Category: C-Suite
Name: Carolyn Crandall
Title: Chief Deception Officer
Company: Attivo Networks
Why Nominated: Crandall spends the majority of her time educating the industry on the benefits that can be achieved by shifting to a balanced cybersecurity defense; one based on prevention and the early detection of in-network threats. The impact of her work – both internally on the product roadmap and externally as an active advocate for the evolution of the deception technology category – has been significant at a time when the deception market is growing rapidly.
Profile: A technologist at heart, Crandall has served as the chief deception officer of Attivo Networks since 2014. She is a technical evangelist of deception technology, not only for Attivo Networks, but for the industry at large. Going above and beyond, she spends the majority of her time educating security professionals on the need for active defense measures through event speaking, blogs, and creation of contributed articles. Prior to Attivo Networks, Carolyn held leadership roles at top tech organizations including Cisco, Juniper, Nimble Storage, Riverbed, Seagate, and others.
As Chief Deception Officer, Carolyn is articulating the importance of – and inherent market needs for – real-time, inside the network detection. Carolyn is an advocate for active cyber defense and is using her platform at Attivo to educate enterprises about the need for new cybersecurity measures that can accelerate the response to advanced, credential, insider, and ransomware cyber-attacks. Deception and threat detection technologies have not yet been broadly implemented across the industry, and Carolyn has made it her mission to be the leading voice in advocating for organizations to embrace these critical security measures.
Finally, Crandall provides a fresh voice in the cybersecurity industry. According to the 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study, only 11 percent of the cybersecurity workforce today are women. When it comes to women in leadership roles like CTO or CISO, that number stands at less than two percent.
What colleagues say: “Carolyn possesses a unique combination of exceptional business acumen along with remarkable leadership talent. We are very fortunate at Santa Clara University that she is generous with her time in speaking to our MBA and Undergraduate business classes. My students highly value the wise and noteworthy business perspectives she shares, as well as the excellent career insights she provides. Carolyn has a very candid, articulate and warm approach to her talks that make her a first speaker.”
– Phyllis Brock, principal, Highland Team Consulting and adjunct professor at Santa Clara University
“Carolyn has a great depth and breadth of technology and marketing disciplines. Part of what is inspiring is her ability to swiftly move from strategy to planning to execution in building world-class customer programs that connect Attivo with customers who want to develop their security posture via deception technology. Carolyn is a global marketing authority who has a well-respected track record in growing technology companies into market leaders. That, in and of itself, creates an amazing career experience, but it gets better - Carolyn inspires, challenges and drives you to your best work that at the end of every day is very rewarding.”
- Helena Kuly, senior integration and industries partner marketing manager at Attivo Networks
