2024 SC Awards Finalists: Innovator (Executive or Practitioner) of the Year  

The security team practitioner played a pivotal role in building and managing an innovative IT development team. They collaborated with compliance engineers, external auditors, and security specialists to achieve ambitious goals, ensuring adherence to ISO standards through regular evidence reviews. They also designed a modular, scalable architecture for storing audit evidence, allowing for future enhancements. Their strong technical background enabled them to lead the team in implementing cutting-edge solutions and successfully achieving the project’s objectives through close collaboration with cross-functional teams.

Chandrsekaran was instrumental in educating Intuit team members on leveraging innovative technology to achieve business goals, leading a major initiative to secure licenses and compliance certification for $300B in money movement and payment products across the US and Canada. This effort contributed to the development of Intuit Assist, recognized in Fortune’s Top 50 AI Innovators. By coordinating with cross-functional teams and external auditors, Chandrsekaran ensured adherence to industry standards, improving the efficiency, security, and user experience of payment transactions.

Clar Rosso is a passionate advocate for IT, with a deep interest in how technology can enhance people’s lives. She actively engages with IT and security professionals, learning about their daily challenges to better understand and communicate the broader implications for the entire organization. Rosso plays an important role in bridging the gap between technical and non-technical individuals, helping others appreciate the strategic value of IT beyond its operational necessity.

Rosso consistently supports the IT team’s goals, emphasizing its contribution as a strategic advantage to the business. She is genuinely invested in the well-being and success of the people within IT, engaging with individuals at all levels, not just leadership or management. Rosso serves as both an advisor and an attentive listener, making meaningful connections across the organization. Her approach fosters a culture of collaboration and understanding, highlighting the importance of IT in driving business success while also ensuring that the personal and professional needs of IT team members are recognized and supported.

Emily Austin has redefined leadership in security research. As a researcher herself, she understands the complexities of the work, including the questions her team faces, the time required for each request, and the expectations for delivering results. Leading a team at Censys, which scans the entire internet for vulnerabilities and threats, Emily has expanded and trained her team to become some of the industry’s top threat hunters. She collaborates with them to enhance Censys’ scanning capabilities, ensuring it stays ahead of the evolving threat landscape. Austin’s true distinction lies in her passion — she deeply cares for her team’s well-being, their work, and leads by example, working alongside them every step of the way.

Tim Brown played a crucial role in the company’s response to the 2020 SUNBURST cyberattack. SolarWinds’ transparent cooperation with law enforcement and intelligence agencies was widely praised, allowing the company to retain most of its customers and gain new ones across public and private sectors. SUNBURST was an unprecedented threat, prompting Tim to lead the development of SolarWinds’ Secure by Design principles for secure software development and cyber resiliency. A key initiative was the creation of the Next-Generation Build System, which enhances security throughout the development lifecycle by using a unique parallel-build process in multiple secure environments, making supply chain attacks harder to execute.

Under Brown’s leadership, SolarWinds continues to address nation-state threats, exemplified by SUNBURST, through its Secure by Design initiative. Brown has been pivotal in enhancing cybersecurity awareness, improving threat mitigation for IT, engineering, and product teams, and leading the development of the unique SolarWinds Next-Generation Build System to prevent advanced supply chain threats. Beyond strengthening internal security, Brown actively educates the IT community on integrating advanced technologies with business strategies to enhance product security, customer trust, and business growth.