Episode 8

Shawn Bowen - CISO, World Fuel Services; Trusted Board Advisor, First CISO Marine Corps Intelligence

Published on: 7th October, 2021

Shawn Bowen is the Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer of World Fuel Services, a Fortune 500 energy, commodities, and services company. 

He was formerly the Global Head of IT Security and Compliance (Chief Information Security Officer) for Restaurant Brands International (parent company of Burger King, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, and Tim Hortons). In this role, he was responsible for establishing the strategic direction, instituting comprehensive security programs, along with building a thorough data governance program and consumer privacy framework.

He has over 20 years of experience in information technology, primarily in cybersecurity. Previously, he was the first-ever Chief Information Security Officer of the US Marine Corps where he directed the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Enterprise (MCISRE) Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) Cybersecurity Program. For over 23 years, he served as a reservist in the Air Force Cyber Command as a Command Chief Master Sergeant and Senior Enlisted Advisor.

Shawn is a Certified EC-Council Instructor (CEI) for the C|CISO course and is regarded as a highly passionate, transformative, thought leader in IT Security, with a record of leading successful strategies in various environments.

Shawn is passionate about people and educating them on cybersecurity. He 'wants the willing, no matter what your rank is.' "Meaning, find people who are interested in cybersecurity at any level in your organization: your cybersecurity champions. He notes that it’s more important for most of the staff to know a little about cybersecurity than a small percentage of staff know everything about it. It’s with this approach that people will start proactively reaching out to Shawn when they have questions and creating a more open dialogue about security throughout the organization."

He fuels this passion by serving on the Board of Advisors for YL Ventures and cloud security startup, CloudDefense.

Highlights:

0:00 - Introductions & Background

  • Installing Windows 95 on his own kickstarted his interests in computers, etc
  • 2000s getting "stuck" with an audit and learning about the challenges with security
  • Problem solving and the difference between wicked and complex problems
  • Curiosity and being satisfied with "never finishing"
  • Daily puzzles on a calendar

8:05- Personal Bonding and Sharing Within The Team

  • Story: In his 20's focused on the job, personal lives irrelevant, even his personal loss.
  • Learned that he is not a robot and learned to address emotions through team meetings - Personal and professional ratings
  • Understanding the trends between personal and professional performance to help the team to be real
  • Importance of creating a safe place to fail and sharing leadership paths for the next generation leader
  • Held up a solved puzzle during a tough meeting
  • Recognizing different aspects within the team and partnerships
  • EQ prior to Shawn's wife, he looked at personalities based on his assessment and what "value" they had to him.
  • Learned to shift expectations from what the team could do for him and move toward how can he help the person achieve goals.

18:50 - What Is Shawn's Vision of Life After CISO?

  • The evolution of CIO and CISO
  • CISO is where Shawn wants to be
  • Shawn sees a future of CISO as Board Members or Advisors
  • Retirement plan - Advisory work

27:15 - Avoiding Burnout

  • Soccer
  • Hobby the last few years, sky diving!
  • Managing risk and sky diving
  • Finding the right balance between home life and work
  • Passion helps keep things in interesting and fun
  • Don't fake passion for the job, get away and do something else.
  • Reddit comments are gold

30:47 - Where Shawn Got His Passion

  • Self admitted perfectionist and will analyze
  • Soccer story - Goalkeeper and heard comment about him "nitpicking" and analyzing players on the field
  • "Don't Shawn It!" - aka. Seeing forest from the trees
  • Ongoing learning - how to minimize the constant analyzing
  • Sherlock Holmes and sparring training story
  • To be successful in life, you're going to always want to learn.
  • Be acutely self aware of your strengths and weaknesses
  • Be insatiably curious and have critical thinking skills
  • Keep planning and anticipate so you are better prepared for critical thinking and decision making
  • Shout out to his team - Got rid of 22 Data Centers and moving to the Cloud

Final Thoughts:

You can't replace experience. You have to be intellectually humble enough to learn new things.

Leah - Shout out David Spark, Host, CISO Series Podcast!

Shawn can be found here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smbowen

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About the Podcast

The CISO Diaries
The path to cybersecurity leadership is not a direct route and it's those divergent routes that create the amazing stories and histories of leaders who are driving security to keep businesses and people safe.

We’re Leah McLean and Syya Yasotornrat and we intend to give CISOs and cybersecurity professionals a place to be their authentic selves. These are the unedited stories told of how they got into cybersecurity, the real struggles they’ve persevered through, personal anecdotes that make them tick, and leadership advice based on experiences.

We aren't the kind of cybersecurity podcasts that focuses on the technologies, or recent incidents. We are the podcast that focuses on the people behind the headlines and the incredible diversity of experiences and backgrounds. (And it's not lost on us that we're two awesome female hosts)!

Let's face it: we are a cybersecurity tribe and we need all hands on deck!

We hope you enjoy our CISO diary entries.

After all, we're only human, right?

Special thanks to our sponsor, Cyber Future Foundation, a non-profit global cybersecurity executive leadership community, where leaders, thinkers, and futurists discuss and develop actionable guidance and frameworks for a trusted and safer world.

About your hosts

Syya Yasotornrat

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Syya is a tenured tech sales professional with her time at SonicWALL and Hewlett Packard (HPE) with some hospitality at the Walt Disney Company and IT recruitment experience in the mix. She is currently a podcast strategist and consultant, helping others to bring out their voice and legacy through podcasting. She loves to learn and talk about anything, so feel free to reach out!

Leah McLean

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Leah is Vice President, Cybersecurity Specialist at Mastercard. She is focused on implementing strategy and programs to evolve cybersecurity risk management approaches and cybersecurity awareness and training. She actively contributes in community working groups to advance cybersecurity risk management and third-party risk. Leah is also a mentor to candidates breaking into cybersecurity careers, and collaborates with employers to rethink their workforce and hiring strategies.
Leah is a co-founder at Whole Cyber Human Initiative, a non-profit focused on redefining how we identify, train, equip, advance knowledge, and build workforce development within IT and Cybersecurity. She also volunteers for Cyber Future Foundation, a non-profit driving workforce development initiatives and private and public sector collaboration.
Previously Leah held senior level roles as a cybersecurity practitioner at Armor, a cloud security company protecting data for SMB and mid-market customers, Apstra (acquired by Juniper Networks), A10 Networks and Cisco Systems. Leah serves on the Board of Advisors for Cloud Defense, Inc., a breach visibility cloud security startup and is on the board for the Cloud Security Alliance North Texas Chapter.
Leah holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, with an emphasis in International Relations from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is an active outdoor junkie always chasing adventure.