CSO honors 2011 Compass Award winners

Security professionals with a record of excellence and a commitment to security programs that drive business are this year's CSO Compass Award recipients

By Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor

February 28, 2011 — CSO —

CSO has selected the recipients of the 2011 CSO Compass Awards. This year's theme is 'Security That Drives Business.' Winners were chosen by CSO's editorial staff and decisions were based on nominees' career-long achievements in creating state-of-the-art security departments and programs.

The 2011 Compass Awards will be presented at the CSO Perspectives Conference, April 5-7, 2011, Naples Grande Resort, Naples, Florida.

The 2011 winners are:

Andy Ellis, Senior Director, Information Security, Akamai Technologies
In recognition of: Transparency and openness of security models as a business driver; broad industry participation
Nomination highlight: As head of Akamai's InfoSec, Ellis has not only driven the security practices at one of the world's largest clouds, he has paved the way in openness and transparency to his customer base, supporting models like CloudAudit, building scalable compliance regimes to expose his security models, and been a public voice for security thought leadership. He has driven Akamai's security product offerings, not only bring PCI Compliance to the cloud, but removing it from the data center with EdgeTokenization, supporting it with cloud-based Web App Firewalls, and defending customers against Distributed Denial of Service Attacks.

Jamil Farshchi, CISO, Los Alamos National Laboratory
In recognition of: Change leadership and creation of strategic planning process/tools that map to organizational goals
Nomination highlight: Farshchi has served as a change-agent that has rebuilt a struggling information security capability for a national security institution by using best practices and transforming traditional security methodologies with new and innovative security strategies, approaches, and methods. When Farshchi was hired, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) information security program was reeling from public and government scrutiny due to security weaknesses which culminated in a security compliance order. He injected discipline in the areas of compliance, budget management, and operational security; built a highly talented team, and undertook game-changing innovative initiatives which resulted in the re-positioning of the information security program into a best-in-class capability.

David Komendat, Vice President and CSO, The Boeing Company
In recognition of: Embedding security and safety expertise & considerations within business units, projects, and sales cycles; internal leadership development program
Nomination highlight: Komendat depicts security's greatest importance as a business function. He realized in 2005 that Boeing's Global Security & Fire Protection (S&FP) organization leadership team lacked an acceptable level of business knowledge sparking the dedicated work with the finance and other business organizations to develop training and education to help leaders improve their individual business acumen and run their individual security and fire functions "like a business". The result has significantly improved year-over year-resulting in exceptional budget performance. Leaders run Boeing S&FP utilizing LEAN practices, sound financial discipline and personal accountability to insure strong financial performance.

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