Culture , Leadership , Training & Development
CyberEdBoard Profiles in Leadership: Kenneth Townsend
The CISO of Ingredion Discusses Cybersecurity Leadership in Manufacturing
Kenneth Townsend's professional journey from using hacker tools for troubleshooting to becoming the CISO of Ingredion began unexpectedly when he was working in IT. As his company grew and cybersecurity began gaining prominence, Townsend was tasked with performing a risk assessment, which piqued his interest. This introduction to cybersecurity led Townsend to pivot his career, and he said he has never looked back.
Townsend has worked in different industries, but the manufacturing sector stands apart, he said. Unlike highly regulated industries such as financial services or healthcare, manufacturing involves fewer regulatory demands. This requires cybersecurity leaders to adopt innovative thinking to protect their organizations.
"It's going to force security leaders to put on that sales hat and understand the business and help them know what's truly at risk," he said. "You have to be a strong communicator, a collaborator, getting buy-in from different stakeholders to help build that program, because you can't say, 'The regulator is making me do it.'"
In this video interview with Information Security Media Group at ISMG's North America Midwest Summit, Townsend also discussed:
- Strategies for elevating technical cybersecurity discussions to a business level when speaking with the C-suite;
- Best practices for promoting proactive learning and development within internal security teams;
- How transitioning from IT to cybersecurity leadership changed his career.
Townsend has more than 20 years of experience in delivering business value by developing and executing IT and cybersecurity strategies. His areas of expertise include information security, risk management, ITIL and IoT. At Ingredion, he helps financial institutions and the U.S. financial system mitigate risks through a regulatory lens. He is a member of the CyberEdBoard.
CyberEdBoard is ISMG's premier members-only community of senior-most executives and thought leaders in the fields of security, risk, privacy and IT. CyberEdBoard provides executives with a powerful, peer-driven collaborative ecosystem, private meetings and a library of resources to address complex challenges shared by thousands of CISOs and senior security leaders located in 65 different countries worldwide.
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About the Author
Michael Novinson
Managing Editor, Business, ISMG
Novinson is responsible for covering the vendor and technology landscape. Prior to joining ISMG, he spent four and a half years covering all the major cybersecurity vendors at CRN, with a focus on their programs and offerings for IT service providers. He was recognized for his breaking news coverage of the August 2019 coordinated ransomware attack against local governments in Texas as well as for his continued reporting around the SolarWinds hack in late 2020 and early 2021.
