Sequoia Consulting

Niche management consultancy around the strategy, maturity, policy, organisational, and maturity issues that actually cause most cybersecurity problems.

We help executives reduce security costs and get clear, understandable, results. We help CISOs elevate themselves to the business.

In short, we solve the business problems causing your security problems.

Managing Director

CDW UK

Assisting CDW in helping drive business outcomes for customers. 

Messaging, strategy, and a holistic approach all help customers move beyond buying tools to firefight problems and move towards solving them sustainably to the benefit of the business.

Security Advisor to the Office of the CTO

More strategist than technologist, I help customers achieve better outcomes. It's my mission to provide our customers with a different approach to security that improves the business and supports the bottom line rather than burdening it.

Chief Technologist - Security

Champions UK plc

Book at https://champions-speakers.co.uk/speaker-agent/greg-van-der-gaast

Speaking on all aspects of information security for conferences and events.

Profile:

"Engaging, thought provoking, and humorous are words not typically associated with Information Security speakers, but Greg has taken the speaking circuit by storm, frequently being the highest-rated speaker at events, thanks to his unique personal brand, fascinating anecdotes, and a very different take on the industry.

An advisor, CISO, author, mentor, and speaker, Greg was once cited as one of the world’s five most notorious hackers and worked undercover for the US FBI and DoD for three years after setting off an international incident by breaking into a nuclear weapons facility.

He’s since become one of the foremost thought leaders on how organisations can protect themselves with unconventional approaches going far beyond just technology to include elements of strategy, leadership, and human potential, and even turning security from a cost to a competitive business advantage.

Able to entertain, captivate, and enlighten a wide range of audiences from technical to C-level, Greg has featured in Wired Magazine, CNN, and numerous Tech and Business conferences. He is sure to be a hit at your next event."

Reviews:
“Engaging, inspirational, insightful.”
“Really positive, useful, completely different twist. Much needed at InfoSec events.”
“The best reviews we’ve seen.”
"World class."
“Incredibly good.”
"Epic talk."
“Ranked the highest of all of our presenters.”
"It goes without saying that you were the star of yesterday’s conference.”
“The best chair we’ve had.”
“The delegate response from your talk has been excellent, you are a really engaging presenter and people found the advice you gave really constructive and pragmatic.”
“Lost count of the amount of times I've recounted things Greg said to my customers and left them in awe.”
"His part in the event was amazing and definitely provided the wow factor."

Public Speaker - Information Security (the not boring kind)

I help vendors...

-Build trusted relationships with customers by promoting understanding of the customer and helping them with useful insights and expertise.
-Create marketing messages that resonate with what security teams and companies are aiming to achieve.
-Creating content that addresses concerns and misconceptions and presents value propositions so your prospects are ready to be sold to.
-Create strategic narratives and value propositions around products and offerings that increase their perceived value by the customer.
-Advise Sales, Marketing, and Sales Engineering staff on how to better connect and convert through relevant storytelling and framing.
-Educate and break down barriers with talks, hosting dinner or other events.

See gregvandergaast.com for more details.

Cyber Sales & Marketing advisor, speaker, writer, host, and strategist

cmcg

CMCG (Creative Minds Consulting Group) is my own consultancy, providing savvy executives with the insight to get the assurance they need, far surpassing what the information security status quo can provide, at a fraction of the cost.

During my time operating I have:
-Taken InfoSec organisations from highly dysfunctional to strategic contributors.
-Identified several million $/€/£ in wasted spending.
-Found countless issues and traced back their root causes.
-Coached numerous CISOs and C-level executives.
-Gotten organisations ISO27001 and PCI-DSS compliant without even trying (focusing on securing the company instead of chasing compliance, allowing transparency and compliance by default).
-Dramatically improved internal visibility and security capability with no increase in cost (decreases as high as 30%).
-Built phenomenal human talent and teams.


Have a look at my articles on LinkedIn or contact me at gregv@cmcg.it for more information.

Helping you create real security assurance.

Bloor Research

Navigator

Cyber Resilience Centre for Greater Manchester

Member of the Cyber Expert Group

scoutbee

Creating, staffing, and managing the company's information security function including traditional security functions, all security infrastructure and tooling, proactive product and infrastructure quality, promoting security as company brand value, top-line revenue creation through security, Sales assistance, meeting the security governance requirements of helping manage the supply chains of clients such as Audi, Airbus, Unilever, Siemens, General Electric, Philips, John Deere, and more.

Advisor & CISO

Clearco

Defining security framework and strategy, mentoring security leadership.

Strategic Security Advisor

The University of Salford

Forming the Information Security team and implementing a formal 3 year strategy to cost-effectively and proactively embed security in every part of the University. Increased the ranking of information security in terms of business concern from 132nd to 2nd by driving visibility and awareness that allowed significantly increasing the maturity and resiliency of the organisation.

Head of Information Security

Helping security vendors grow value, relationships, and customers. Former Hacker, FBI & DoD Operative, Author, Advisor, CISO, People & Culture Enthusiast.

I speak, train, and advise on everything I know on how to make organisations be less vulnerable, rather than endlessly ramp-up risk management capacity to risk manage an ever-growing number of vulnerabilities.

If security issues are fundamentally quality issues, shouldn't quality management preempt risk management?

It's a well established fact (that I've just made up) that all management consultancy firms must be involved in racing. 🏎️ 

First points scoring round of the Caterham Academy Championship at Curborough today. 

Bit of a dream this. Thankful for the believers that have made it a possibility. 🙏🏼 

Major incidents aside, regular service will resume Monday.

#security #infosec #quality Sequoia Consulting

Greg van der Gaast

I started in cybersecurity because I liked messing around with my computer doing "cyber" stuff in my room for days at a time.

I didn't expect to end up living on the other side of the Atlantic, working, writing, and speaking trying to convince people that there's a bigger picture to all this, that the problem isn't a technology one. A journey that this year will be taking me to Porto, Munich, Cannes, Brussels, Sofia, Bratislava, and Kuwait, among other places.

But first, the IDC Security Roadshow in Estoril.


And if that sounds cheeky, realise the hardest part of my job is getting people want to join this journey! 

Let's embrace the change! We can produce more value than the tech firefighting status quo and that is good for everyone.

Just hope I don't get a sunburn...

#cyber #infosec #business #strategy #rootcauses #process

Your organisation is not a computer. You do not fundamentally secure an organisation like a computer. 

It is the business' processes that must be secured (also in such a way that they do not continuously *produce* unnecessary risk), including the IT processes that produce its computing systems. 

Not just the resulting systems, which are guaranteed to be insecure if the processes creating them weren't made for them to be secure.

Why is it so difficult for our industry to get a handle on this? Are we even in the industry of providing real security, or something else? How do we get people to refocus on addressing the outcomes, the big picture, instead of firefighting more of the mess we have today?

Why are we ignoring all the business benefits a quality management focused security approach could generate?

When will businesses hold this approach to account?

Things to contemplate today, at the beach, in my shorts...

Photo credit of Jaye Tillson, who managed to not make my forehead look a foot tall.

#security #strategy #quality #management #ideas

We are on COUNTDOWN to #GoBeyondLondon! ⏰

Find us at Convene 22, a state-of-the-art entertainment space on Bishopsgate, Tuesday April 23, for the next stop on our popular Go Beyond World Tour.

With countless customers and partners from all across Europe already registered, this promises to be a conference to remember!

A big thank you to our amazing partner sponsors:

Ping Identity, HCLTech, Amazon Web Services (AWS), CyberIAM, ServiceNow, and Tenable.

There are exclusive product innovations, customer and partner spotlights, breakout sessions and even a guest keynote from the world-renowned cybersecurity expert, Greg van der Gaast! Now that is quite the agenda.

Getting a bit of FOMO? We have limited spaces left...

https://lnkd.in/eqH3TVpG

#GoBeyond24 #BeyondTrust #London #CustomerConference #Partnerships

Quick thanks to everyone at BeyondTrust for having me at their Go Beyond event yesterday and letting me speak about the security big picture from a business & outcomes standpoint. Met and connected with so many great people.


Jos van Zuidam summarised it beautifully (credit for the picture too):

Greg van der Gaast spits some truths around why the security function at a lot of organisations is broken. 

--> we focus too much on the tech results and not the business outcomes! 

--> we try to remediate 'alerts and notifications' instead of looking at what business processes might be causing them. 

--> we are often not aligned with what is best for the business and what the money making side of the business needs

--> we should change our thinking from 'risk management' to quality management.


#GoBeyond24
#BeyondTrust 

Happy Thursday! Resharing Part 7 of my CDW UK series on building security programmes. This time the IT Operations Domain. In many ways the meat and potatoes of the programme where we define what good looks like for the core IT function so that we don't have the configuration, maintenance, design, build, and provisioning problems that cause so many of our security fires.

Link in comments.

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In this in-depth, multi-part series, Greg van der Gaast, Security Advisor to CDW, discusses strategies to help organisations not just ‘do cybersecurity’, but do business securely 🖥️🔒 

In Part 7, Greg covers all IT operations and the related processes, standards and guidelines that need to be considered when developing your security framework. 

It’s the part of the framework that takes the longest to build, so prioritisation is key. 

Let us know your thoughts, and look out for Part 8, coming soon. 


#CDW #CyberSecurity #DoingBusinessSecurely #cyber #security #infosec

Part 6 of my CDW UK series on how I build security programmes. It's a bit of a mouthful, but this part of the framework aims to define important areas of collaboration between departments that play a key role in ensuring our security is effective and enforced throughout the whole organisation.

Link in comments.

-----------
In this in-depth, multi-part series, Greg van der Gaast, Security Advisor to CDW, discusses strategies to help organisations not just ‘do cybersecurity’, but do business securely 🖥️🔒 

In Part 6, Greg shows us how to keep different business units on the same page, namely HR and Legal. These departments cover a multitude of specifics that need to be considered, such as acceptable use policy, security training, identification checks, GDPR, and compliance. . 

Developing a close, harmonious relationship with these departments can also be beneficial for getting traction for your security programme, as General Counsel typically has a seat at Board/ExCo level. 


Let us know your thoughts, and look out for Part 7, coming soon. 

#CDW
#CyberSecurity
#DoingBusinessSecurely 

Resharing Part 8 of my CDW UK series on how I build security programmes to deliver for the business. This time it's covering the SaaS and business application side of things, an area of tremendous business risk where so much of the business' critical data goes, yet often with little visibility and control by security teams.

Incidentally, one of the best tools I've come across to take care of some of this burden has been Obsidian Security. Check them out and let whoever you speak to know I sent you ;)

Link in comments.

Enjoy,

Greg

In this in-depth, multi-part series, Greg van der Gaast, Security Advisor to CDW, discusses strategies to help organisations not just ‘do cybersecurity’, but do business securely 🖥️🔒 

In Part 8, Greg addresses security concerns for keeping our business applications—which are largely SaaS-based these days — safe. 

Most businesses have thousands of SaaS applications in use to some degree, so prioritisation is key. Widely used, everyday apps like MS Office, Outlook, Salesforce etc will have the biggest impact if disrupted. 

Let us know your thoughts, and look out for Part 9, coming soon. 


#CDW
#CyberSecurity 
#DoingBusinessSecurely

Just realised Jaye Tillson has been tormenting me about his Lotus and I've been chasing one down through the Highlands for 2 days.

More importantly... where are you Jaye? 🤣

#bants

Happy Thursday everyone! A heads-up that I'll be speaking at OffSec's Evolve event next week next week about this whole concept that you don't secure an organisation like you secure a computer, what concepts apply, and what strategies and approaches are needed (which sadly aren't yet part of the status quo). Hope to see you there!

---

Join my session with Dan Heath @OffSec's virtual Evolve Cyber Leadership Summit. https://lnkd.in/epsydTMx

All registrants will receive recordings of the session after the event as well.

Hope to see you there! 

Resharing part 9 of my CDW UK series on building effective security programmes. This time it's all about the engineering functions and the challenges they prevent.

Link in comments.

Cheers!

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In this in-depth, multi-part series, Greg van der Gaast, Security Advisor to CDW, discusses strategies to help organisations not just ‘do cybersecurity’, but do business securely 🖥️🔒 

In Part 9, Greg details how to take the Product and Engineering departments on the security journey. 

Getting involved in Product and Engineering is probably the biggest contribution security practitioners make to a business – so this is one you won’t want to miss! 

Let us know your thoughts, and look out for Part 10, coming soon. 

#CyberSecurity 
#DoingBusinessSecurely 

A quick one: Today is National Parental Alienation day. 

If this is something that you've been impacted by or are just curious to find out more, please check out the amazing work being done by Martin Cracknell around his The Change for Children charity.

If you have a story to share or need help, I highly recommend you get in touch with them. This is an issue that needs more voices, and momentum is building.

Thank you, and good luck.

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