 only about 25% of all cyber roles will be filled by women. We at Deloitte half about the same you know, ratio at this point. And you know, it's, it's going to be podcasts like yours. It's going to be, like I said, showing up at colleges, at high schools, it's going to be talking to our friends and their children, their daughters, right. And, and continue to work with the professionals that we work with in the space of cybersecurity and, and, and frankly keeping them in cybersecurity. Right. Because we want to really just address that gender deficit, like head-on with the upcoming generations, we have to do it. I think it's the right answer to do it. And you know, we will, we will be more successful with that.
Lauren Vaccarello: I, you are a hundred percent right. And it is unfortunately, we can't combat the, the tail end of where much more seasoned professionals are today as much. But if we go into your point to high schools to start pushing these as potential careers and showing young women what's possible, like that, that ends up just compounding over time. And you know, as well as I, to how quickly time just sort of bleeds by.
René Waslo: Sure
Lauren Vaccarello: It just, it is terrifying how quickly time goes.
René Waslo: Don't think about it.
Lauren Vaccarello: No, no, I'm trying, I'm trying not to. As I was cleaning out old photos when I was cleaning out my apartment the other day and I went, oh, I was 20 there. Oh, that was sweet. That was sweet. I, I remember that. I don't know how that happened, where the last time went. But if we think that way, if we start to get into high schools and inspire these young women into cybersecurity, into STEM related fields, 10 years from now, the gap will be so much smaller, 20 years from now, hopefully it'll be non-existent. The my I went to a math and science high school and I get the little like alumni newsletter and there's a, a group in it, which I just thought was the best name ever. And it was, I think it's the robotics team. And they're called the Fe Maidens to be iron maiden. I was like, that is amazing.
René Waslo: Beautiful. That's beautiful.
Lauren Vaccarello: This is the appropriate amount of nerdiness, all, all in one place. And I, I loved that they had this, the, like the women's robotics team at my high school. And I went, I wish, I wish they had that when I was in high school. I probably would have, I dunno, not paid any attention to it because I was in high school and was far too cool to do anything. But.
René Waslo: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think, I think schools have come such a long way, as have businesses, right. have businesses. But, but it's not gonna stop. I mean, we, we kind of, sort of have to keep that pressure on to make sure that we, we, we keep focusing on it so that we can bring more and more women into this space.
Lauren Vaccarello: Nope. Totally agree. I can talk to you about this all day and I feel like we have to get you. We hosted a Women in Data summit recently that was just amazing. We have to get you on the next one that we do. And we had we had a NASA astronaut was on it and she had just come back from space. We had another woman that was an expert in AI. We had another woman that was an actress and model who turned coder. It was just this incredibly like interesting diverse group of people. So the next one we do, we have to.
René Waslo: Fantastic.
Lauren Vaccarello: Get you on this one. And then I have a couple of quick questions to, the quick fire questions at the end of the interview. So don't overthink anything. Hopefully it should be light and fun. What is one talent or skill that's not on your resume?
René Waslo: Interior design.
Lauren Vaccarello: Really?
René Waslo: I absolutely love that. Yeah. I mean, do you want me to do a modern house or you know, a farmhouse style? I mean, I absolutely would enjoy doing that. It's just a fun, fun, and a time-consuming but fun activity and skill that I love doing.
Lauren Vaccarello: Oh my God. René, where, where are you? I've been remodeling this house. It has been killing me. I can't pick a coffee table to save my life.
René Waslo: No, I, I I've always enjoyed that. So that's pretty much what all the books in my and my library are about. So I truly enjoy that.
Lauren Vaccarello: That is amazing. It's the creative, it's the creativity of all of it.
René Waslo: Right.
Lauren Vaccarello: What what is your, do you have a TV show or podcast or a book or anything, you've been bingeing lately?
René Waslo: Queen's Gambit. I think it actually just got a bunch of Emmys or whatever TV awards, now recently as well, but yeah, that's the last one that I've been watching
Lauren Vaccarello: That was good one.
René Waslo: You know, definitely binged through it. So...
Lauren Vaccarello: Do you have any advice for cyber professionals stepping into leadership roles?
René Waslo: You know, be true to yourself. You know, have integrity in everything that you're doing and trust yourself and trust your teams. Everybody's going into it with the right intentions. And you don't, you're never an island. There's always help around you. So rely on others and trust that what they're doing for you is, is, is, is right. And you know, enjoy what you're doing, have humor with it all.
Lauren Vaccarello: Awesome. And final question. What is the top piece of advice? You'd give the younger version of youself?
René Waslo: You know I I'd probably say that. We all make mistakes and don't, don't let the mistakes rule you learn from them. I've always kinda said to myself, you know, nobody's ever moved forward by looking at the rear view mirror. Right. And so you know, embrace, embrace who you are, embrace what you've done and take, take any mistake and take it as an opportunity to improve. And, you know, you do so much more right than you do wrong. Right. And so celebrate the successes just as well as you celebrate some of the failures is true as well, because you know, as long as you're true to yourself, you will be fine even with those. So that's probably say.
Lauren Vaccarello: That that is a really, really good one. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. This has been absolutely fantastic. And for everyone that is looking, if you were bored with your, your job or the function that you're in, and you need a little excitement, as cybersecurity in the energy space it seems like a way to go.
René Waslo: Lauren. Thank you so much. It was lovely. And it was a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks for having me.