Cyber Leadership Across East and West with David Gee, Hosted by Fred Menachem

Welcome to the engage and secure podcast brought to you by out think. Of course, I'm your host, Fred Menachem. And today's exciting because we're taking a different lens on cybersecurity and one that stretches across cultures, industries and leadership styles. We're joined by someone with a truly go global view. Excuse me, David G born in Australia, raised in a deeply and fascinating multicultural world.

David has built and led cyber security teams in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, China, as well as the U.S. He's been at the helm of some of the most high pressure environments, transforming organizations across banking, insurance, and pharmaceuticals to name a few. So David is a renowned cyber security thought leader. He's the author of Aspiring CIO and CISO, which was just named one of the 10 must reads for security leaders. He writes for CIO,

I think I screwed up guys because I my apologies. It's CEO and see so right and how would I I? It's CIO and see so right I okay. I Okay, let me I'm gonna do it one more time because it I thought so it's CIO I say right I use the actual it's not CEO

David Gee (01:04.289)
Yeah, it's CIO NCSA magazine.

David Gee (01:16.59)
Yeah, think Fred, if you introduce them, because I've obviously been a CIO and a CISO in all these countries. But my CISO experience has actually been with HSBC in Asia Pacific, which includes Japan and Asia, Australia. But as a CIO, I've been in Australia, China, Japan, et cetera. Oh, no, no, I think you said CISO for these countries, because I've obviously never been a CISO for the US. I've been a CISO for Asia Pacific and Japan, Asia, Australia.

Fred Menachem (01:33.46)
So what do you want me to change real quick? So we like.

Fred Menachem (01:43.57)
you want me to make a differentiation? can.

David Gee (01:45.238)
No, no, it's okay. It's okay. Because you kind of gave me more credit than I was due.

Fred Menachem (01:47.7)
Does it really matter? I mean, can, if you, if you want me to, I will. don't think anybody really, it's up to you. Let me fix it. Okay. But, but you say he, when you say, said, he writes for, is it CEO or CIO? Oh, and CSO and CSO. Okay. That's why I K so it's CIO and CSO and AICD. Right. Okay.

David Gee (01:59.148)
CIO.trump and then CSO. CSO, yes, yes.

Fred Menachem (02:10.887)
Right.

David Gee (02:10.952)
CSO is actually the magazine. It's called Foundry. He's a computer world.

Fred Menachem (02:15.097)
so it's not CIO. There's nothing. You write for CISO. That's it. An AICD board magazine.

David Gee (02:18.834)
I write for Foundry which includes CIO magazine, cio.com and cso.com.

Fred Menachem (02:24.628)
Okay, let me get this right though. So ci.com, cio.com, okay.

David Gee (02:27.438)
CIO.com

Hmm.

Fred Menachem (02:34.731)
And. OK, let me just make sure I have these acronyms right. I'm sorry I stopped, but I want to you know, I got caught up in saying it the wrong way. Ambassador for CIA. It's ISAC, right? OK, I mean, I studied this, that's my screw up. OK, let me just make sure before I OK. All right. Everything else should be fine. OK, one more time, guys. Let me get to the top. All right. You ready, guys? All right.

David Gee (02:43.854)
See how I said correct.

Fred Menachem (03:04.539)
am I starting? you didn't do 5-4, you want to say it?

Fred Menachem (03:10.516)
Actually, why don't you start it over, dude? Sorry. So then we don't have to give a cut to. Okay. All right. Five, four, three, two, one. Welcome to the engage and secure podcast brought to you by outthink. I'm your host, course, Fred Menachem. And today we're taking a different lens on cybersecurity. It's one that stretches across cultures, industries, and leadership styles. We're joined. I'm very excited that we're joined by somebody with a truly global view. David G.

Born in Australia and raised in a deeply multicultural world, David's built and led cybersecurity teams across the world, including in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, China, and the United States. He's been at the helm of some of the most high pressure environments, transforming organizations across banking, insurance, and pharmaceuticals. And David's a renowned cybersecurity thought leader. He's the author of Aspiring CIO and CSO, which was just named one of the 10 must reads for security leaders.

He writes for CIO, CISO and AICD board magazines and he shares insights that really shaped the industry. He also serves as the ambassador for CIISAC Critical Infrastructure Australia, helping protect all critical national assets. And if that wasn't enough, his second book soon to be released, The Day in the Life of a CISO is set to release in Q4 2025. So before we get into David's cybersecurity career,

We need to understand the man behind the leader. So David, first of all, I'm so excited to have you. Welcome to the show. How you doing?

David Gee (04:45.422)
Hey, thanks Fred. I'm feeling a bit humbled by that introduction, but thank you.

Fred Menachem (04:50.804)
Well listen, that was, I could have even talked about more, so I tried to keep it little bit low key, man. But listen, you've done a lot of things, and you're a great guy. I'm glad that we had the chance to get to know each other, and I'm excited to dive into this. Are you ready?

David Gee (05:02.766)
Absolutely, let's go.

Fred Menachem (05:04.21)
Alright, so first of all, obviously David, you were born into this world as a cyber security leader. Like many folks, you had an interesting trajectory and a journey. let's start at the beginning. Let's talk a little bit about your childhood. What was your childhood like?

David Gee (05:19.318)
gosh, where do I start? I always talk about being the fat sport kid. I was fortunate in a way, Fred, I, fortunate or unfortunate in a way, my dad died when I was two, right? So, a deeply personal thing, my dad died of cancer at three boys, six, four and two. And I was adopted by my uncle at the age of two. My uncle then raised me. He also raised my two brothers and paid for them, you know, for their upbringing and their education and their weddings and...

Fred Menachem (05:21.648)
Hahaha!

David Gee (05:49.058)
their first car and my dad was such a saint, uncle was such a saint to do that. So I came from an incredible, generous family that was always giving and doing charity work. And my dad was the, you know, was the president of the Red Cross and the Chinese society and the, the rotary clubs. And I was always surrounded by people in my house, the parties and you know, my dad was always doing charity hostings and stuff. So I think I grew up with an incredible background that I've, I still

imprisoned on me today.

Fred Menachem (06:20.069)
So your father you said was involved with all those organizations, but he died when you were two,

David Gee (06:25.358)
Also, yeah, I want to say my dad, sorry, because I was two years old. My uncle was my dad. And so, yeah, he raised me. And I think I was, you know, my parents couldn't have kids, so I was very spoiled. And I was like, I call myself, you know, sort of a fat, chubby kid. I was a fat, chubby kid, very spoiled. Whatever I wanted, whatever toys I wanted, I got, right? And was, my parents were well-to-do, so.

Fred Menachem (06:31.252)
that's right, okay, your uncle, exactly, so your uncle really raised you and...

Fred Menachem (06:41.128)
Hahaha

David Gee (06:51.47)
I've had the silver spoon experience and I've had also the experience of my parents losing their money and coming out the other end. I've, you on that basis, I try to stay as humble as I can because, know, life's cycle. You know, don't know. You don't know exactly.

Fred Menachem (07:07.868)
Of course. And look, I've been there too. know, life is ups and downs and we learn from experiences and look like we, we, we don't want life to be hard, but that's life. You know, we go through our things and that's, sometimes the hardest things are, are, are also the most opportunity to learn. In fact, my father died much later. I was 20, but I think there's different things that come from that, but, it's always a loss and nothing changes. So you were though.

Born in Australia, course. Your third generation Chinese Australian. you grew up, this is the most interesting thing for me. I like to tell folks really, give us a picture of Darwin because it was an interesting, highly multicultural environment, but not typical multicultural environment. Not the kind that people are used to. So why you talk about that for a moment.

David Gee (07:50.19)
No, Yeah, look, I was up there recently, two weeks ago, Fred, first time in 50 years for me to go back there and say 50, not 15, 50 years. And for me, it reminded me a lot of my DNA and the fact that I grew up in a class of school kids, be me and then an Aboriginal kid, then a half Aboriginal kid, then a Greek person, and then a white person, right? And so Aboriginals were about 20, 30 % of the population.

Chinese are about 10%. It was really, really a balanced population. You didn't lock your doors at night. You didn't lock your cars. just, you know, lived a good life. Everybody coexisted well. And I didn't encounter racism at all as a kid till I went to Sydney. And then people started calling me names and, you know, not nice names. And I was like, well, hang on, how do I fight them all? You know, because this is not right. But it's an interesting place. And to me, I think the upbringing I had, you know, was because everybody speaks their mind.

Integrity is really important. If someone says rubbish, you'll say bullshit real fast. You don't hold people, everybody's special, everybody's sort of equal. We had a really egalitarianism view of the world, right? We all have an opportunist and also maybe a little bit naive, right? Which is, you know, I could do anything. I could do anything I wanted to choose to do. And my parents taught me that all my life.

Fred Menachem (09:15.698)
You know, and we'll get into this later, but from what I understand and from our conversations, look, you didn't let, obviously there's always issues that occur, right? There's racism. There's that, there's that bamboo ceiling. talk about a little bit later, but the thing is because of that ego, ego, tarion mentality, you don't let anything stop you. And, and, know, and I think that's amazing. And that's a great segue into the fat kid, man. So we talked, you know, you, you know, you bring up this fat kid and, and, and it's a much more, mean,

nuance than people are hearing this fact kid because it's complicated right about how we feel about ourselves. you were you know you want to talk about that the chubby story I think you called it you know being bullied and then how you over you overcame that.

David Gee (09:53.71)
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, my brothers were the ones getting the book prizes. They go to the end of the year, seven or to get the book prizes and I never did. They were the one in athletics that running in basketball, running races, Aussie rules football, kicking the ball around. They were better than I was in this sort of stuff. But I was the fat chubby kid who sort of ate the ice creams and wasn't very good at it. But being sent to Sydney for school and going to college at the age of 12 and boarding school.

Fred Menachem (10:23.678)
right?

David Gee (10:24.602)
was transformative to me because it meant I had to be great really fast, had to stand on my own feet, encounter racism and encounter people not being nice to me and then be resilient and then figure out, okay, actually, how do I, I had to fight back against this, how do I not be the fat kid, how do I be good at sports, how do I start to study, which I'll talk about as well, for changing myself from my own perceptions of myself and actually reinventing myself. So I think I learned about that.

when I was 12, how do I start to be different to what I am? I don't like what I am, how do I be somebody else, if that makes sense.

Fred Menachem (11:00.754)
You know, it's interesting because leaders often have these stories. They're sometimes afraid to say it. It's interesting because you've met Flavius Plesu, who's the CEO of OutThink. And when I interviewed Flavius, he talked about a similar story, right? Feeling inferior, feeling like he wasn't talented. And he overcame that like you didn't. think that's sort of tell me if I'm I don't want to put words in your mouth, which I tend to sometimes do not purposely. But, you know, I assume that there was some level of imposter syndrome. I think every leader struggles with that.

Would you say that that on some level would be accurate?

David Gee (11:31.502)
Yeah, no, I think so. I, in my whole career, you had that because, know, I'll talk about that later on if you like, but I was always thrust into leadership roles and, managing people older than me, you know, even from a very first job I was managing, you know, an insurance in working branches and managing people that were 20, 30 years older than I was, and they knew more than I did. And I was wearing a nice suit and I didn't know shit, right? So how do I make them

Fred Menachem (11:59.764)
Hmm

David Gee (12:00.364)
And I make them come along with me, at least to, you know, humor me and listen to my advice and learn from them. Because it had to be, you've got to be generous about that because they know more about life than you do. But yeah, that imposter syndrome is real, but having natural confidence to overcome that and then work with people to figure out, how do I make the most of this? How do I get the right outcomes for the organization by changing myself? Not just not being one note, yeah.

Fred Menachem (12:28.52)
And I think that leaders tend to all people have some level of insecurities and that's a normal human condition. I think leaders, because there's that imposter syndrome with many, that forces you to compensate, right? And to fight even harder. And let me ask you this, David, you think you feel like an underdog in many respects?

David Gee (12:49.166)
You know, I don't carry that. I'm aware of like, like I said, I was made consciously where I'm different. When I was 12, I was constantly because I grew up thinking I'm white. Okay. I think I'm white. I'm part of Australia. they said, no, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're English is pretty good, David. And I said, well, I'm born here, you know, like my dad's born, my grandfather's born here. Come on. And then I jerk and he would say, you know, but I'll speak.

Fred Menachem (13:02.172)
Right? Three generations in Australia, right? Right? Right? Right? Right?

David Gee (13:16.91)
you know, really good aboriginal, but I can't speak Chinese, which I learned later on life. But that was the truth, right? Is that you tended to assimilate to this environment. yeah, that's fair. But I think I was always, you know, given I was trying to be the fat kid, I was trying to be better than anybody else. know, wasn't their therefore, I knew there was something there about being different, but actually I just wanted to be better. And so when I was on the sports field or actually in the classroom, how do I be better? How do I compete?

Fred Menachem (13:26.142)
Right?

Fred Menachem (13:45.596)
So, and I'm gonna move on to the next component in a moment, but I'm guessing you're talking about in Darwin, you probably felt more it was about the fat kid than the multicultural thing, right? Because you didn't experience it as much there. That was later, correct? So was the, now I want to, I have a question. You talk about, you did talk to me and to us when we met last time about your father's story. Now I'm assuming you're talking about your uncle, right? Who was basically your,

David Gee (14:08.43)
All right,

Fred Menachem (14:08.786)
your father and and you know know that that he had a lot of interesting background maybe some hardships and stuff and that that also molded you in many ways. Do you want to talk just briefly about that?

David Gee (14:18.252)
Yeah, he was a successful businessman, as I mentioned, and a leader in the community, and a proud businessman that owned shops and supermarkets. And before the big supermarkets came in town, we had the biggest one in town. I kind of saw this in a strong integrity. I saw him giving, then I saw him actually at the other end of the scale. Fred, mentioned, know, his business didn't go well. He moved to Sydney, people cheated him.

He lost his money, and then he became unwell, where there was diabetes and heart issues. It was all connected, right? Life's not good, you get depression. And I saw that, it troubled me because I saw the proud man that became small, I didn't, what have I could to help him? In my little way, he was a 20 year old.

to help him financially and help him support his transition. I think that's a... You see a proud person, you want to keep them proud if you can, help build them up again. But yeah, I've always remembered that. think it's really humbling part of seeing some people change.

Fred Menachem (15:32.756)
And unfortunately, it's life situations can cause, you know, hardship can affect people in different ways. Now, let me ask you this. So you were 20 and you lost your dad at two. Did he pass away as well?

David Gee (15:45.426)
He passed away but that was much later. I think I skipped over a piece that maybe I have mentioned. I met my wife when I was 17, think Fred. So we got married at 20. Had a kid at 20. Yeah, and then I think we were married 45, 46 years. And still, I love her very much. She's a beautiful woman. We made choices even back then as a young kid to...

Fred Menachem (15:57.972)
That's right, your kids, right?

David Gee (16:14.318)
go ahead with that wedding, because we could have chosen not to do that and do something different. But you you make choices and I think it helps you. It made me grow up really fast, you know, from being a naughty boy running around doing different things, to settling down and being a dad, right? And being a dad and then so that I learned a lot, a lot about leadership from being a dad. And I may have, if you allow me to relate a story around having a kid and actually trying to figure out, okay.

Fred Menachem (16:26.896)
It kept you out of being a naughty boy, right? Right. Right.

Fred Menachem (16:39.646)
Please.

David Gee (16:42.798)
How do I, you know, I've got this 20 year old, how did you the kid, a bit awkward, you're not sure what to do, so we did the medical, you know, first aid course, and then we did a course to teach my son how to read, and the course was interesting, because it was all about teaching your kid how to be brilliant, and it was, you know, play your kid Mozart when they're one year old, show them flashcards, and don't say doggy doggy, say this is a dachshund, this is a wean mariner, you know, and so you showed them the depth of biology. We showed them.

We showed my son Nathan Picasso, Monet, Renoir paintings. So we gave him this ability. So when he was one year old, he could read, he could swim. He later played the Suzuki violin. We just gave him so much input. So I realised quickly as a leader that that's what leadership skills around people development is that you get branded a certain thing. You're not the smartest, you're middle or you're low or whatever. And then you can change that. This is all...

or kind of false. And so as a leader of, embrace that to say, you know, take any performer I have, I can make them better. Because I just need to find the right buttons at the press. And I learned that as a 20 year old.

Fred Menachem (17:54.42)
And I think you're making a great point because, know, and I know from personal experience, look, our brains, you know, many people have different brains, right? Not everybody's brains the same. Some people have learning disabilities and all that, but our brains are amazing. You know, we don't use what, probably 10 % of our brain. I don't know what the numbers are, so I'm just making that up. But to your point.

David Gee (18:12.534)
That's it. Yeah. Yeah.

Fred Menachem (18:17.798)
Yes, we can all right, can shift how we learn and our brains can grow because we have that capacity. And I think what you did with your kid was you gave him the ability to grow his brain to grow his brain. And you didn't let anybody tell you that was impossible.

David Gee (18:32.466)
And right now, society is facing the challenge of AI exceeding our intelligence. How do we live with AI in a fashion that we're not actually outsourced to them? So it's another challenge all of us have face around living in that AI environment.

Fred Menachem (18:51.774)
So, by the way, want to move to another point, getting to business a bit, but I do want to say you have three grandkids as well, Two grandkids, forgive me.

David Gee (18:59.326)
I got two grandkids. so I'm very proud of my kids all grown up and they got seven degrees but didn't to pretend to three of them. So they've done well, they've done well and they've got their second mortgages and the like. So life's been good for me, I think. we've had our hard years, I think, where we had no money and we had to struggle and have second jobs or doing business as my wife ran to pay the mortgages. If I recall back when I graduated from university,

Fred Menachem (19:19.604)
All

David Gee (19:28.718)
Fred, the mortgages were 15, 16 % interest. yeah, so taking a 70s, yeah, in the late 70s, the taking a job on in my first, after graduating and not taking the job with the low interest loans, because the banks were offering me a job with half rate interest, know, 8%, 7%. It was really tempting and I said, no, no, if I do that, I'll never, never leave.

Fred Menachem (19:32.66)
I remember in the 80s, right? 70s or 70s, late 70s, right? Yeah.

Fred Menachem (19:51.612)
Right? You know.

David Gee (19:57.452)
I don't want to do that because I'll be trapped. want to have, I want to be, yes I've got responsibilities, yes I want to have an orchard, I want to have a look after my family but I want to be able to change industry so I can and maybe, and I wasn't sure, you what I wanted to do grow up. But I knew I did want to be stuck in one place.

Fred Menachem (19:59.806)
Sure.

Fred Menachem (20:15.806)
So let's on that note, a great segue. So I love this particular topic because I'll preface it with this. My father was a partner with Ernst & Young. So I love talking about E and Y by the way, and it was Ernst & Ernst when I was growing up, then Ernst & Winnie and Ernst & Young. So I have a lot of love and the history with Ernst & Young. I know that you, you know, went and worked for Ernst & Young and I'm not going to tell your story. You can tell it yourself, but how you rose in your career and the trajectory and, know, and how you said, I'm going to be at this point and people, you know,

David Gee (20:29.015)
Mm-mm-mm.

David Gee (20:44.834)
Yeah.

Fred Menachem (20:45.086)
questioned it, but you kind of did it. So what's the story there?

David Gee (20:48.174)
Gosh, Fred, graduated first job, you know, managing insurance, managing people, know, counter calls, phone calls, processing claims, underwriting, all that sort of stuff. And then after six months, I did my first IT project, an IT project, was one of those ones where they say this is going be used for a few years. It was used for 15 years afterwards. It was my first sort of, you know, time experience doing requirements and testing and getting the team to deliver.

training and the like. So I kind of hooked by this idea. How do I do this? This is mainframe days, Mainframe IBM Armdell. And then from that, yeah, this is in the 80s. In the 80s. and then my second job I've moved to Fairfax, which ran the biggest newspapers in Sydney. And you want to hear all the reviews and television stations. And I was a business analyst. So I'll continue on what I was doing, doing process.

Fred Menachem (21:25.972)
What year was this by the way let me stop you because what let's give it some context. Okay.

Fred Menachem (21:37.022)
Right?

David Gee (21:45.684)
and looking at the bigger picture of how we make improvements. And then I started getting asked to go do coding. So I started doing coding. This was the very first IBM PC. So PC DOS version one, know, ethernet, novel networking, all that sort of side I learned how to cable, you know, to play with modems and support that. So I run the help desk and create applications. And I was doing so many different things and

IT was over there doing something else, they were doing the accounting systems and I was doing all the fun stuff with a small team. And I got hooked because I think I was in a sort mini computer world, right? In a mini PC world. And I moved to Pioneer Concrete for a few, three, four years later and PC manager, team of three, know, putting in PCs and organisations, which was novel back then, okay? So organisations used to have a...

Fred Menachem (22:36.314)
Of course it was novel. sorry, go ahead. yeah. I, of course I remember, by the way, I stopped you for just one moment because you're making me laugh. I remember in elementary school, because you're a bit older than me, maybe 10 years I think, but I shouldn't throw that out there. Sorry about that. But all, I'm 53 for anybody listening, but all joking aside, I remember they would take us to play with computers like DOS and programming. think I lasted about 30 minutes and you know, never touch it again. But on a joking note, my father, when he was at Ernst & Young,

David Gee (22:39.052)
No, there's actually you shared pieces, right? You had one piece for five or...

Fred Menachem (23:05.94)
through the eighties, would always tell everybody that computers were just a fad. Anyhow, I thought that was funny, but on that note, I say that, you know, to segue into what you were saying, that it wasn't common. So that's what the point you were making. Right. So, so what was the

David Gee (23:16.334)
It was in common, yeah. So rolling it out and then I think I got promoted to be application development manager and support manager at the age of 27. They fired the guy who was in charge and they promoted me to manage a team of 45, I think it was. And everybody was much more experienced than I was. had master's degrees in development, they had PhDs. And again, had imposter syndrome. How do I overcome that? do I then, you know?

worked with that to run large scale projects and I had to learn. I got back in the study, did a post-grad software engineering certificate but then I think they fired the boss. CI got fired.

Fred Menachem (23:55.506)
You're talking about Ernst or different? Okay. Okay.

David Gee (23:57.07)
No, this before this was pioneer concrete. Ernst Young was next. So pioneer concrete, pioneer financial was bricks and plaster ball and all that sort of stuff, quarries and know, blokey business. But what was interesting was is that, you know, they fired this guy and then suddenly of this big team, then they fired the CIO and said, you're too young for this because you're 29. But we're going to ask you to go and run this transformation with Tony. Tony White, you're going to figure out how to change this place. And we didn't turn

We had no budget, no team, and we're say, okay, we're gonna go five next, because we've got nothing around us. Then how do we go and then transform the organisation? This is my first transformation exercise ever. So look at every process, change every system. It's a three and a half year programme to change everything from back office to production systems, putting computers in the trucks. So computers in the trucks with floppy disks, so it wasn't actually wired. They weren't wired, okay?

Fred Menachem (24:52.894)
Not that right.

David Gee (24:54.818)
It went wide and that was radical change. We had the organisation go from number three or four in the market to number one in that industry on the back of that chain. So that's when I moved to EY. I finished that transformation. They offered me a job over there and I, as you said, hinted, kind of, you know, was, what's the word, confident? And then I said, well, you're going to make me a partner within two years. And I was coming in as a senior consultant when this senior consultant

then director, then principal, then partner. Within two years, you're meet your partner. And the guy looked at me and smiled and said, why not? So I guess, cut a long story short, I did get offered a partnership and they offered me the works, the MBA and the study tour and the signing bonus. And you're not gonna be a solid partner, you'll be a full partner with next month. And they really wanted me to join and that's when I made my career choice, Fred, to be a CIO. To say that I don't wanna do this tactical stuff, working for...

Fred Menachem (25:27.688)
Yeah.

Fred Menachem (25:49.704)
Right?

David Gee (25:53.198)
clients for know slices I want to actually do the strategy and see it through I want to see the value I want to see the beef I want to see that you know all the fun stuff so not just do the upfront piece yeah

Fred Menachem (26:05.556)
And that's when you start. so on that note, I want to get through a few more things here. And then we have so much to talk about today. I could do five episodes with you, by the way. So I did want you to talk for a moment because we're going to get into East West in the next, you know, in the next in a few minutes. But I do want to talk for a moment. You you spoke to me about the bamboo ceiling. Right. And and and what it was and how you really and it's a great story. You know,

about Japan, you had an amazing story about what you did there, how you shifted sort of, well, shifted the culture in many senses. I think you were a pioneer and maybe you never thought about that, but you know, you, really made some difference. When you talk about that for a moment.

David Gee (26:47.386)
yeah, yeah. So I think from one stage going over to Lilly as a CIO and then they promised me to send me through an MBA and then over to China, to Shanghai, to Hong Kong, to Japan, et cetera. So that's why I did always the CEO for Australia, Australia, New Zealand, then China, then Australia, Asia, Pacific, then Japan, then the USA. And I've expanded large, large teams and really, really small teams with no budget. But going to Japan was interesting because I...

Came as the CIO, the second largest market for globally. I think Lily's probably number two in America right now for pharmaceuticals. It was interesting because the team was poor. The team was, you can't go and fire people. There was no mechanism to fire people. But I realised there was, you know, you need to fix the hardware and the software and the people wear. You had to fix all that to fix it because it was an issue. But the people was, you know, was interesting because Japan's very male dominated.

you'd ask for some, you know, some CVs and you get this pile of 100 CVs of males that are 35 years old with the same black suit, white shirt. I said the time, look, my definition of a talent is actually that they get stuff done, they solve problems, they're bilingual or trilingual, they can speak English and Japanese and maybe Chinese and other languages, they can work internationally.

And that's my criteria. So if you can find those people for me I don't care if they're black or white or young or old or male or female bring them to me and so I changed that old paradigm shift to Get people to resign that they were bad. They had to resign I couldn't find them and then go and hire some great people so in that four years and Lily I my success was actually getting new leaders in the place who now, you know themselves CIOs and CSOs and

being a net exporter to the business of about 20, 25 % of my team is being pulled into the business to say, want to take Fred because he's amazing, because he gets stuff done. But it was just something that I love doing because it just meant I could make a contribution broader than IT. I could actually help the IT agenda by having people on the other side who understood what you want to get to as well. So you became a net exporter, which was really unique.

Fred Menachem (28:47.25)
Why, thank you.

Fred Menachem (29:05.236)
And I think, look, and...

you know, I think in many ways we talked about this the other day. Look, you're a pioneer because Japan in those days and, we're to move on in moments of the East West, the distinction, but Japan in those days, that was not a cultural, it wasn't, they didn't necessarily understand conceptually, right? It was mostly, you know, Japanese men. So what you did there is number one, you created a much more successful company from a revenue perspective. And it was, you know, running much better, but that was really a major shift that really was probably

because of the way that you were raised in Darwin. you didn't even, right? I mean, wouldn't that be some truth to that?

David Gee (29:43.116)
Yeah, perhaps, the naivety aspect of it, I suppose Fred would be sure. And then, you know, how do I then work with these people who, know, fundamentally, Japanese don't like Chinese, okay? So how do I come across? Yeah, how do I come across as a credible leader that they want to follow and then they would love to follow. So, you know, from being suspicious about me to...

Fred Menachem (29:55.997)
Yeah?

Right, right, well, that could be another separate podcast,

David Gee (30:10.606)
to getting to the point where they love working for me. That's my goal. I want them to love working for me. I don't want them to feel that I'm telling them what to do and they're afraid of me. That's not a good philosophy for people. People should follow you, but they want to follow you.

Fred Menachem (30:15.698)
Yep.

Fred Menachem (30:27.974)
So I want to get in for a moment before he moves in the next section, because I know we, you know, one of the things that I know that, that you, really did was, was, you know, you had a leadership style shift from, you know, solo player to making the entire team better. Maybe we can get into that a little bit later, unless you want to make one point about that. Cause I want to go into your book for a minute. then, so yeah.

David Gee (30:48.302)
Oh, no, I feel, I it as my book, the leadership algorithm I came across during my travels was interesting because it all about how do you make, you know, people the best version of themselves. It back to my son's story. And then I learned in Japan around how you're identifying your skills, knowledge, experience, behaviour and finding one thing for each of those dimensions that we're going to make you a better leader two jobs ahead. But it really was...

That was one aspect. The other aspect, think, Fred, that I talk about in my book is around this algorithm, is, you're inherited team, right? So you can't fire them all. Usually, usually, right? And how do you then take David and Fred, make sure they have good teamwork, so it's a multiplication of the negative, right, between the two of us, and make Fred the best version of himself, so Fred can, you know, he's a six out of 10, but I want Fred to be an eight out of 10. And then David's a five. He's not that good. But how do make David a seven? So as a leader,

Fred Menachem (31:36.53)
Yep.

David Gee (31:44.846)
If I can coach each of you to be your best version, understand where your gaps are, where you're not seeing yourself because you're not sure, and then make sure you've got great teamwork because there's a multiplication. I look great because I'm getting amazing output and outcomes from you, this team. And so we have all these fancy theories, but if we break it down, that's the fundamental leadership response, right? Making people the best versions and getting great outcomes and having teamwork across. You can call it when we call it, but if you do that right,

Fred Menachem (31:45.511)
Eh.

David Gee (32:14.124)
basics you get success.

Fred Menachem (32:16.852)
Which is a great segue although right to get into the books, but I want to say just one thing quickly I remember a story you told me that you know once you overcame and became this basketball star You know you were first you know just taking the ball you wanted to shoot and then is similar to what you're saying here And then one day you realize or somebody said something you had to pass the ball and by passing the ball You were building a better team and that's sort of I think really what you're talking about here, right? how do you build a team because one person can't carry a team and and

David Gee (32:43.213)
Yeah.

Fred Menachem (32:45.766)
and you make somebody better by passing the ball and then the output of the team is going to be better. Am I getting that right? I?

David Gee (32:46.146)
And

And it's uncomfortable for it because when I was in high school, I was the star shooter. In all the teams, I was in the top team and I was, passed David the ball, David was the big shooter, passing the ball. So when it got to last two years, I was in the first team and I was the captain. And then my coach said to me, David, can you just pass the ball? Don't shoot it. I want you to make everybody else better.

I was really uncomfortable with this idea because it was like, I'm the best shooter, why would I pass the ball? Then, okay, get it. He wants me to be uncomfortable to make others better. Damn, okay. And I didn't succeed probably in high school to that challenge. I tried and I kept, but I kept in my head which is, if I do this well then actually the team's better than me being the star. And how do I do that? How do I share the love, so to speak?

around with others and it's a challenge I've embraced my whole life.

Fred Menachem (33:48.724)
And look, I think a lot of people do, but that's how you make, right? That's how you build a better team because at the end of the day, it's you build more output. So on that note, because I want to move into East first West, but I want to talk for a moment about you, man, you wrote, you wrote a book, you have another one coming out now. I was reading the other day. It just popped into my email or something, or I was looking up something excited. It was called, it was from an article from help net security. And it was called the CISO's bookshelf. And tell me if I'm right. I think it was, I wrote it down the 10 must reads for

security leaders and Lo and behold I see David G's book man. What was it? us just give us the quick, you know, you know, there we go man aspiring CEO and see so so give us give us the Quick bullet points man. What's it about? And then hopefully people will will read it

David Gee (34:25.858)
Let me follow that.

David Gee (34:34.498)
Gosh, right? Yeah, well, first, I was tickled to get nominated for this career list of must reads. And I wasn't told, I didn't nominate for that. They didn't tell me that I was on the list. I saw a colleague of mine, Deborah Breaker, who wrote a book too, and her name was there and she was writing, thank you very much for being, and I was there Saturday morning at five o'clock and I was like, that's so cool, Deborah's on the list. Hang on, on the list as well. And so it was a lovely shock to have that, to to acknowledge, but.

Fred Menachem (34:57.598)
Ha ha ha ha.

David Gee (35:03.512)
But I think the book is a whole bunch of stories I have around learning to be a leader. And I think about the journey, right? Leadership is all about climbing this mountain. And when I did the cover with the publishing company, I said, look, it's a pretty slippery slope. It gets to the top of the mountain. It's sort of depth-zoned. The air is very rare and thin. And it's kind of sharp rocks and cold. And it's not very nice, which is the way it works is the C-suite, right?

Now, not everyone wants to be at the very top, but being a base camp is okay. So the book's all around how do you actually be your best version of yourself to yourself close to the top? I'm the gondola. I'm helping you guide you there to take you through understanding yourself, understanding your gaps, trying to think two jobs ahead to figure out what are your skills, knowledge, experience, and behaviour you need to grow to, and then navigating your way through interview processes. And so I've got lots of guidance around getting through. I talk about...

Fred Menachem (35:35.156)
Right, sure.

David Gee (36:02.606)
For example, getting through 17 interviews for one job I got. Yeah, yeah. And so you've got to walk in very positively thinking, my god, this is my seventh interview. Do they want to hire me or not? And how do you be positive and walk in and make sure you provide the right sort of eye contact and charm and the right questions back. And then once you the job, that's easy part. And the hard part comes of doing the work.

Fred Menachem (36:06.64)
my god,

Fred Menachem (36:28.538)
And.

David Gee (36:28.998)
It's stressful, it's, know, first 90 days is all about you branding. So I talk about your 90 day plan as a CIO and CSO, what you need to do and what you need to not do because you're creating your plan for yourself that the team goes, that's what David is doing. He's actually being really accountable, trying to be strategic, looking at the team, looking at the, you know, the threats and then figuring out where we need to tweak things.

And then the whole book then talks around survival skills, because we all know that sea stones don't last more than two or three years normally. so how do you survive and thrive?

Fred Menachem (37:04.049)
Right, right.

Fred Menachem (37:08.596)
Well, I would suggest that folks pick up that book. I started reading it. I'm going to finish it and we're going to come back again and talk more about it. And I just want to give you a quick, uh, a quick mention because a day in the life of a CISO is, coming up. Uh, it's going to be released in Q4 2025. So we'll look forward to hearing more about that. Uh, I don't know you want a quick 10, 15 seconds to mention something.

David Gee (37:28.866)
Yeah, no, no, thank you. Thank you for it. I wanted to take what I've done with the book with this book and then go the next step further, which is to say I invited firstly said 24 CISOs and CISO types that are in around the world for you know, from Japan, Australia, Singapore, UK, America, India, and then say, tell us, tell us your story. Tell us what you care about in cybersecurity that is not textbook like but all more around. Okay, Fred's the CISO at this organization cares about cybersecurity strategy.

or cares about managing regulators. Tell us that story. Why do care about that? And I introduced Fred and then I asked you to talk about that area, which is your passion. So what it is, is many ways is actually really good guidance for the next generation. Going on with my thing, which is not just David talking, it's actually the 25 other CISOs talking about their experience, their playbook, how they manage stress, how they're growing from imposter syndrome.

Fred Menachem (38:20.926)
Sure.

David Gee (38:26.966)
And so there's common themes there, but in different voices, right? Everybody's slightly different. Some are humorous, some are more serious. It's been such a fun exercise to do with so many different leaders around the world. I've learned from that exercise myself.

Fred Menachem (38:42.328)
And we'll get into more about that because that's behavior, right? How you, how different people think and how to, how to, you know, messages are palatable and all that. But I want to move on here because we have a lot to talk about. And this is so interesting to me. I mean, you know, you built security teams all over the world and you have an experience that not a lot of people don't because you've, you've built teams in the East and the West and you've kind of straddled both sides of the world. so, you know,

What's the biggest difference you think between leading in the East versus the West? If there could be one or two things that you would throw out there.

David Gee (39:19.63)
think there's many things. you know, Asia, Pacific, Japan is many cultures with many differences, right? I've mentioned that Japan, Korea are very different to each other. China is very different to each other. So you've got to understand the inherent differences around that and embrace those differences. So I often will talk about, you know, look at India. India is a complex society and I've visited there maybe eight, 10 times. I've done a Buddhist pilgrimage, you know, to all kinds of things that I've done in my life.

Will I understand India properly? No, never. But I have to try to appreciate the fact that there's a layer there, Fred, that there's a level of caste, and there's 1,200 caste levels in India. 1,200, which is unbelievable to understand. So you have this caste level, you've got the class level, you've got the religion on top of that. So as an outsider, trying to appreciate the subtle differences within...

countries and understand that. But generally speaking you'd say that at a top of the 10,000 foot level, the people in the east are much more hierarchically bound. They will literally bow to you, their heads, be more listening to what you say. In the west of course, it's like, be like Australia of course. No, no, no, no, you're wrong David, you're wrong, and challenge you.

and push back on things. And I like both. I do like to have the push back. do like to have the, so when I'm in the East, I encourage them to challenge me and tell them I'm wrong. Please tell me I'm wrong. And in the West, I'm asking them to cooperate. Hey, work together. And that'd be so, take positions. I want to have your view, but actually then we make a decision, we made a decision. Okay, let's go back again. And so it's about trying to understand the subtle differences and get them to...

Fred Menachem (41:14.164)
you

David Gee (41:17.646)
again to the outcomes, right? And so to me that's just true diversity. You're getting people thinking differently, acting differently, but then you're getting to better outcomes by having that thinking different.

Fred Menachem (41:24.593)
Sure.

Fred Menachem (41:29.33)
And you talked about hierarchy versus open debate, right?

David Gee (41:34.584)
Yeah, it's very true and people just do that naturally because that's the way society is formed. They're more subservient, they will bow physically, they won't ask, know, they're very detail-oriented. If you're opening a data center or doing something, they'll be very detailed where you stand and to the second and minute the speech is made, the ribbon is cut, while in the West we just, we'd wig it, right? We'd just go along with the, we're gonna do this and do this and we'll pop the champagne, done.

Fred Menachem (41:58.174)
Right.

David Gee (42:04.27)
It's a very different society, different way of thinking.

Fred Menachem (42:08.308)
It's funny because I was in Korea not too long ago and my friends kept saying, listen, different culturally it's in that, although I think you always break barriers and I, I, know, Koreans tend to be right, much more discipline. They're not pushing with questions and all that it's falling. I, I, one thing I couldn't believe was that people waited in line. I was like, Oh my God, I would.

and so patiently. was like, who the heck? was like, I'm like, I'm trying to cut the line, sneak in on the side. was actually, but it was actually in some sense, you know, beautiful, beautiful because people weren't beating each other up. They weren't screaming at each other. And you know, they had a level of discipline. And I think to be frank with you, sometimes in the West, we can use a little more of that. And then, you know, both cultures have something to offer, but I was, no, I enjoyed it, you know, truly.

David Gee (42:51.086)
I a little story of the Tokyo Dome in Japan and there was a thing is Paul McCartney concert and I can't remember is it 25,000 people

Fred Menachem (42:57.148)
Yeah, okay, nice. McCartney in Japan, man. That's pretty damn cool.

David Gee (43:01.07)
So, concert finishes, light comes on. normally concerts people just jump out and run down the stairs, right? You know, just push your way through. Not in Japan. In Japan, the top row goes first and they come file down and everybody waits for them to come down. And the whole stadium just waits, waits orderly while the top comes down, the next row comes down. So it's just, and then they'll take the garbage with them as well. They'll pick up the garbage. And so you're going, my gosh, this is so orderly. We can actually get out faster.

Fred Menachem (43:08.788)
Sure.

David Gee (43:29.334)
No one's pushing, no one's falling over. It's really stunningly different. compared to a normal concert you go to, you just fight your way through the crowd. But it works. It works.

Fred Menachem (43:35.966)
Sure.

Fred Menachem (43:44.412)
So talking about security in Asia and the West, what's the difference there? Relationships and policy and how does it all work together?

David Gee (43:52.45)
Yeah, it's true. It depends where you are. If you're in Japan, Japan, Japan, I guess suffers from, you know, the fact that they, they do speak English and learning English at school, but they don't speak it very well. And that's not just not this, that's just true. So, so therefore, you know, the, the cyber companies, you know, got to be more accommodating for the language. Number one, people don't

Fred Menachem (44:05.565)
Reh.

David Gee (44:22.104)
go and study cyber security at university. So they get a graduate who is journalist and they're going to train them. So you'd say that in countries like Japan, and you find, you know, there's lots of nation level issues because they've got, you know, Korea nearby and China nearby who don't always like them. And so they get attacked naturally because they're trying to, you know, bring them down. I think probably, probably, you know, guessing under reported, okay, that

Fred Menachem (44:42.566)
Right, right. Right.

David Gee (44:51.278)
things have been hacked, but never report that. So that's an interesting cultural aspect in Japan that probably doesn't get spoken about too much. But every country is a little bit different, right? You just gotta be aware of the politics and where this country, Singapore stands with China's relationship and geopolitics. Geopolitics matter, right? They matter, they matter.

Fred Menachem (45:08.978)
sure geopolitics right to they matter listen I've always been engaged on some level in geopolitics through the media and of course they matter people need to understand them and I think that and not enough people do because it drives it drives everything in a sense

David Gee (45:25.89)
Yeah, and if you go back to the cyber intel piece, right? You know, if you're in America or in Australia, you can, you know, pick up a number of subscriptions or, you know, companies that help you get into Intel. In China, can't. you got to find other mechanisms through trying to through government, the government to find information because no one's going to share that information readily. And so it's like, it's sort of like

Fred Menachem (45:33.481)
Right?

Fred Menachem (45:43.796)
Right?

Fred Menachem (45:50.142)
Sure.

David Gee (45:52.824)
gray here and then black, there's nothing happening. No, no, no Intel.

Fred Menachem (45:57.716)
I will tell you something and I want to get into something a little bit lighter, lighter, but I kind of think it's a bit fun to talk about, but I will say this. Look, at the end of the day, I've traveled a lot all over the world to the East as well. And people are people at the end of the day. I've always broken barriers, right? We, you know, look, yes, I think all human beings put people in a box, but I think the brilliant part is taking them out after that. Right. Once we meet people one on one and I've always experienced that. And I think we're, we're, we're more, we're more alike than we're different. And, and

I think people want to be around unique, different people. They're just nervous because they don't understand them. I think that's why the divisions happen so much. But once we meet people from all walks of life, it really makes us, I think, you can speak to that for just a moment, but I think that makes us more interesting, better leaders, and that type of thing. Would you agree with that?

David Gee (46:44.738)
Yeah, I agree Fred. mean being accepting of the differences doesn't matter if you're traveling to Jerusalem, to Hong Kong, to Shanghai, every place is different. People do different things. But just appreciating the difference is important. If you appreciate the differences, you don't get like, why is it so noisy, loud, dirty, whatever the bad thing is. Versus saying, you know what, it is what it is. So to me, I love the contrast. So when I was living in Japan, I'd go to places.

Fred Menachem (46:54.121)
Right?

David Gee (47:14.862)
like Egypt, like Turkey, that we're upside down. Okay. And when I lived in a place like China, where it was upside down, I'd go to a place like Singapore, in Japan, where it's things are precise, because I like the opposites. But you know, you don't go there expecting, you know, if the trains arrive in Egypt, an hour, within an hour, you're happy versus within a minute in Japan. And so but that's, yeah, but that's all acceptance of what it is and embracing that.

Fred Menachem (47:18.46)
Right? Sure.

Fred Menachem (47:23.731)
Right ward.

Fred Menachem (47:35.124)
But I think, sorry, snort, but that, right.

David Gee (47:42.124)
rather than being angry and upset because that's the joy of the world, think.

Fred Menachem (47:47.634)
You know, I think I find and I think unfortunately this happens often. And I think, look, as with Americans, I think sometimes there's a little bit of ethnocentricism, you know? And so sometimes, I mean, I don't want to mean I'm an American, but at the same time, sometimes people will go to a country and expect them to cater and behave the way they do. I don't think it's just Americans. I think a lot of cultures, and I think that that's unfair. And I think that people lose out on really getting to know a culture when they feel like theirs is the best and they're not willing to look at other approaches and other things. But I do want to get

to something and then move to another section. So I think this is so fun to talk about fun, but, you know, we talked for a minute about the party culture, right? How it works. You know, you go to Japan, you're doing business. We talked a little bit about the first party and the second one and, know, ends up in karaoke bar. But anyway, what happened? But, how did it really? I mean, I'm joking, but, it does work in a certain way. How does that work?

David Gee (48:39.118)
Yeah, people in Japan don't talk the truth, right, in the office. They all try to figure out what the hell does David mean by that, even when I try to speak Japanese, whatever, and try to explain it. And you go to a first party and the boss will pay, right? I'll pay for dinner. It'll be more formal and at the end of it, there'll be a simultaneous clap, you know?

Fred Menachem (48:47.764)
Right.

Fred Menachem (49:08.946)
Right?

David Gee (49:09.934)
which I understand is some sort of militaristic view of it, back around to it. But anyway, so that was, I was just told that's part of the culture. But at the party, they'll start saying, you know, oh yeah, you know, this is what we do and trying to understand what you meant by that strategy or that plan. And second party, I would never go to, because second party would be they go to eat more food and then they talk about what David said, what the boss said, and do we agree or don't agree. And then have that Japanese, nemawashi is the right word, I think, which is over alcohol, then discuss.

Fred Menachem (49:32.2)
Ha ha ha!

David Gee (49:39.564)
work and try to interpret it. And the third party is the bad party. That's the girly bar type thing.

Fred Menachem (49:44.818)
I guess it depends who you are, right? The batter, right? Exactly. But it's the karaoke grill you brought, right?

David Gee (49:48.396)
Yeah.

And the colleagues would tell me that they'd go to these bars and they'd save their lunch money for weeks to spend on this girly bar. And I'd say, you're kidding me, right? You're going to go to this girly bar to buy someone a drink. And there's no sex. It's just a drink. you're having lunch for how many days? Are you crazy? But it's just part of the culture.

Fred Menachem (50:06.546)
Re... Re... Re...

Fred Menachem (50:17.108)
interesting. We're not going to get too deep into that. I have a story, but I'm going to skip it. No, I actually have a story about an interesting experience when I was in Asia, but I'm going to skip it for today. We'll do that for another podcast. But, but, but it is interesting. That could be a whole nother conversation, but let's first of all, I want to ask just one question before we move to, to, to, to another area I want to talk about, but what approach you think build stronger teams, you know, East first West, how would you, how would you, you know, how would you answer that?

David Gee (50:19.394)
No, no, no,

David Gee (50:31.032)
Yes, it is.

David Gee (50:45.006)
Yeah, I think I think once you're conscious of the differences in that, like, and that's a lifetime of learning for you never really understand. But as you said, people are people. And if you treat people well, and treat them as you want to be treated, then they get it. then, I think, to me, it's it's I've tried to step approach, right, and I've adapted a slight little bit here and there. So when I've been in the East, I will use more baby English, no big words, we keep it simple, talk even slower than I do, which is hard for me.

But fundamentally give people trust and tell them look I'm gonna trust you. I'm gonna trust you to do it I don't want to micromanage you I want you to grow I want you to feel comfortable pushing your own barriers where you're not sure you know and learn from that And demonstrate that if you do those sort of things people go okay He think he means it actually he doesn't mean it so if I screw up he's gonna catch me You're right. He's gonna look after me and stand in front of the flag

Fred Menachem (51:15.027)
Hahaha

David Gee (51:41.71)
If you do these sort of things, you get incredible loyalty over time. Now it's painful because you get people goof off and do things that are silly and you take the hit for it, for them. And it's sometimes hard to do that, but actually that's just, it's the right thing to do. If I've had bosses do the opposite, which is usually the case, right? You kind of know they're not gonna catch you. You need to catch yourself. And it's lovely to have a person to even, willing to take the hits for you and then, you know, whether it's...

good and bad, good and bad, because that comes with the part of the territory. That builds a strong team and a strong sense of purpose and mission. Once you have purpose and mission that's strong, you can get anything done. doesn't matter where you're working and you can build missions to Mars or wherever you're going to, can get it done because people are willing to go above and beyond.

Fred Menachem (52:16.68)
Yep.

Fred Menachem (52:34.009)
And and and you know, that's how you treat people, right? I was actually I was I was writing something. It's just recently in a a LinkedIn comment about when you treat people well, they'll go the ends of the earth for you. And also when you lead them and treat them well, you give them you make them feel like, know, they're contributing and you're developing them, of course. But but but, know, and that's, you know, the point, I think part of the point you're making. But let's get into the see so hot seat because

I think this is important, know, lot of CISOs I think will benefit from this conversation because you've been in that seat and we know what the pressures everybody talks about, but what are some of the pressures that most people don't see? Let's just spend a few minutes on this.

David Gee (53:17.646)
Well, I think I that I always talk about the inherent pressure between the CEO and CISO and I've written articles for CIA magazine about that being it haven't been a CEO for you know 20 years my life and Then seeing many CEOs just think cyber security is a pain that is just downside there's an upside for them and so they will steer away from being involved in that because if it's going to be an issue it's friends problem. Okay, it's not my fault and so

That was shocking to me because as CISO, was always, a CIO, sorry, I was always thinking how do I support my CISO to get things done? And then to see CEOs act, know, well I care about customer experience Dave, I'm not gonna put in MFA. And I said, well hang on, sorry, we're being attacked by a bot in the US, your country's being attacked by, could be attacked by the same bot, you have the same version of mobile banking software. I don't care about customer experience being out.

It's actually a bad customer experience and so seeing CEO is pushed back against that shocking to me. Okay, then I realized that actually I got another HSBC. I had more support from the CEO's who the CIO's often reported to then the CIO's themselves and You know, I I found that interesting. I didn't expect that I expect you know, there's one or two CIO's that got it and they got that they need to be supportive You know

and really be supportive in spirit and in person versus actually saying, no, no, want to stay as far as I can from that because it's dangerous for me. But yeah, it's an interesting dilemma.

Fred Menachem (54:58.568)
So I want to get into just a couple things here and then then I have so much more to talk about as it relates to you personally, but a couple things. Number one, you know, I think this is so important. You know, I think everybody in cyber, you know, struggles with this. You know why security is still seen as a cost and not a growth driver and, and

you know we can all see it in the cyber security industry it's like right in front of us but it seems like it continues to be a problem.

David Gee (55:26.072)
Yeah, yeah. If you think, step back from it all, know, cyber security, even in a flat budget, is often growing, or actually a large slice of the pie. So if you're a peer in the business, or a peer and there's a CIO in one of the divisions, for example, you say, why are those guys getting all the money? Aren't they done yet? Aren't they done yet? there's a...

bit of jealousy I think that happens there around that and then also as cyber professionals we're not really good at the quantification the cyber risk convocation to say you know we're doing this to reduce X number of millions of dollars to reduce this risk and risk buy down of X right we just often go there and say we've got this regulation it's a new thing that's up it's Dora's whatever it is and we're gonna need 10 million dollars to fix that right and then it's a fear and fud and

Fred Menachem (56:14.324)
Right.

David Gee (56:20.75)
All that sort of aspect of we must have this money otherwise we won't be able to pass Dora.

versus actually, know what, we need to be compliant to Dora, we need to be passing the test, we don't need to be getting a distinction for that, but how do we really focus on reducing risk? And if you do that as well as being compliant, so you've got that sort of triple threat going on, right, you're able to, if possible, you know, be compliant, right, have a good customer experience, and reduce risk. If you do all three things with one investment, fantastic, right, so how do you start driving towards that agenda?

Fred Menachem (56:54.078)
Right?

David Gee (56:55.906)
versus just one of those pillars and saying, it's compliance. I must do this. That's a cop-out, I think.

Fred Menachem (57:02.604)
Yeah, I agree and I think look that's I really think that we can have a roundtable just talking about that alone I mean, that's all that's a whole conversation about how to solve that and and and and how to get Cesar's to able to speak to boards and you know It's another conversation. I think we should in the future we can bring a group together But I do want to talk about something so I know that and this was fascinating. We started to talk about this a bit

Excuse me, at HSBC you developed something called the vulnerability index and it focused on identifying exactly who within your organization was vulnerable and why. And I think we talked about this and OutThink emphasizes a similar approach. Instead of relying solely on generic compliance or policies, it highlights the importance of understanding human behavior to.

Proactively reduce risk you could say so I wondered if you could explain and you were kind of ahead of your time here Which is so cool. So could you explain exactly what the vulnerability index was how you implemented and I guess what kind of results or changes it drove within? HSBC security culture kind of

David Gee (57:45.752)
Hmm.

David Gee (57:59.918)
Yeah, I think it's part of a journey, because think the HSBC when it got there, we spent a billion dollars and four years on cyber to uplift it. And uplifting the SOC, the Intel group, every group was being uplifted with tools and the like. But fundamentally, we went from being very data poor to being more data rich and saying, OK, we can start to see one name brands, but the data analysis of use of these tools and where we are and then.

Fred Menachem (58:07.592)
right?

David Gee (58:27.918)
And then we started thinking a bit about this as we talk on the responsibility of thinking, well, have we got well-defined definitions for higher risk users? know, people with, know, pillage access or admitted of interest since the EAs for executives. You know, all the people who've got the keys to the kingdom. Do we have a definition for those guys? Do we train them differently? Should we train them differently? Yes, the answer is yes. We should train them differently. We should give them harder phishing tests. We should give them more...

explicit specific training that's targeted towards them, whether they're developer or whatever it is. So we spent a lot of time trying to work that out and then I kept thinking actually this is interesting because we're doing it very crudely, we're just measuring phishing and clicks and reporting. That's okay, but it's not really, it's all test.

Fred Menachem (59:17.972)
Right.

David Gee (59:23.886)
test lab stuff, right? We're doing it and people are doing it and we get click rates and we had a really good culture of getting reporting happening in the business and business CEOs were very proud to be, I'm at 2 % click rate. I've got the lowest in the country. That's great, but actually can we look at this more broadly to point about the index. The idea was actually simple, we collect all the information about Fred. If he's going to, or trying to get a blacklisted site, if he's trying to, you know,

Fred Menachem (59:25.352)
Sure.

David Gee (59:51.278)
to do things now with AI or things they shouldn't be doing, whether it's a DLP incident or whatever it is, we just collect information about your behaviour. Whether you're actually being attacked through being blocked by the filters or actually you're clicking phishing links or not doing the training, then we see you as being more vulnerable and we need to give you more training because it's looking you holistically as an asset, as a person versus a small little slice of that being phishing and reporting.

Fred Menachem (01:00:01.544)
Right?

David Gee (01:00:20.79)
And so it was an idea we had. I think it's the right thing to do because you're starting to, you know, unpeel and figure out, you know, what is it? Is it behavior? Is that attitude? You know, is it is it the trainings are good enough? You know, how do we be more tailored towards it?

Fred Menachem (01:00:40.446)
So I mean, I guess and you know, I've been now cybersecurity. It's hard to believe it's almost a decade. So I fell into this never intended to be in cybersecurity, but you know how I never looked back. Well, maybe sometimes I did. But but but all joking aside, you know, it's amazing to be in an industry that really is that really at the inception and you really were a pioneer back then talking about that. I would I mean, the way the way that companies are approaching training without

sort of individualizing it. Do you think that's a problem? Does there need to be a complete rebrand of training in the industry? How would you?

David Gee (01:01:16.002)
Yeah, that's a good question. I think gamification is good. mean, we saw that within the, because we're doing two levels, we're doing the awareness training for general 300,000 people in HSBC. We're also doing the training for the staff, the Cybers team as well. But certainly, you know, the young kids like the immersive live labs, know, that things that are actually gamified and there's a little board and...

Fred Menachem (01:01:31.059)
Right?

David Gee (01:01:41.614)
But fundamentally, if we look at the example with the DevOps side, how do you make sure that there's the right carrot and sticks for these things? HSBC had a tool we used and we bought it for 25,000 developers and probably using about 20%, 15 % of that. And I said, is not the tool, it's actually how we're using it. So we just need to make sure that we, for developers, we say there's a...

Fred Menachem (01:01:50.153)
Right.

David Gee (01:02:06.094)
A white belt training, you gotta do a white belt to minimum one course a year and then the yellow belt and different levels, right, up to black belt. But then, how do we then go from 20 % adoption to 100 % adoption in eight months, which is we did. I said, let's just measure it, let's have data. And let's start pushing Fred and David, why is your team at 15 %? I want you to be 100 % by in six months time. And then saying, that's a minimum, we expect that, otherwise it'll be reported in risk committees. So you start to make it a stick.

versus like, we're get this free iPad, we're get this free iPhone, if you join this group. It didn't work, it didn't work. And people tried that for years and basically spent licence money, right, but not had high adoption. So sometimes you need to be a hard-minded about it and get stuff done so you can move on to the next stage. No, no, we're good.

Fred Menachem (01:02:39.43)
Right, right.

Fred Menachem (01:02:52.638)
Sure. Well, excuse me, interrupted you. So no, no, I agree with you. And I think, look, it's got to change. The industry is going to be better. are going to be able to protect. know, humans are important, right? Machines can't do everything. yeah, we have to find a way to make human risk not a risk anymore and turn into a, you know, not into a liability anymore is what I'm saying.

David Gee (01:03:17.614)
Yeah, the human firewall, as they always call it, right?

Fred Menachem (01:03:18.758)
Right. Exactly. Thank you. was struggling with my words for a moment. Exactly. And so we can talk more about that, but let's move on because we've got we've covered so much today. I before I'd be remiss if I didn't get into look, you've had a obviously you've had a long, successful career. Many countries we've talked about it, you know.

Have you developed any type of personal framework or philosophy to keep yourself on your A-game consistently? Like how do you do that? I know that you're, I mean look, we talked about it. I know that there's a lot of things you do. So why don't you talk for a moment about that and how you handle that.

David Gee (01:03:49.292)
Mm.

David Gee (01:03:53.016)
Yeah, think coping, all of us have a, know, resilience to me is resilience is all about elasticity, right? Be able to bounce back. And all of us take it differently. You know, as I'm talking about my dad, you know, mental illness and stuff. How do you not succumb to that? How do you be strong to understand what you can, can't do and then figure it out that, you know what, I need to take time for myself. That time can be different things. For me it was yoga. I embraced yoga. did yoga.

at seven o'clock most mornings and I'd do an hour of yoga and I'd come out feeling fresh. But also there's mindfulness of thinking what's, you're not trying to do it, but you're thinking about the pose and the movement and the alignment you have and et cetera. Then you're going, actually, what's really important today is to do that. If I do that today, I'm good. Because as a CISO, you've got all these things coming at you, right? There's a board report, there's an incident, there's some steering committees, there is committee papers.

Fred Menachem (01:04:46.131)
Sure.

David Gee (01:04:52.494)
15 things, 20 things come at you. But if I can get that one thing done, I'm gold. And if you can have that peace of mind, clarity, thinking to prioritise and reprioritise, that helps you survive and thrive because you're then letting the dust settle around the emotions of people really pushing to do versus what I wanna do to be a good leader.

Fred Menachem (01:05:17.56)
And I'm sure that yoga helps you to focus and realize that you may have 20 things in your head But once you center right you focus on what the main goal is so I should take you up on that so there's a few more things You have a nine-day transformation plan. I think we talked about right. That's how you help turn around security teams So tell us about that for a moment

David Gee (01:05:35.042)
Yeah, that's, as I mentioned, that's something that I talk about in my book, which is that you start off by doing yourself by saying, here's my one page across people, process, technology, things I'm gonna be focused on, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. That sets the tone, which is I'm gonna be looking at making these changes, doing these things with a longer term view in mind, but what I'm working on now is connected, there's dots getting connected, And so whether it's about people or it's about the strategy, whether it's about...

in you're fixing hygiene issues, you've thought through it and you're being transparent about it, then your team starts, oh, okay, I should think this way as well. So I've had teams who actually then would actually adopt this as a rolling, now they're playing for themselves. Not that we did it, right? And I didn't force them to say you must do this, but it's trying to role model that you're thinking this way. What have you done for me lately is important, right? Because you can't just be resting on what you did last year or last month.

Fred Menachem (01:06:29.108)
Sure.

Fred Menachem (01:06:32.446)
So I wanted to just on a side note, I'm looking here. So I turn my head sometimes because I got my WhatsApp going and I got, you know, our executive producer and some other folks here sending me messages sometimes like speed it up or, you know, the usual stuff. And I just got a message saying that to let that my, my, just got a message and my executive producer is saying that I need to do yoga.

And it will help me. So I think maybe we can do a video yoga one day. can write. Yeah, I, it would benefit me, huh? Being very ADD and not always having a hundred things in my mind. It probably would benefit me. Correct.

David Gee (01:06:57.774)
Thank

David Gee (01:07:05.748)
I think so. I so. I think I do all kinds of yoga now, but I started off by once they do Bikram yoga. If you know Bikram, it's 90 minutes at about 45 degrees Celsius, which is 100, about 100 plus Fahrenheit temperature. You know, it's an international movement, you basically 90 minutes of exercise in this hot movement. And I can't remember if it's...

Fred Menachem (01:07:13.148)
Yeah, what is what is that?

Fred Menachem (01:07:23.046)
And dry it's Australia, right? Right. Right. OK.

David Gee (01:07:34.51)
28 would have a pose. It's not that many poses, but it's flexibility, it's strength, it's being able to just stand in that heat. And you flush all your toxins out of your body. You lose a liter of water in that period of time. it's quite... Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's... I think I wrote a story about this many years ago for CI Magazine about it's a good analogy for being...

Fred Menachem (01:07:50.014)
It's like going in a sweat lodge with Native Americans, right? Or I'm sure, right, I know people who've done that actually and passed out, yeah.

David Gee (01:08:04.334)
transformation, you're transforming yourself and you're trying to lead the right way and have the right form and even when you feel not that great, you don't want to show it. You got to just hold your form and then that's part of leadership, right? Because you sometimes may be thinking, my gosh, I'm screwing up today or it's not going well, but you can't show that. You've got to just be calm, be considered and be thoughtful. What's the right thing to do here? Even though you don't know what to do.

Fred Menachem (01:08:15.774)
Sure.

David Gee (01:08:34.464)
then engage the team to get you to help you.

Fred Menachem (01:08:38.228)
Right. So by the way, I just got, you know, these young bucks send me messages, you know, I'm old, I don't even know these, they know all the hip stuff. Apparently it's called hot yoga in the U S something to know, right? For the, yeah. Hot yoga apparently. What do I know? Right. I exactly. So, uh, there, there we go. But I know that, um, you know, thinking two jobs ahead, you talked about earlier, it's another one of your mindset. We covered that earlier and I know that that's in, that's important. And then, you know, you already talked about your son's story. Uh,

David Gee (01:08:47.868)
Yoga is a variation of variation.

Fred Menachem (01:09:08.21)
Right? And we talked about deliberately exposing, you know, your kids to diverse learning styles, which helped, you he went through some situations, right? It's your son, right? Or he had some difficulties initially and he doesn't, I mean, that went away, right? I mean.

David Gee (01:09:16.632)
Yeah, maude. Maude, son.

No, I think the people who came up with this method, Fred, had a kid with learning disabilities and born slightly brain damaged. My son was never brain damaged, but they realised actually the same techniques work on normal kids. And they just supercharge their learning abilities. And so my son's super smart. Sorry, if you watch this, you'll hate me saying that. And that's because, know, Tommy was 12 months old. He'd been to the zoo, you know, 12 times. You he just got stimulation. We just took him to see things and...

Fred Menachem (01:09:40.978)
Nothing wrong.

Fred Menachem (01:09:49.201)
but he also had fun and he learned exactly because I think it's so important to have both, right?

David Gee (01:09:51.628)
Yeah, yeah, when you're doing these cards, it's not real learning, it's actually you're doing these cards for like 10 seconds, 15 seconds, whatever it is, for twice a day. So it's actually, make it fun, you smile, make it, because learning has to be fun.

Fred Menachem (01:10:05.3)
I mean look, there's always these philosophies I remember and and I want to ask you one last question here But you know, there's a Waldorf mode to you know, the Waldorf story the Waldorf schools where they say kids don't get to play enough, right? Whatever and I'm saying there has to be you know, but there has to be both I think you know kids also need to sometimes just have fun as well and it sounds like you did you did it from an educational perspective but going to the zoo that's fun and that's and I think learning and I think that has we talked about for training perspective

David Gee (01:10:17.123)
okay.

David Gee (01:10:27.854)
Okay.

Fred Menachem (01:10:33.756)
Yeah, people have to learn the way they learn. And if you don't enjoy it and you're miserable, then why are you going to be interested? I learned through reading novels. I loved when I was a little kid, historical fiction to help me understand the world on some level. And I think that's the key, right? And so would you agree? mean, on some level as a leader.

David Gee (01:10:50.542)
Having fun, Fred, is part of it, right? For sure. want to always, in life, have fun? don't bother. I mean, seriously. If it's a job you don't like, then don't do it. Okay?

Fred Menachem (01:10:59.24)
Yeah.

Fred Menachem (01:11:02.908)
Right? of course. Or find a way to do it and maneuver it so that you can have fun. So on that note, man, I've had so much fun here, but I want you to tell us, what's the best leadership advice you've ever received? I don't mean to put you on the spot here, but...

David Gee (01:11:19.042)
Gosh, well I think the feeling that the past, past you others is one that I always remember is that that's been formative to me to actually think about making others better. That's always troubled me. I don't know if there's any other ones that pop out. I think I've observed role models and say I like what that person's doing, you know, there's a...

guys called Bryce came in, was the inner being COO at Ila Lillian. He was very generous, he was always, you know, in the management committee, he always wanted to know what everybody thought. Then he made a decision, because it was his decision, but he wanted to make sure everybody had involvement, engagement, and then he said, okay, thank you for your input, we're gonna do this. And I thought, wow, that's so empowering, because you listen to, it's thoughtful, and then he makes sure all the team gets a chance to...

Fred Menachem (01:11:49.533)
Right?

David Gee (01:12:15.214)
add to the decision and then he makes the decision and he owns it. That was great role modeling for how I wanted to operate myself and I think all of us can look at different people and take those pieces together and make your own Frankenstein of what good looks like because that's how you define that baseline.

Fred Menachem (01:12:34.996)
And I like that because I've seen I've worked in many different types of places and I've been involved with lots of different organizations and I one thing I've noticed is that often time it seems like a constant theme. People don't feel like they're able to give feedback. So I think when you implement that and understandably, you know, so I think that's so important. But listen, David, this has been an incredible conversation. You know, we talked about cybersecurity, but also, you know, leadership, resilience, breaking barriers, you know, stress. But.

There is one question that still lingers in my mind and I have to ask you this before we wrap up. What advice would today's David give the 10 year old chubby David?

David Gee (01:13:15.192)
Yeah, that's interesting. I think it would be pretty much, mate, you got this. You can do it. Trust yourself, trust your instincts. Whatever you have, you can also change. So keep trying to make yourself a better version of yourself. I think that self-doubt, we all have self-doubt, right? And then you get reinforcement by success. So I think...

Self-belief, self-confidence is important, but then be able to have a shot at something and then say, okay, this is good, I can keep building towards something better. But definitely, think all of us have that potential to be better. And so we need to define that for ourselves.

Fred Menachem (01:14:02.366)
First of all, David, that was beautiful. I feel like I have grown throughout this episode and there's nothing better when you spend time with somebody and you really get to engage and we had a chance to spend more time last week. And when we grow and learn from each other, that's like really the most important thing, evolving as human beings. And so thank you. I so appreciate this and thanks for joining us. And I just wanted to say, speaking of breaking barriers, next episode, we're gonna be doing something big.

for folks listening or watching. bringing together influential women in cybersecurity. Now, it was Women's History Month, so it's going to be little bit delayed, but these things take time to put together, but it's going to be a no BS, high impact roundtable on how women are not just making space in this industry, but they're shaping it now. And I'm so excited to talk about that. It's more than just about diversity because it's about true leadership.

new paradigms in the future of security and we're calling it women hacking the quo because these leaders aren't just part of cyber security. They're leading it, evolving it and pushing it forward in ways the industry has never seen before and many of them are my friends and colleagues that I've gotten to know over the years. So I'm excited about that. So if you think cyber security is just a boys club, things are changing, think again and you're not gonna wanna miss this one. So again, David, thank you. It's been a pleasure. I've had.

David Gee (01:15:22.67)
Thank you.

Fred Menachem (01:15:23.444)
a great time with you. We're gonna do this again. We're gonna do round tables and this is the Engage and Secure podcast, of course, brought to you by Outthink. Again, I'm Fred Menachem, zero to 60 and nothing in between. Until next time, stay secure, stay ahead, and keep thinking differently. Thanks again, David.