John Ackerly of Virtru talks with Nick James

Imagine being in the West Wing of the White House on September 11, 2001.

That’s exactly where John Ackerly, co-founder and CEO of Virtru Corporation was in his capacity as the National Economic Council White House technology adviser.

John is one of our speakers at #RISK and I caught up with him recently to talk all things ‘risk’.

We discussed that awful day, 21 years ago and John told me.

“Even though our collective memories of that day still feel fresh, 21 years have passed, and we now understand the vital role that data played in the months leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But unfortunately, we failed to connect the dots that could have saved thousands of lives by holding intelligence data too closely in disparate locations. These data silos obscured the patterns that would have been clear if only a framework had been in place to share information securely.”

Thankfully most of us don’t make decisions that have a life-or-death consequence but as John goes on to say: 

“Massive and costly data leaks — whether from ransomware or simply misconfiguring a cloud bucket — have become so common that they barely make the front page. As a result, public trust has eroded.”

Safety, privacy, and security are three key pillars of trust in a digital world and over the last few years risk professionals, alongside accelerated digital transformation, have had to deal with Covid, conflict and climate change.

New risks are emerging like never before. As a result, the need for a holistic approach to governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) has never been more critical.

John and a host of subject matter experts at #RISK will be helping organizations understand the solutions in the market and exploring how an integrated GRC framework can help build ‘trust’, and how trust can provide a competitive advantage.

Watch the discussion between John & Nickbelow: