Chad Sheridan has always been a voice for the customer. Over the past few years, he has morphed into an evangelist on how the government should deliver services to citizens and government customers.

On this edition of CyberChat, host Sean Kelley sits down with Sheridan to discuss his new role as Chief, Service Delivery and Operations at USDA-Farm Production and Conservation Business Center and what that means for cybersecurity.

“This whole thing stemmed about as the consolidation at USDA,” Sheridan said. “We took the organization and brought it together to serve the business center, which has consolidated all the back-office functions like finance, HR, budget, etc. We are part of that business center serving all three agencies and the people of the business center.”

Sherian said part of his job is to operationalize USDA cybersecurity and support the Chief Information Security Officer, even though cybersecurity is managed by a different part of the organization. The CISO is dependent on Sheridan and his staff to ensure patches and updates are applied and that systems are built secure before deployed into the environment.

Sheridan said [the government] needs cybersecurity professionals that look outward and want to understand the business of those they support.

“CISOs need a broader base of knowledge and understanding of what the pain points are for running an organization … It’s no different than the journey we’ve made as (IT) operations professionals,” Sheridan said.

As for the future of cybersecurity? Sheridan said IT consumerization will drive it.

“The reality of the way the world has really hit the government and what I mean by that is the expectations of rapid delivery, rapid innovation and agility are hitting us with force.“

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