Former CTO of Microsoft Enterprise Security and across Office 365, Azure, and GCP - pioneered cloud scale security and zero trust for Microsoft.
Experience
Executive Roles
Microsoft
Chief Technology Officer, Enterprise Security
Partner General Manager, Azure Security Engineering
Principal Group Program Manager, Office 365 Security Engineering
Board and Advisory Roles
Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute Advisory Board Member
Two Nonprofit Boards
Sara Manning Dawson
Partner
About Me
I am a security engineering leader and innovator with executive experience as Microsoft’s Enterprise Security CTO and across Office 365, Azure, and GCP. I have led multiple engineering teams driving security scale, fundamentals, strategy, and execution of company-wide mandates, evolving and innovating technology to meet the demands of the global marketplace. My leadership roles within product development and management have helped me to help the industry determine how to select and prioritize security solutions, giving users and customers the perspective needed to understand and assess expected impact and ROI. Utilizing my skillset and breadth of experience, I advise leaders and executives on cyber security needs and trade-offs to protect their greatest assets and drive their success.
Career Highlights
I have led several engineering teams to develop, design, and innovate security services, products, and features that were thought leaders in either improving or evolving technology. As CTO, I led security design, operations, and CMMC compliance for Microsoft’s Federal environment, bringing Federal to cloud scale while managing complex military security requirements. I led the Critical Infrastructure Security Engineering team for Microsoft, driving vision, strategy, and development of key security and resilience solutions for IoT, OT environments, and cloud hosting of critical infrastructure software solutions. For Office 365, I pioneered zero-trust solutions and zero-touch operations at cloud scale, reducing expected human interaction with a customer’s backend data to once every 40,000 years (on average). I designed and managed the engineering of Office 365 Secure Score, a holistic security assessment tool providing a credit-score-like metric for customers, influencing millions in Office 365 revenue within the first year of launch, and steadily improving customers’ security postures.
Techquity Solutions
Cybersecurity is a complex arena where a company can spend a lot of money and still be exposed. Understanding zero trust and where to allocate resources is crucial to driving ROI. It’s not just about identifying vulnerabilities, or great detection and response; it’s about putting first things first to improve prevention. It’s about making the right cost-benefit trade-offs between user impact and risk in building a strong prevention strategy, thus reducing the many challenges of security via detection and response. I am passionate about helping companies develop the right cybersecurity strategies - where their security dollars have the highest ROI.
Innovation & Impact
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Pioneered zero trust for the Microsoft enterprise
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Pioneered cloud scale security via zero-touch operations with Microsoft 365 servers, reducing human interaction with a given company’s data to once every 40,000 years on average
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Developed Secure Score, improving customer security postures by 25% in its first year
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Brought Confidential Computing to Azure, improving memory protection in the cloud
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Awarded six patents
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Invited to participate in the World Next 50 Women (CEO intensive) in 2019.
Why Techquity?
The Techquity engagement model allows companies across all industries and continents to work in partnership with me in whatever capacity they need. I enjoy partnering with enterprises to review security IT plans, leadership, and long-term security strategies. From there, we establish together the right security plans and tradeoffs to reduce risk with minimal user impact.