A Cybersecurity Phoenix Story: Dealing with Burnout and How to Recover with Special Guest, Karen Worstell
Dec 15, 2022Season 1Episode 13
Karen Worstell
This is a bonus episode with Karen Worstell as she shares with us her experiences from her own burnout of a CISO to finding a new path in life and how it brought her back to the world of cybersecurity.
Karen Worstell's story of overcoming burnout and finding her purpose inspires us all.
"The truth is, for those of us who especially for women and minorities, underrepresented groups, for those of us in this industry, we're the shoulders that the next group stands on. If we flame out and we leave, those shoulders aren't there."
Karen Worstell is a cybersecurity expert with over 20 years of experience in the industry. She was a Chief Information Security Officer at Microsoft, where she unfortunately worked herself into a state of burnout. She sought help and was diagnosed with sleep deprivation and started therapy, which was a pivotal moment in her journey. After leaving her job due to a medical emergency, she realized she needed to take care of herself. She became a chaplain and worked in palliative care for three years. Here, she reflected on her experiences in the cybersecurity industry and realized a need for more support for those in the industry. She now works to help people in cybersecurity through burnout and moral injury.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
Karen Worstell's experience with burnout and recovery
The need for better support for employees experiencing burnout
The importance of figuring out one's purpose in life
This is a bonus episode with Karen Worstell as she shares with us her experiences from her own burnout of a CISO to finding a new path in life and how it brought her back to the world of cybersecurity.
Karen Worstell's story of overcoming burnout and finding her purpose inspires us all.
"The truth is, for those of us who especially for women and minorities, underrepresented groups, for those of us in this industry, we're the shoulders that the next group stands on. If we flame out and we leave, those shoulders aren't there."
Karen Worstell is a cybersecurity expert with over 20 years of experience in the industry. She was a Chief Information Security Officer at Microsoft, where she unfortunately worked herself into a state of burnout. She sought help and was diagnosed with sleep deprivation and started therapy, which was a pivotal moment in her journey. After leaving her job due to a medical emergency, she realized she needed to take care of herself. She became a chaplain and worked in palliative care for three years. Here, she reflected on her experiences in the cybersecurity industry and realized a need for more support for those in the industry. She now works to help people in cybersecurity through burnout and moral injury.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
Karen Worstell's experience with burnout and recovery
The need for better support for employees experiencing burnout
The importance of figuring out one's purpose in life
Loved this episode? Please leave us a review and rating on your favorite podcast platform!
James McQuiggan:
Hello there. I'm James McQuiggan and I'm the producer of Security Masterminds. And this is a bonus episode from our interview that we did with Karen Worstell. Overall, our whole discussion was about 90 minutes. And there was a lot of great information that we learned from Karen. And I wanted to make sure that we had that available for you. The first episode focused on the role of the CISO its challenges and how it's changed over the years. This episode dealt with her burnout and recovery and how management can help support that with their employees. So we're just going to jump right in and pick up within the episode. As we hear from Erich. And then of course, additional comments and thought leadership that we get from Eric and Jelle. Please enjoy this bonus episode with Karen Worstell.
Erich Kron:
She mentioned that she stepped away from the CISO role before being invited to the table, the board table. That's something that again has not necessarily happened up until recent years. But that's changing a little bit these days. But I wanted to understand about why she thought that happened and, and how she views her role in cybersecurity today.
Karen Worstell:
I talk about it, and I'll tell you, I didn't talk about it until about four years ago because for me it was embarrassing and it was, I felt a ding on my career. And so I really carried that around for quite some time and I've talked to enough CISOs to know that there's, this is a shared experience, , so I'm not for the longest time, you know, when something happens to you that is a shock to your system and it is a awkward, would be a mild way to put it, kind of a situation. You go into this place where you think, what did I do wrong? How did this happen? Why didn't it have a better outcome? What should I have done? Why can't I make it work? And you think you were the only one. And so the reason I started sharing this story was I realized that it happened to so many people that weren't talking about it, that if I talked about mine, people would start to talk about it. So I found myself working really very hard and, enjoying very, very much my role at Microsoft as a Chief Information Security officer there. I really enjoyed the role. I enjoyed the people that I worked with. Normal set of difficult circumstances, but also just a really terrific place to work. But there were some very challenging scenarios that had developed, and my response to having very challenging scenarios develop is to work harder, work hard. I've never really encountered an obstacle I didn't feel like I could overcome, and all I had to do was work harder to do it. I hadn't learned yet that the best way to handle some of these things is either a walk away or number two, bring in the troops. Do you know what I'm saying? Don't try to do things alone. I worked myself into a situation that one could only kind of classify as like burnout. But at an extreme level, what happened was I was at home one night. I rarely was home, by the way. I had an apartment a mile from campus, and I lived in the apartment during the week, and then I went home on the weekends and I was home on a weekend, and I heard voices. And the voices were telling me that I was a frog, had done a fake, that I never knew anything technical in my life, and I had managed to fool everybody. And I'm audibly hearing this voice in the room, and I'm thinking, I'm dreaming. I get up and I walk around and it starts following me around the house. Long story short, you know, I finally go to my laptop and I flip open my laptop and there's my usual set of a bazillion emails and I open one up and I, I start talking back to the voice and I was like, do you see this email? This is a really complicated technical email and I am answering it . So, uh, and that's when I was like, Karen, you are wide awake. You are hearing voices and you are talking back to them, and it's time to see the doctor. And I called a psychiatrist at the local medical center and he saw me right away and he did a full exam. He said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Really? You are sleep deprived, like significantly sleep deprived. And then he said something that changed my life. He wrote out three prescriptions and he handed them to me and he said, welcome to Microsoft. He said, you have no idea how many people just like you I see here every day. And that was like, I was speechless. But what I realized at that moment was that we had a workforce that is working in such a way that they are self-medicating just to be able to go, or they're, they're medicating or self-medicating just to go to work and that broke my heart. Shortly after that, I started seeing a therapist, which was fantastic, was one of the best decisions I had ever made. Well, one thing I had told the therapist that going to work was beginning to feel like every day I got kicked in the stomach and then I got my legs swept out from under me. There was some very tough situations going on and I wasn't getting the support that I needed in order for me to be able to handle it very well. And so when I told her that her name was Louise, and then I got two months later an appendicitis attack. I went and obviously had that taken care of and , I was out of work for 10 days. By the time I got back to work, I had a meeting on the very first day with Mike Howard and his office was up on the third floor of the building. And I decided that since I'd been out of work for so long and I hadn't been getting enough exercise, I was going to take the stairs. And I got to the top of the concrete stairs in the building. I think it was in building 34 or something like that on the campus in Redmond. And my legs went out from under me, and I went down the concrete stairs, managed to make sure that my laptop didn't break, but my knee didn't do as well. And when I got out of the emergency room, after having my knee stapled shut, I hobbled over to Louise's office and she looked at me and she says, what the blank just happened to you? And I explained to her what had happened. She goes, I do not want this to be lost on you. Listen to me very carefully. She said. You told me several months ago that your work experience was like being kicked in the stomach and having your legs swept out from under you. I want you to pay very close attention to what just happened, and I wanna know when you're gonna resign. And that probably saved my health, and it wasn't the way I wanted to go out for sure, but it was the medical crisis that essentially told me, you cannot do this anymore. It's not that you're not smart enough. It's not that you're not capable enough. I had already demonstrated at AT&T Wireless all the things that I knew were possible in cybersecurity the pinnacle of my achievement really was there. So that wasn't on the table for me. What was on the table for me was how much did I care about myself? How much did I care about my health? How much did I care about being in this game for the long haul? I love cybersecurity. I have always loved this industry. What was I doing to make sure I could stay in the game? Because the truth is for those of us who, especially on for women and minorities, underrepresented groups, for those of us in this industry, we're the shoulders that the next group stands on. If we flame out and we leave, those shoulders aren't there. So I ran into the brick wall, is basically what ended up happening and I had to take some time off. So I did. I started doing consulting on the side cuz I still like to do the work. I did something that was much more low key, but also right up my alley. I know how to overhaul. if somebody comes to me and says, this is the security program, fix this. I got that. Right. And so I just like staying involved in, in helping other people be really successful in their program. And I went back and did, a few years later I did a short gig at Russell Investments as their Chief Information Security officer. And then I did something completely different.
Erich Kron:
You know, I think this is a time that people should stop listening to this for a moment. Make a note of this broadcast, and I want you to, at least once a year listen to that section again, because I, I was in a job that was the same way. It was just brutalizing me and I felt alone, and I felt like only working harder, working longer, doing more, was gonna fix it. When now that I'm out of that, now that I'm away from that, I realized that other people have had that same experience and that it was just a matter of bad leadership. It wasn't me. And that no amount of what I was gonna do and drive myself into the ground was gonna fix that problem. And I think we all need that reminder on occasion in a very easy going but kind of upfront way like she just put it.
Jelle Wieringa:
Yeah, I heard her tell this story and it, it, it kind of left me the loss for words. It also kind of broke my heart to hear somebody like Karen, someone who has well proven over and over again that she's more than capable of what she's doing. And someone that I look up at kind as a force to be reckoned with in, in the cybersecurity industry, tell this story. She is incredibly brave and generous, I think, to share this really personal story. And I hope that hearing this story brings more people to reflect upon their own situation. The honesty of this story and the wealth of experience that she shared are something that I hope many of us can learn from.
Erich Kron:
I, I mentioned that she left. And I wanted to know kind of like what did she do during that time and, and looking back at her career when she took some time off or, or an intermission as one might say. I'm really glad she came back, but it, it was kind of interesting.
Karen Worstell:
When I left Russell Investments, three things happened all in the same week. My mother died, my sister was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, and I got laid off. I got laid off along with a bunch of other executives. So it wasn't just me, but I take some solace in that . But the shock of that, I was like, all. I know this drill. I've taken care of my elders before. I've done the caregiver thing. I've had plan A, plan B that I'm used to that. So I had my Plan A, which was take a break, let things settle down, sort of see where the landscape is, and get back on the horse. And I had trouble getting back on the horse, like really no interest. And then I was like, oh, I know how to fix this. I'll buy a SANS course that'll make me have to do something . So I bought the forensics course with all the hardware and everything and it sat there, it just sat, I just stared at it like I couldn't even, I love this stuff. That's when I was like, what's happening? So one of the things I didn't say was throughout my cybersecurity career, I was a caregiver for the adult members of our family, all five of whom had dementia. And the rugged real deep valleys that you encounter as a caregiver in some of those kinds of situations. At one point I had a kind of call it that inner knowing, whatever you wanna say, and it was just that the way that I was gonna make meaning out of the deeply personal challenges that I faced while I was trying to do my technology job and be a caregiver and a parent and a wife was that I was going to be a chaplain. Well, that was several years prior to my end of my time at Russell, but I realized as the weeks went by. That weeks and months went by, and finally I had the one year anniversary of my mother's death, and I still hadn't done anything that was the thing I was supposed to be doing next. And so I was like, huh. So I was working, with the local philanthropy department in, I had a relationship with them, with the local regional medical center. And I struck up a conversation with my counterpart there and said, huh, you know, I, I think this is the weirdest thing. I mean, I think I'm supposed to go do this chaplaincy thing and I'm really not sure how to do that. She goes, oh my gosh. She goes, the next cohort of chaplains being trained for the, for this medical center starts next week and they're interviewing candidates and they still have one slot open. And I went over the next day and I mean, I got that interview slot and I went over and I interviewed the next day and I was added to the cohort. So the short version of the story is I did another. I earned another master's degree, and I spent the next three years with 2000 supervised clinical hours of training and eventually became the palliative care fellow at the Veterans Administration. That was, I mean, there's no way for us in our earthly knowing, like our day to day knowing to understand such a change in direction. To be honest, it looks like, like what was like, what was that? But for me, in hindsight, especially being able now to look at things in hindsight, the thing that I realize is that I needed healing. In order for me to sit with another person in their space, in their crisis, I have to have dealt with my stuff. I can't be bringing my stuff into their room. And so much of the, so much of the training that I had to prepare myself to be a palliative care fellow, a palliative for those who don't know palliative care, it's not really hospice. What it is, is when someone is given a life limiting diagnosis, um, then palliative care is there to help them live the best life to the best of the ability and time that they have left. And that often involves very spiritual, deeply spiritual conversations. As well as very practical things. And I ended up doing a lot of work on myself while I was actually learning to my, my poor patients. They, I, they were, I was learning and on the job training, but had the most amazing experiences, opened my eyes to a world that I had forgot to be present to while I was involved in the day to day. Very, very temporal sorts of things that we have to deal with in the technology world, right? And so I did that and while I was working there is when I realized kind of like bringing things full circle and seeing the whole picture that there was burnout and moral injury and moral distress, not just in the soldiers and in their families, but in the staff. And our role was to work with anyone. And as I was doing that and reflecting on my time in cybersecurity, working at large companies, and the number of encounters that I'd had with my own employees, it was realizing that there, there's something in chaplaincy called the "principle of proximity," which is the chaplain doesn't sit in their field tent waiting for a soldier to make an appointment from the front line. The chaplain goes and sits in the foxhole. And for me, cybersecurity's, my foxhole. And I realized that we had two things happening. One of them was women were fleeing our industry and the people who were staying were burning out. And I was like, wow, that is where I need to be. I I don't know how that's gonna go or where, how I'm gonna work there, but that's my foxhole and I'm gonna go figure it out.
Erich Kron:
Wow. I swear every time I ask her a question, it just gets more and more deep and the answers are just so personal. She shares so much of herself in this, and I think it's just, it's an amazing story that we need to remember.
Jelle Wieringa:
Yeah. One of the great things in people, or about people in general is that most of us have a greater purpose we aspire to in life, and this is especially so in our industry of cybersecurity, but only a few of us have truly figured out what this goal really means, and especially not at the level that Karen is able to describe here. And I've found that working towards that goal, figuring out what that goal is, can actually be really, it's almost a healing journey and we all do it. It's truly rewarding to figure out what your purpose is, but a purpose can be as small as what do you really want to achieve in your career? And I'm not talking what role, what function, what job level you wanna attain. But in cybersecurity, the one goal we all share is we wanna help. We wanna help people be safe. That's a good thing, but. Go beyond that. Figure out for yourself what drives you. And Karen has done that and she's had a lot of setbacks, but those have also enabled her to figure out what she wants to do right now and it really is inspiring.
Erich Kron:
So she, she's just experienced so much of this, and we've talked about burnout and we know that that's an issue in the industry. And, and so many of these things that we do where it's high pressure, high stakes, we put a lot on ourselves a lot because we are the type of people that care. We do care about this stuff. It is a personal failure for us sometimes when this goes wrong. So we are very, very subject to burning out. And so I wanted to ask her, somebody who's dealt with this so many times what recommendations did she have for professionals when they're feeling like they're burning out, uh, morally or physically even, because it can take that physical toll, like she said,
Karen Worstell:
That's a fantastic question and I'm glad you asked it. First of all, there's a very interesting, I'm gonna , do a little bit of history. The Desert Fathers, you know, early church fathers, desert Fathers, however you call them, had something they called the seven deadly sins. And one of them, and it's considered to be one of the more serious of the seven they called, they had a very archaic word for it. It's archaic by our terms called Acia, a c E Dia. And over time that word fell out of usage and it got replaced with a word called sloth. And so many of us think that sloth means laziness. Here's what I would like to kind of describe what Acia is and why it's so serious, because that's what most of the people who are going through these very difficult situations are dealing with. And I wanna preface this by saying it's always a good idea to get checked out by a physician. There's many medical things that can contribute to having a low mood, okay? Low mood, even depression. All of those should all always get checked out. So don't necessarily assume you have to kind of do this on your own and you just have to suck it up and, and figure out how to, how to work your way out of this. Cuz I can tell you that from my own experience in it, when it's bad, you are staring down a very dark abyss and you can't see the bottom. And I remember, I remember my own feeling being, I described it to Louise, which was, I feel like I'm standing on the very edge of this. And if I fall in and I scream, I will never stop and I will never hit the bottom. So I want to acknowledge that the feeling is overwhelming, and so get some help if that's available to you. Even reach out to EAP at work. That being said, the hopeful side of it is much of this is related to ac, cia, and as CIA is this sense of what I'm doing doesn't matter. It isn't going to ever change. This is a mind game to a large degree, it isn't going to ever change. Nothing I do is going to make a difference and we start to detach. We start to disengage. And the reason that the desert father saw Acedia as so dangerous is that when we start to disengage from life, when we start to disengage from our work, from the things that we love to do, from feeling the grass on our feet and the wind in our face, we are starting to shut down. And the best description I've heard of it is, it is as if your soul's song goes silent. And it is such a damaging thing to happen. That's why the church fathers made it one of the seven deadly sins. It always sounds so much worse when you call it that, but it's because it has such a tremendous impact on your, you have a, every person has a God-given purpose. There's a plaque on my wall that I, I'm gonna look at right now while I read this, but it says, the child must know that they are a miracle, that since the beginning of the world, there has never been, and until the end of the world, there will not be another child like them., that's from Pablo Casals. And the reason I read that quote is because every single person who's listening to this podcast, every single person who's on this planet, is here with a purpose for being here. Whether you call that you're calling, whether you call that your mission, whether you call that your sacred contract, there's all kinds of different words for it, right? But what happens with Acedia is you let go. You begin to let go of that purpose for the reason why you're here, the reason why you're uniquely made, and the reason why you exist. So never ever doubt that that reason is there, but you may not feel like you have it. And that's, that is the beginning of as cia, the really great news about, as cia, it's some people call it depression's evil twin because it's not clinical depression and you can do something about it. So the best thing to do about it, and there's Hal Elrod. He wrote a book called Miracle Morning. So this, a lot of this comes from what he talks about, which is movement. Connection with whatever is your divine, whatever your higher power is, call it worship if that's what you if, if that's what you're comfortable with. Music song, getting in touch with nature. There's a such a thing as a forest bath, which is just incredible to me because I have a friend who's dealing with breast cancer and her white blood cell count was so low the doctor told her to go take a forest bath and it pulled her white blood cell count back up into normal range. We are creatures who are intended to be engaged with nature and as, and we're particularly susceptible, I believe, as technologists because we're constantly in front of devices and screens and we're sitting and we're not moving, and we're focused on things that are not tangible. The things that we can feel so smell, I call it smell swell smells. Winter's coming here in Denver, we just had our first snowfall. We've got still got snow on the ground. And for me that's the signal for smelling swell smells for me. That's beewax candles, that soup on the stove, that's, you know, whatever we do environmentally that we find really. Gives us joy or pleasure. And even if you don't feel like doing it, if it's something that has been good for you in the past, go do that thing. Go light your bees wax candles or whatever they are getting outside, walking barefoot in grass, which is hard to do when it's under two inches of snow. But in Florida you can still do this walking barefoot in the grass, going out and being in the woods. For me here's my routine, cuz when I know I need a reset, I do this. I live one mile from open space here in Colorado, which means I have a wide open plateau. I can hike up to the top of the plateau. From there, I can see the entire eastern plains and I can see the Rocky Mountains. I can go up there at sunrise, I can watch the alpen glow on the mountains. I put my prayers. On my earbuds, I sing them and I put my prayers on my earbuds and I. Move my body cuz I have to hike up the hill. I'm listening to the things that fill my spirit. I am filling my, I'm filling my senses with everything around me. That is beautiful and that is a miracle morning. Practicing gratitude, being present with really the things that we have available to us that are so amazing that we often, quite often take for granted that actually has a, a physical effect. When you practice gratitude, you can't have two circuits, these two circuits. One which is taking you down and one which is taking you up. They can't be operating at the same time. So you have to be intentional about it. But do that daily practice. The other things are much more practical. Drink lots of water, make sure that your body's getting the nutrients that it needs, whether it's through food, food is ideal supplements or whatever., I'm not a nutritionist and I struggle with this myself, but nourish your body. So we're nourishing our body through all the senses and that is the antidote to Acedia. And I write about this and , I'm pretty sure it's still out there, but if you go out to "beanally.today", there is a free guide available called Flameproof that we wrote, and we talk about Acedia in there and we talk about the things that people can do in there. We cover why burnout happens and what are the contributing factors to that. There's one other thing I just wanna make sure I cover and that is this in the cybersecurity community, we do a lot of focusing on the things that are broken. We also deal with a lot of insufficient ability to fix the things that we know are broken, and we develop a cynical outlook because of that. And I would have to say that cybersecurity jokes, cynical cybersecurity jokes are some of the funniest jokes I've ever heard. However, cynicism practiced is a contributor to Acedia. So if you find yourself feeling cynical, take that as a big red flag. Stop it right now. Don't give into the temptation to look at the world through cynical eyes. Instead, we focus your attention on the things that are going well and on the things that are within your sphere of control that you can actually do something about instead of focusing on things that are outside your sphere of control and practice the gratitude for all the things that we do have that are incredible and that generally helps. Those are some of the things I would suggest. That's a very long answer to your short question.
Erich Kron:
Well, as long as that answer was, I think there are some amazing nuggets in that, and I think a lot of people are gonna hear this Jelle and they're gonna, see themselves in the mirror of what's going on here. And I think it's very helpful that we do that. And remember a lot of the things that she mentioned here. You know, and it's really refreshing to consider that and think, you know what, maybe it's a time that, that we just go out to a park and hang out and. Do a bit of nothing for a little bit. I think that, that being aware of that can help us in this high stress, high paced job and industry a lot more than we might think.
Jelle Wieringa:
Yeah. And she mentioned Hal Elrod and the Miracle Morning. And for those of you that haven't read the book, there's also a really good YouTube video out there, and I highly recommend you watch that. The thing is with Acedia, and I've been a manager before. I've and once you stop caring about yourself and the position and your condition in the world, and you're doing that at your job, but you're not just giving up on your organization. Worse, though, you're giving up on yourself. And there's a greater risk here. The risk is that the more you do that, the more you will default into that behavior and things just start spiraling down and it's devastating to anyone and making sure you don't spiral into cynicism. All the time in our industry, where so much bad news, where, the things we talk about are cybersecurity incidents. We're talking about threats, we're talking about breaches, all negative things. We need to make sure that we don't drown in that negativity, don't drown in that stuff. So, yeah, she has some really, really good advice here. We should actually make sure that we don't become too cynical. We don't stop caring about the organization. We don't give up do, not stop caring.
Erich Kron:
Yeah, and the interesting part of this was that it's more than just not caring about the organization, it's, it's more about you just checking out. And Acedia is not a term that I had heard before. I'll be honest with you. I, I'm sure a lot of our listeners may not have heard that either, but I think it's something that, it's actually a little bit mind blowing. And I know I, I've been in director roles, I've been in other roles like that where I've managed other people, and you can see when people kind of start sliding down sometimes and so what I wanted to know is her ideas about what a CISO or a leader can do to support their employees to prevent this kind of burnout that we're all, all kind of subject to in this industry.
Karen Worstell:
I've always said one of the things that can happen in the workplace is for managers to be. Empathic empathetic to be able to acknowledge when someone is struggling and without judgment to open the door to the conversation that says, I wanna share with you, there's no problem here. There's, I just want you to know that I sense that something maybe really taken a lot of your cycles emotionally or whatever, and I just wanted to let you know that you're free to come and chat with me about that. That would be amazing if it happened. But it doesn't happen, and there's a really good reason for it is because if we could go ahead and make the invitation and then, oh my God, what happens if they come and talk to us? What will I. And I can tell you that every single chaplain in training on the planet has gone through the exact same thing. There is only one way for us to learn to be more empathetic individuals and to be able to open the conversation to make it safe and okay for other people to not be okay. And for us to sit with them in that and not try to fix it. And the only way for us to get the skill is to practice it. And that's the thing. They, on new chaplains, they send us to do patient visits the very first day, and it's terrifying. I mean, every single one of us, whether you were a priest or a minister, or you're somebody like me who isn't clergy , or wasn't clergy, to walk into a room like that and to be that, it's like, what if I screw it up? What if I cry? What if they break down and I don't know what to say? Those are the things that go through our head. So it stops us from being the one that says, I don't know what's happening right now, but I want you to know I've got your back and I'm here and I care about you and let it be there. And that if we could do more of that just as human beings, the world would change overnight.
Erich Kron:
You know, she describes a lot, the difference between being a boss and a leader. And it doesn't mean as a leader, you, you have to be the counselor. But that is honestly part of being a leader, is being responsible for those people that work for you.
Jelle Wieringa:
Yeah. Empathy's a skill that every, every manager or every leader should have, and I love her perspective on humanization, basically making situations less unpleasant and more suitable for people. It's about making sure that you as an organization understand where your people are at emotionally, psychologically, and that they're healthy in both physical and psychological ways. So emotional depth, basically occurs when you don't identify or acknowledge the those emotions, and that's what's happening a lot. Let's also focus on the people and let's focus on the emotional debt that we have in our organization and fix that.
Erich Kron:
Well Jelle, this has been an incredible episode. I mean, really the, the discussion topics that we've taken on here are some of the most critical ones, I think, in our industry and personally for people to survive and thrive in this industry. And I think it's been fantastic. I really do hope that people will bookmark this episode and occasionally listen to it. Just as a refresher.
Jelle Wieringa:
It was fascinating for me and at the same time, somewhat personally confronting. Karen, I'd like to thank her. She was kind enough to share so much wisdom with us. She has so much experience, which she, she's shown a light on a part of her industry that we don't talk about often enough.
Sarah McQuiggan:
Coming up on our next episode of Security Masterminds
Roger Grimes:
and every single client where I installed all the best advanced security stuff, they all still got compromised, how they get compromised, social engineering and unpatched software.
Sarah McQuiggan:
We invite you to join us with our special guest, Roger Grimes, Data Driven Evangelist for KnowBe4 you've been listening to the Security Masterminds podcast sponsored by KnowBe4. For more information, please visit KnowBe4.com. This podcast is produced by James McQuiggan and Javvad Malik with music by Brian Sanyshyn. We invite you to share this podcast with your friends and colleagues, and of course, you can subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. Come back next month as we bring you another security mastermind, sharing their expertise and knowledge with you from the world of cybersecurity.
