Into the cloud – Steve Cottrell

February 18, 2022

Steve Cottrell, EMEA CTO of Vectra AI

What does ‘security’ mean to you?

The essence of ‘cyber security’ for me is the ability to understand any given organisation’s susceptibility to breach, and to put in place the necessary controls to reduce the risk of it manifesting.

What made you want to work in the industry?

I was always one of those kids that enjoyed taking machines and electronics apart to understand how they worked and enjoyed modifying them to do different things. Security has allowed me to carry-on doing this throughout my career and I love that no two days are the same. To do a great job at securing an organisation you need to first understand how the technology in an environment works and also how to break it! Armed with this information you can then secure it.

If you could talk to your younger self, what would you say?

Focus on enjoying the journey rather than fixating on the destination. Take time to celebrate success before moving on to the next challenge.

Describe a funny thing that happened to you recently?

During my last visit at our corporate headquarter I met a group of math and science geeks at a party called ‘social engineers’.

What three traits define you?

Authenticity, integrity, passion

What’s the most important trend you see today?

The move to cloud is accelerating as technologies appear. Many organisations who have been a little slow to start their cloud journey are skipping the traditional step of moving into IaaS/PaaS from on-site data centres and instead moving directly to SaaS – this is accelerating the adoption of zero trust. Clearly this also has a radical impact on the way organisations are having to manage their security ecosystems and crucially they require vastly different skillsets moving forward.

If you didn’t work in the security industry, what would you be doing?

Playing guitar in a rock band!

What’s the most interesting thing about you that we wouldn’t learn from your CV?

I enjoy building electric guitars from scratch.

What is one thing you would make compulsory in the office and one thing you would ban?

This is really two sides of the same coin – everyone should accept and embrace security as a key component of their role; everyone plays a part whether they are a technical engineer or an accountant. It is only by thinking in this way that organisations can become secure. Conversely, thinking of security as only the domain of the CISO and their team drives a poor outcome and should be banned!

Read the full article in our February issue here: February 2022 Single Issue – (securitybuyer.com)