Defense in Depth: CISO Series One Year Review

The CISO/Security Vendor Relationship Podcast is now more than a year old. On this episode, the hosts of both podcasts, reflect on the series and we respond to listeners critiques, raves, and opinions.


Check out this post and this post for the basis of our conversation on this week’s episode co-hosted by me, David Spark (@dspark), the creator of CISO Series and Allan Alford (@AllanAlfordinTX). Our guest for this episode is the co-host of the CISO/Security Vendor Relationship Podcast, Mike Johnson.

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Thanks to this week’s podcast sponsor, Trend Micro

On this episode of Defense in Depth, you’ll learn:

  • We provide the definitive story of how the CISO/Security Vendor Relationship Podcast started and how David, Allan, and Mike all connected.
  • We’ve been challenging many of the sales techniques that have essentially irked CISOs. The podcast has become a validation tool for sales people to show to their management and say, “We need to change direction.”
  • One of the critiques we’ve heard is the desire to understand more of the sales process. We are actually very much in the dark as to the different levels of incentives are for sales staff. A security sale is often a long and involved process and we know the incentives are more involved than just a sales commission.
  • We’ve actually done webinars that take a look behind the scenes of sales and we plan to do more.
  • Those who feel isolated with their company enjoy hearing the different viewpoints.
  • There is actually a real return on investment to listening to our show. Sales people say that they’ve changed their strategy based on advice on the show and it has proved to be fruitful.

Defense in Depth

David Spark
David Spark is the founder of CISO Series where he produces and co-hosts many of the shows. Spark is a veteran tech journalist having appeared in dozens of media outlets for almost three decades.