Why Nominated: Having started his career as a cybersecurity practitioner gaining experience in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, Kalember has first-hand global knowledge of what practitioners deal with day-in and day-out in terms of compliance, threat and other challenges. Now, in referencing some 20 years of experience that engages both this perspective and that of a product strategist for the likes of WatchDox, Hewlett-Packard, ArcSight and currently Proofpoint, Kalember provides a range of cybersecurity and other executive leaders with guidance on everything from breaches to best practices to the wider threat landscape.
Profile: This year, Kalember was nominated to the National Cyber Security Alliance board where he works with other like-minded information security leaders to promote and empower companies and everyday citizens to “stay safe online.” Just as he furnishes this organization with input and ideas on various awareness and educational initiatives through this organization, he also is doing this through his own work at Proofpoint; just last year alone he led some 150 discussions with organizations of all sizes to help them learn about ways to bolster their security strategies against attackers directly targeting end-users rather than corporate infrastructures. More the 50 percent of the organizations with which he worked were from the Fortune 1000. No wonder, then, that under his leadership Proofpoint has won 24 corporate and product awards so far this year, including SC Media’s “Most Important Companies of the Last 30 Years.”
What colleagues say: “Ryan always provides exceptional viewpoints on the latest cybersecurity innovations and threat trends. Because he comes from a security practitioner background, he has a rare ability to examine the most complex security problems and offer a solution that is both scalable and will be effective. The challenges security professionals face are ongoing, but Ryan is one of the voices that cuts through the masses and provides a clear path forward." – Dan Barahono, an executive at Anomali and former executive at Qualys and ArcSight
-Illena Armstrong