Avatar

John N. Stewart

Senior Vice President

Chief Security & Trust Office

John N. Stewart formed and leads Cisco’s Security and Trust Organization, which underscores the company’s commitment to address two of the most critical and top-of-mind issues for boardrooms and world leaders alike. Under Stewart’s leadership, the organization’s core missions include protecting Cisco’s public- and private-sector customers, enabling and ensuring Cisco Secure Development Lifecycle and Trustworthy Systems efforts across the company’s portfolio, and leadership in data protection and privacy, trust and assurance, and cybersecurity efforts with governments globally.

Throughout his 25-year career, Stewart has led or participated in widely ranging security initiatives from IT design for elementary schools to national security programs. He is a Board Director for ReFirm Labs and SpyCloud, special advisor to the Board of Directors for Focal Point, RedSeal, and NSX, llc. (LSE: NSX) and is on the Syracuse University’s College of Engineering Dean’s Leadership Council. Stewart previously served on the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Cyber Security Review panel, the Cybersecurity Think Tank at the University of Maryland University College, and the CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th United States Presidency. During his career, Stewart has served on the Board of Directors for Fixmo, Koolspan, the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA), RiskSense, Shadow Networks, and Shape Security. He has been on advisory boards for Akonix Systems, Anomali, Area 1 Security, BlackStratus, Cloudshield Technologies, Finjan Holdings, Ingrian Networks, Nok Nok Labs, Riverhead Networks, and TripWire.

Stewart, a highly sought public and closed-door speaker who leads an organization that is well-recognized across the industry, keynoted RSA Conference USA 2018. In 2017, the International Business Awards (Stevie Awards) and the Golden Bridge Awards honored the Cisco Security and Trust Organization as IT Team of the Year and Management Team of the Year, respectively, with Stewart also winning a ‘Stevie’ as an Innovator of the Year in Computer Services and Software. Additionally, Stewart won the 2017 Ada Award for his vision of a Trust-Based Ecosystem of Technologies, Process and People. In the past three years, Stewart and his team have received numerous industry awards, including Info Security Products Guide Global Excellence Award for Security Organization of the Year (2016); as well as RSA’s Award for Excellence in Information Security (2015), the Global Golden Bridge Award for CISO of the Year (2014), and the CSO 40 Silver Award for Chief Security Officer of the Year (2014) for Stewart individually.

Stewart has a Master of Science degree in computer and information science from Syracuse University.

Articles

March 7, 2014

SECURITY

Advantage: Defense, or Several Ways to Level the Playing Field Against Cyber Security Adversaries

I recently contributed a chapter titled “Advanced Technologies/Tactics Techniques, Procedures (TTPs): Closing the Attack Window, and Thresholds for Reporting and Containment” that was published in an anthology Best Practices in Computer Network Defense: Incident Detection and Response, published by…

March 6, 2014

SECURITY

RSA 2014 Live Broadcast – Recap

Last week at RSA 2014, Chris Young and I joined a Live Social Broadcast from the Cisco Booth to discuss our announcements of Open Source Application Detection and Control and Advanced Malware Protection, as well as to answer questions from you, our partners and customers, about the trends, the chall…

January 28, 2014

SECURITY

Cisco Annual Security Report Live Broadcast – Recap

Last week, following the release of the 2014 Cisco Annual Security Report, my colleague Levi Gundert and I took questions from you, our partners and customers, about the report and its most interesting findings. This year’s report highlighted a number of new trends and found unprecedented growth of…

January 24, 2014

SECURITY

Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report: Trust Still Has a Fighting Chance

I spent a good deal of time last week supporting the launch of the Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report. I’m one of the Cisco executive sponsors for the report, which means that while I cannot take credit for writing it, I am significantly involved in setting course, providing advice, and reviewi…

January 21, 2014

SECURITY

Bridging the Looming Global IT Security Professional Shortage

I must admit that I recorded the accompanying video blog post before I had a chance to read the 2014 Cisco Annual Security Report (CASR), but this time slip on my part sets up a now-more-than-ever situation for what I’m about to tell you. The CASR projects 500,000 to 1,000,000 person global shortage…

January 17, 2014

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

Cisco Chief Security Officer on President Obama’s Data Collection Speech

“President Obama’s announcement represents one of many important steps required to address global concerns about privacy and data collection. Our customers require that privacy, security, and transparency be at the foundation of the equipment, services, and capabilities they purchase from technology…

January 16, 2014

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report: Trust Exploitation a Permanent Fixture in the Cyber World (Trustworthy Systems Can Be …

The Cisco 2014 Annual Security Report has been released, following months of collaboration between threat researchers and other cybersecurity experts at Cisco and Sourcefire. As promised, it provides a “warts-and-all analysis” of security news from 2013 and our perspective for the year ahead based o…

December 29, 2013

EXECUTIVE PLATFORM

Comment on Der Spiegel articles about NSA TAO Organization (UPDATE 2)

UPDATE 2: On Monday, December 30th, Der Spiegel magazine published additional information about the techniques allegedly used by NSA TAO to infiltrate the technologies of numerous IT companies. As a result of this new information coming to light, the Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PS…

December 20, 2013

SECURITY

2014: A Look Ahead

It’s December and the 2013 cyber security news cycle has just about run its course. We’ve seen more and increasingly virulent attacks, continued “innovation” by adversaries, and a minor revival of distributed denial of services (DDOS) actions perpetrated by hacktivists and other socio-politically mo…