Darren Challey
Chief Security and Privacy Officer
Remitly
Darren Challey joined Remitly on January 8, and he was previously employed by Amazon for seven-and-a-half years in both cyber and physical security focused roles within worldwide operations.
Prior to Amazon, Darren was the vice president of enterprise information security at Expedia, Inc. for four-and-a-half years. He began his career with General Electric as a field engineer supporting the Naval nuclear program and held a variety of other roles at GE including: application security leader, IT controller, sarbanes oxley leader, and six sigma black belt.
Darren earned a master’s degree in computer and systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Union College. He maintains the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) - ISC2 and Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) - ISACA certifications. Darren served on the board of directors for EarthCorps (a local, environmental nonprofit) for six years and now supports a local chapter of Tau Beta Pi as a director.
A fun fact about Darren is that he plays several instruments, and he started the Think Big Jazz Ensemble in which he played tenor sax.
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Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.
I have been in security for about two decades, and I fell into security due to a nation-state level compromise that I was asked to work upon early in my career.
What is one of your guiding leadership principles?
My guiding leadership principle is optimism — focus on what's possible.
What is the greatest challenge CISOs face today, and how are you addressing it?
The regulatory bar continues to increase and move, and there is little coordination across the many governing entities to try and drive some level of commonality and consistency to reduce the burden of compliance.
What is the key to success for someone just starting out as a CISO?
The keys to success are to be humble, ask questions, never be embarrassed to say "I don't know" or "I don't understand,” learn to delegate, learn what needs your attention, be comfortable saying "no" and backing it up with the "why,” be practical in the application of security and ensure the effort to implement a control is less than the overall business value that will result, use risk to drive business conversations, make security accessible and be sure to bring everyone (your team, your stakeholders, your leadership) along on your journey, be transparent in your thinking and be constructively direct with everyone at all times.
How do you measure success as a leader?
I measure success by building and inspiring strong teams to deliver business value, ensuring that leadership has few if any surprises. Also, use the resources that have been entrusted to me to deliver the greatest business value and the maximum risk reduction. Inspire your team to try hard things and not be afraid to fail.
What is the value of being a member of the Evanta community?
Evanta provides high-quality interactions with the vendor community in a relationship building and information sharing context and not "I want to sell you this widget." Evanta protects my company and my brand and is careful about how they represent me and my company and our participation in events.
Evanta brings top quality C-suite talent together and makes it just plain easy for us to connect, share and learn from one another. All you need to do is show up and everything else is handled for you to make the most of your time together.
Evanta Governing Body members share their insights and leadership perspectives to shape the agendas and topics that address the top priorities impacting business leaders today.
by CISOs, for CISOs
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