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Women of Influence 2005

The Executive Women's Forum awards program celebrating female infosecurity achievement recognizes a quartet of pioneers.

"[An important] part of influence is influencing those who are not in the business. People such as my mother and grandmother. I've done presentations at assisted living facilities [where] I'm helping senior citizens understand what identity theft is. That's a lot of fun. They really listen to you, and they really care.

"Influencing senior executives I think is the most difficult piece of all. You have to really show that you know something. You have to have factual information with some power behind it, [explaining] what the state of security is within your company."

Influencing the Security Future: "If you don't know where information is, or what happened to it or who touched it, you're in big trouble. So [using a tracking technology analogous to] RFID in a document is absolutely essential. I believe that just as with RFID technology in products [in the supply chain], we really need to integrate that into intellectual property. I'm not just talking about tracking change management on a document in Microsoft. I'm talking about actually [capturing data] anytime a document is touched. Adobe has a platform by which they do that with a PDF file, with digital signatures. It gives you a history of who touched [a document], who looked at it, what was changed, when it was changed. So, with data that's been at rest for five to 10 years, you access a document thinking that it just sat there that long and no one's touched it. In reality, you'd be able to check to see if that's true or not."

Susan D. Lutz - One to Watch
CEO, ELI (Electronic Lifestyle Integration)

Susan D. Lutz

Exercising Influence: "I think I sold the first firewall appliance in the industry [back in 1993]. And it took a tremendous amount of education. I can remember us bringing in hackers and telling [prospective customers], â¬ÜLook, would you give us permission to show you why you need a firewall?'"

Lutz offered free trials to prospects who were skeptical of the need. "I'd say, â¬ÜI'm gonna come back in a week. And if you don't like [the firewall appliances], I'm gonna pull them out. And if you like them, you can buy them.' From there, we sold hundreds and hundreds into major financials and pharmaceuticals, and in any other industry you could think of. It went from zero to tens and tens of thousands of firewalls." By doing this, Lutz took risk out of the transaction. "And that was key. It took a tremendous amount of influence to convince a JPMorgan, a Bank One, a Citigroup that they needed to do something completely new and industry-breaking. That was my first experience of influence."