Lumen Technologies has hired Jason Lish to join the company's senior leadership team as chief security officer. He’ll report to Lumen’s CTO Andrew Dugan.
As CSO, Lish will lead all corporate security functions and oversee Lumen’s physical security, emergency preparedness, fraud management and government security services. He'll also oversee global security for the company.
Prior to joining Lumen, Lish served as the chief security, privacy and data officer for Advisor Group, a company that oversees a network of independent financial advisors in the U.S. Prior to that, Lish was CSO and later chief information officer for Alight Solutions, a business processes outsourcing company. He also spent many years in various security leadership roles with the Charles Schwab Corporation and Honeywell International.
Lish has been with Lumen for only about 10 days, but he’s already developing his priorities. Speaking with Fierce, he said he wants to position Lumen as a trusted security partner for its customers.
“Part of what I’ve seen successful in security programs I’ve run in the past is having a seat at the table and being a consultative partner,” he said. “As we progress the Lumen brand we want to have a seat at the table.”
He’s also focused on assessing Lumen’s current security talent and creating a pipeline to draw more security professionals. He said that “within security, talent is very competitive.” He wants to make sure security folks on his team are challenged and have career growth, and he also wants to seek more “diversity of talent.”
His third top priority will be to integrate some risk management processes into Lumen that he learned from working in the financial services industry.
"Protecting Lumen information and physical assets from security threats is critical to protecting and serving our customers and their networks," said Dugan in a statement. "This is why we are thrilled to have Jason filling this very important role. His background and his broad security experience are an ideal fit for Lumen."
SASE and Black Lotus
A big topic in the telecom industry is the secure access service edge (SASE). Lumen has said that it’s working with VMware’s SD-WAN product and incorporating VMware’s SASE security features.
Of SASE, Lish said, “I’m a fan of it. I’m going to have to evaluate how we use it here.”
Lumen has made a name for itself in the security world with its Black Lotus Labs group. That group is run by Lumen VP Mike Benjamin.
Black Lotus Labs uses Lumen’s visibility into its own global network to identify malware and security threats. Lumen’s networks comprise about 450,000 route-miles of fiber and serve customers in more than 60 countries.
RELATED: Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs flags ‘watering hole’ cyber threat
Lish said Black Lotus provides security information to outside clients. But Lish’s internal Lumen security group will also “consume Black Lotus information, data, intel and feeds.”