The Department of Energy (DoE) appointed Greg Sisson the agency’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).

Humor is tricky business in the security world, however. Briefing staff on warning signs of workplace violence, precursors of terrorist attacks, contingency plans for natural disasters, and methods of corporate espionage doesn’t exactly lend themselves to one-liners. Dealing with most security incidents isn’t a laughing matter.

Unfortunately, diversity is still underrepresented in security. Our profession continues to struggle to attract and/or advance diverse candidates into leadership ranks in numbers that accurately represent a cross section of the working population.

Left attempting to optimize security teams while struggling to cope with multiple crises simultaneously, security leaders feel as if almost 75% of the workday is spent battling internal bureaucracy, while 25% is spent dedicated to the issues that require attention. But you’re not alone. To start, have some real conversations with your staff, and don’t forget to focus on yourself and your own well-being.

Now that we’ve learned this dependency on the cloud will continue to grow, there are new challenges that organizations have to solve in the year ahead – starting with making these cloud infrastructures more secure. To do this, organizations must reroute the security perimeter to focus on identity. While cloud-based identity can be a complicated concept for a number of reasons, there are a few simple steps organizations can take to evolve their identity access management (IAM) strategies. By moving beyond “effective permissions,” they should instead focus on threats and risks, following a cloud IAM lifecycle approach.