Governing Body Spotlight

Jihad Hazime is the Director of DevSecOps & Secure-SDLC at Marsh McLennan, and he is a Governing Body Member of the Toronto CISO community.

Learn more about the Toronto CISO community here.
 

Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.

The path to my current role started way back when I was in business development (sales support). Over time, as clients focused more on information security during procurement, I became more and more interested in shifting my career to information security. 

With over 25 years in software engineering and security leadership, I have spent most of my career formulating new approaches to bring current models into a higher level of maturity. This required taking a full journey from inception to operationalization to full adoption and seeing and appreciating the perspectives of all stakeholders in the process.
 

What is one of your guiding leadership principles?

As a leader, you have to keep an eye on the big picture and lead by example. You need to bring positive change in alignment with the big picture and help others in the business embrace change to accelerate progress. 

Also, an important aspect of leadership is being inclusive and fostering an environment for innovation and knowledge sharing. Ultimately, this will benefit your greater organization in a number of ways.
 

With disruption being a key theme of recent years, where do you see the CISO role going in the next 1-2 years?

Disruptions add complexity and present opportunity to the ever-evolving information security landscape. Therefore, our role as security leaders must evolve with it by continually learning, adapting, and maintaining strong footing to address challenges and respond to emerging trends.

Security leaders must remain laser-focused on a few facts as they react to disruptions. These facts include perimeters and boundaries fading out, threats that evolve even without disruptions, and how digital transformation will remain pivotal for future success. So, to effectively manage inherent risks and risks associated with disruptions, security leaders must design and implement programs with these in mind while factoring in important aspects like observability, zero trust, and supply chain security.
 

What advice would you give to someone just starting out as a CISO?

Here are a few things to help sharpen your brand:

• Be curious and constantly learn, never stop
• Build relationships and seek mentors 
• Develop your business acumen
• Share your knowledge and help groom future leaders 
   

Tell us 3 fun facts about yourself.

1. I am an outdoor person. I love tent camping, and I take the family camping at least three times a year.
2. Whenever I have the opportunity, I love quiet time reading books about history or philosophy to make up for my technology sins.
3. I often partake in events in my community to mentor aspiring professionals.
    

What is the value of joining an Evanta community? 

Evanta is indeed a great forum to meet like-minded professionals, share experiences, and learn what worked for some and what challenges other peers are facing in their own domain.
 

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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