Stacey Halota is the Vice President for Information
Security and Privacy at Graham Holdings Company. Ms. Halota has more than 20
years of experience in the IT, security and privacy fields. Before joining The
Washington Post Company in 2003, she served as the federal government and
southeast region leader of Guardent Consulting Services (now part of Verisign),
where she helped transform Guardent from a regional decentralized model into a
national information security consulting organization recognized by
Computerworld as a top 100 company to watch among IT companies. Prior to
Guardent, she worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Technology Risk Services
consulting practice where she helped grow the team serving the mid-Atlantic
market and federal government from two consultants with no client base or
revenue to 46 consultants and $9.3M in annual revenue in three years. She talks
to the Young Professionals about her volunteer work and staying positive in the
face of change.
Ms. Halota
describes herself as a very optimistic and positive person, saying, “there is
so much to be grateful here.” She cites an incident recently when she was in a
taxi and the driver was from Afghanistan. He said, when you live in the U.S.,
you’ve hit the lottery. The sentiment rung true for Ms. Halota, as it does for
us here on the Young Professionals committee.
Although
Ms. Halota enjoys her work – and, as described above, is extremely successful
at it—if she completely changed courses today, she would choose to be more active
in missionary and volunteer work, expanding the work that she already does. One
of her passions is The Mustard Seed Project (MSP), a non-profit which provides
acts of mercy and acts of mission in east and central Africa. Ms. Halota is particularly
active in Rwanda, leading mission trips there and ultimately joining the Board
of Directors in 2013.
She has
traveled extensively with the MSP, describing it as a land of 1,000 hills and
lakes with unbelievable beauty. Ms. Halota also travels around as a consultant
and as a speaker. For example, She was the CISO Spotlight featured speaker at
last year’s Black Hat conference and spoke at the inaugural Privacy and
Security Summit in October as well. Above and beyond these prestigious
engagements, she reveres the Grand Canyon as an inspirational spot that she
would recommend to any traveler.
Asked about
which of her special projects or undertakings she is most proud of, Ms. Halota
cited her work with the International Consortium of Minority Cyber
Professionals (ICMCP). Launched in 2014 to bridge the cyber divide that results
from the ongoing underrepresentation of minorities in the fast-growing field of
cyber security, they will sponsor their first-ever National Conference of
Minority Cybersecurity Professionals in March 2016. Once again, Ms. Halota will
be a featured speaker.
Ms. Halota
was named Secure Computing Magazine’s 2009 Chief Security Officer of the Year
and was also named 2009 Mid-Atlantic Information Security Executive of the Year
(Commercial Category) by the Executive Alliance. She has been featured in
Secure Computing Magazine and is well-known around DC and in the cyber
community generally. We were happy to be granted the gift of some of her time
and— albeit unnecessarily—wish her luck in her upcoming appearances. We’ll be
following you!
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