CyberWire Daily - Luke Vander Linden: With age comes knowledge. [VP] [Career Notes]

Episode Date: August 20, 2023

This week, our guest is Luke Vander Linden, Vice President of Membership & Marketing from RH-ISAC and host of the RH-ISAC podcast here at the CyberWire. Luke sits down to share his story all the way back to when he was a very young age where he was a child model and actor to where he is now working in the cyber industry. Luke fell into the marketing field after his time as a child actor, where he really started to find his passion. After finding his passion, he decided to branch out to different areas in the field, working in public libraries and advocacy groups, this is where he started to really enjoy the prospect of working with individuals who support organizations, which got him started in the RH-ISAC world. Luke shares that he wears many hats these days, working in the podcast business while also working on the leadership team at RH-ISAC. His advice for people getting into this industry is "I think with age comes this knowledge, but also with experiences. So, I mean, to that point, don't be afraid to go out there and fail, give it a shot." We thank Luke for sharing his story with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Cyber Wire Network, powered by N2K. and VPNs, yet breaches continue to rise by an 18% year-over-year increase in ransomware attacks and a $75 million record payout in 2024. These traditional security tools expand your attack surface with public-facing IPs that are exploited by bad actors more easily than ever with AI tools. It's time to rethink your security. Thank you. My name is Luke Vanderlinden, and I am the Vice President of Membership and Marketing for the Retail and Hospitality ISAC and host of the RH ISAC podcast here on the CyberWire Network. podcast here on the Cyber Wire Network. I wanted to be a television producer. It was not a cybersecurity professional because that career, that possibility didn't even exist. I wanted to work in the broadcasting industry and be a Hollywood mogul. My first career, by the way, was in 1977. I became a child model and actor, so it might have been a little bit inspired by my flirtation with the industry at an early age.

But yeah, I majored in media studies when I went to college, basically the business behind television. And while I was in college, I got a job at the local PBS station where I was living, And while I was in college, I got a job at the local PBS station where I was living. And that turned into the first 11 or so years of my career working in television. It was PBS, though, so it wasn't exactly in production or as a Hollywood mogul, but Swiftly became part of their fundraising apparatus and their membership apparatus. That's what I did. I ran those for a while. apparatus and their membership apparatus. That's what I did. I ran those for a while. I also created the online fundraising initiative for that station that was then emulated at the time by a number of other stations. So early on, that was kind of my claim to fame. As the

internet was starting to be a thing, we learned how to use it and use it to market and to raise money for our initiatives. Yeah, so that's how I fell into, I guess we'll call it, back then I was doing basically direct response marketing. So using email, back then that was the best tool we had, but then that would turn into social media and then various other tools. Interestingly, after I progressed through various stages in the fundraising departments at that station, I ended up going from new media, email and online, to old media. That turned into a job working in direct mail. But it was really using any tool to reach out to people to get them to take the action

you want them to take. So I worked at an agency, a small family-owned agency, for about seven years after I left the station, working with a lot of public broadcasting stations, but then branching out to other areas like public libraries, advocacy groups. So that got me interested in working with individuals who support organizations and who are active, involved with organizations. And I ultimately fell into the association world, which is technically what the RHI SAC really is. I wear kind of two hats, well, three hats, if you count the podcast hat, but we'll leave that one aside. But two hats really is the care and feeding of our members. So everything from when someone wants to join, us making that happen, to just onboarding them once they do join, checking in, make sure they're getting as much out of their membership as we can.

And the big part of my day is taken up with interacting with and having calls with our members and prospective members. The other hat I wear is I'm part of the leadership team. So just looking at the overall strategic direction of the organization, are we serving our members from that higher altitude vantage point and making plans for six months to a year to five years in the future? So it's really great to be able to be on the ground and also up in the air doing both things, both strategic and tactical functions. I'm kind of proud of the way I work. I have a great team of four direct reports. They're amazing.

I think for us internally, it's important. And I think the other members of the leadership team feel this way, to have a fair amount of transparency. We work with people who secrecy and non-disclosure and keeping things kind of quiet is a key, key part of the job. But we also run a sharing community. And so just as we want our members to feel free to share with each other on our sharing platforms, we want our staff to be open with each other. We're also entirely remote. So for us to create that corporate culture when you're not running into people at the water cooler or smelling someone's fish leftovers that they're heating up in the microwave from the day before

or having that office space type cubicle culture is important too. And I think we've done a great job building a transparent and great corporate culture, even though we're flung all over the country. There's a skills gap obviously there's a huge number of open positions and how do you fill them and and you know talking to people i'm interested in that but i'm not technical it's absolutely true as long as you have a willingness to learn an interest a passion about this topic you can learn the skills. And not all roles are technical.

You know, I've picked up a lot. It's great if you come with, and in my opinion, this is key, a good level of security awareness. But again, you don't have to be technical. You can go in and have a passion for it, have a passion for learning, and you can learn the technical skills if those are required for the job. technical skills if those are required for the job. When I worked for that small family-owned business, the president and founder of the company once said to me, an expert is someone who's done something once. So every experience that you have is so valuable, even if you fail, because you can learn something from it. This is only the third job where I've had direct reports. But I love managing people, just as one example.

But I've learned from the mistakes that I've made and from the way I've interacted with direct reports in the past. And so I think I'm good at it now. I think with age comes this knowledge, but also with experiences. So, I mean, to that point, don't be afraid to go out there and fail. Give it a shot. I think that's one of the best ways to be successful is not to be afraid to fail, but to go out and give it a shot and learn from what you've done. If you think about the largest retailers who are our members and the number of consumers that they're able to protect because of their membership with us.

It's just, you know, it's an organization that no one's heard of. They don't need to hear about us. They don't need to know we exist unless you work in this industry. And just to me, I don't need my name to be known. But the sheer impact this organization has is so great that, that's, that's just a great legacy to have. Hey everybody, Dave here. Have you ever wondered where your personal information is lurking online? Like many of you, I was concerned about my data being sold by data brokers.

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