U.S. Bank

Tim Held, Executive Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer, U.S. Bank

As Chief Information Security Officer at U.S. Bank, Tim Held leads the Information Security team, ensures the bank has the right protections in place, and educates current and future customers as well as bank employees on how to keep their information safe to protect their finances.

What are the challenges you're seeing today?

I believe the biggest challenge our industry faces is simply the pace at which things move. Being able to pivot is therefore critical. Every day, my team and I have a stand-up meeting for 15 minutes to make sure we plan for any shifts we need to make based on the current environment, which changes daily.The most difficult, but most important, aspect is ensuring that I do everything I can for my team right away. If we’re dealing with aproblem, it’s my goal to be immediately available to themto help drive a response quickly.

What are the current trends in this field that you are seeing?

We’re seeing more companies, including ours, prioritize technology modernization and moving to the cloud. That's a significant change from a technical standpoint, and it makes perfect economic sense as well. As an industry, we should be cautious about concentration risk though, since right now, there are only a handful of cloud service providers available. Because of that, I don't think our industry hasfully developed actionable threat intelligence in that arena, which isalways going to be specific to your company. So, I believe continuing to evolve in that space will be crucial. Another trendstemming from a shift to cloud infrastructure and a hybrid working model is zero trust. We can’t rely on a network perimeter any longer, and a zero trust framework helps us address emerging security needs we’re seeing due to this shift in how we operate as an organization.

"I believe that relying on your peers as well as your team is essential. To achieve the best results, you must put your talent into practice."

Is there a specific project endeavour that you're now working on where you're employing this latest trend?

From an intelligence standpoint, our team is continually looking at where we can improve – not only from a tooling standpoint but also from a process and people standpoint. That's something we're always keeping an eye on. We’re also focused on zero trust, and we’re prioritizing proof of identity, which plays a part in zero trust. Identity access management is a critical part of our work in which we're focused on maturing. All of this requires a diverse mix of expertise, and I’m proud to work alongside the leaders on my team helping drive these initiatives for U.S. Bank.

How do you see this industry evolving over the next 12 to 18 months?

I believe that the pace at which we deal with information will rise rapidly, especially as we move to the cloud, gain more processing capacity, and examine more and more data analytics. As a result, the evolution should be in automation. You can't possibly look at all the data that comes in, so it will be important for our industry to invest in automation to make sure our teams don't develop“alert fatigue” - a lot of false positives where our security analysts are just looking at things that aren't valuable and shutting them down. Automation, as well as other invested strategies, will be critical components in retaining the talent we have in our industry. It’s important to make sure that we’re doing everything possible to retain them as well as inspire the next generation of experts to join us. I'm really fortunate to have a great team. Keeping them is always my first priority.

What would be your single piece of advice to upcoming professionals in the field? 

I believe it's a small industry where everyone knows each other. So, when you need to, lean on your peers, have that openness and be a little more vulnerable,whether it’s a discussion about a technical topic, business, or how you would approach a problem. I believe that relying on your peers as well as your team is essential. To achieve the best results, you must put your talent into practice.