Protecting Higher Education with Princeton University CISO David Sherry

On the 1st episode of Enterprise Software Defenders, hosts Evan Reiser and Mike Britton, both executives at Abnormal Security, talk with David Sherry, CISO at Princeton University. Princeton is one of the country's oldest higher education institutions, with over 8,000 students and 7,000 employees. Princeton is more than just a university; it's also a premier research center and, in many ways, a small city, so keeping its environment secure is complex. In this conversation, David shares his perspective on the unique challenges in protecting Princeton, security in the modern cloud era, and the exciting yet frightening potential of ChatGPT.

Quick hits from David:

On the unique aspects of protecting Princeton: “We have our administrative network, we have the research network, which is really highly controlled and secured, but still has a lot of flexibility and freedom to it. I need to support that by being the compelling alternative to the security model, but if they choose to go another way, we just make sure that on the last three of the cybersecurity framework, ‘detect, respond, recover’ is a lot easier here.”

On Princeton’s long history of being a dynamic environment: “We don't say BYOD. We say BYODs because students can show up with 15 to 20 devices that they want to hit on the network. We also laugh that Princeton's been doing BYOD for 277 years except back in the day, they brought a musket and a shovel with them.”

On security in the modern cloud era: “I’ve never not trusted the cloud. But it's all about trust. It's about contracts. It's about visibility and making sure that if you move offsite, you still have some control, oversight, command response, everything that goes along with it. Why should I be paying the power and electricity when someone else can?“

On the potential of ChatGPT: “I don't think it's going to replace people. I do think it's going to be a sea of change, not unlike the internet or the iPhone. It's going to change the way I think business acts and even how people can react to it as well.“

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Enterprise Software Defenders is a show where top security executives share how moves to the cloud have created an evolved threat landscape that requires new tools to protect against cybercrime. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/

Enterprise Software Defenders is produced by Josh Meer.