Todd Foley: Hello and welcome to the CDO Magazine interview series. I’m Todd Foley, Chief Digital and Information Security Officer at Lydonia. Today, I have the pleasure of talking with Jacob Lorz, Chief Information Security Officer at Cintas. Jacob, thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.
Jacob Lorz: Hey, thanks, Todd. I appreciate the opportunity. I’m looking forward to it.
But one thing I heard at a CDO Magazine event, at their cybersecurity summit, was from a different perspective. Someone took it from the benefit side, saying it’s not so much about how AI can help us as cyber professionals, but let’s flip it and talk about intelligent automation (IA). A huge benefit of AI is now the ability to leverage it inside our tool stack to get better at intelligent automation.
You called out earlier— I think you made the point related to the workforce—that we still have a massive shortage of cybersecurity professionals, with roles that are open within the United States. The numbers vary, but it seems to land around half a million unfulfilled roles per year. We can only overcome that by employing more automation, especially in environments that filter out the noise, identify what’s a true positive versus a false positive, and correlate different events to highlight a true scenario or an indication of compromise that we need to focus on.
So, the boon AI could bring to cybersecurity is really, I think, just better increased automation, increased orchestration, reduced opportunities for the threat actors to either hit the environment or dwell within it. It also helps address some of those unfulfilled roles, because while we’ll still need that capability, I think we can overcome a deficiency in that capability through automation.
Todd Foley: Well, thank you, Jacob, for joining me today. For our listeners and viewers, please visit cdomagazine.tech for additional interviews. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. I hope you have a great day.
Jacob Lorz: Oh, thanks a lot, Todd. I had a great time. I appreciate the conversation. It’s good talking to you.
