2010 Women of Influence award winners named

The 2010 Executive Women’s Forum “Women of Influence” Awards were celebrated earlier this month at the event in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The awards were co-presented by Alta Associates and CSO Magazine, recognizing women in four categories: one winner from the public sector, a winner from academia, a private solutions provider from the security industry, a corporate practitioner from the private sector, and finally, “One to Watch,” a future leader in the security field. The winners were nominated by peers in the security community.

This year, the public sector winner is Dr. Kathleen L. Kiernan. Dr. Kiernan is a 29-year veteran of Federal law enforcement and previously served as the assistant director for the Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) where she was responsible for the design and implementation of an intelligence-led organizational strategy to mine and disseminate data related to explosives, firearms and illegal tobacco diversion, the traditional and non-traditional tools of terrorism. She has been involved with the intelligence community for over a decade, and served as the ATF representative to the Counterterrorism Center (CTC) at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1993-1995. She is a Council Vice President for ASIS International with oversight of the Critical Infrastructure Working Group (CIWG); she chairs the Domestic Intelligence Council (DCI) for Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) and she is the former Chair of the DCI’s Law Enforcement Working Group (LEWG), an initiative designed to bridge the communities of intelligence and law enforcement.

Click here to see who the 2009 Women of Influence award winners were

The 2010 winner in academia is Dr. Carrie Gates. Dr. Gates is a vice president and director of research with CA Labs, the research arm within CA Technologies. She is responsible for performing research that has the potential to impact the strategic direction of CA Technologies products and services.

Dr. Gates has over 30 peer-reviewed publications in the computer and network security field. Her current research interests include applying visualization techniques to detecting security events given highly aggregated network traffic information, a project that has been funded by the Department of Homeland Security. She is also actively pursuing research in the areas of insider threat detection and usable security. In addition to her security research, Dr. Gates is involved in research in sense-making and network traffic analysis, and has recently done work on security architectures and cloud computing. She has given several invited talks, served on both Masters and PhD thesis committees, and is on several organizing and program committees for academic conferences in the areas of governance, forensics, insider threat, and general security.

The 2010 private solutions provider winner is Dr. Galina Datskovsky, senior VP, information governance with Autonomy Corp. Dr. Datskovsky is also president-elect of ARMA International, a non-profit professional association and authority on records and information management. Datskovsky recently came to Autonomy through its acquisition of CA Technologies’ information governance business. With CA, Dr. Datskovsky was a distinguished engineer and senior VP of architecture reporting to CA’s chief technology officer and was responsible for the corporate-wide architecture and design initiatives. She joined CA in 2006 with the acquisition of MDY Group International, where she served as founder and CEO. Dr. Datskovsky is a certified records manager (CRM) and is recognized around the world as an expert in records management and associated technologies, including the convergence of records and document management, email and physical records management, and federated records management. She has been widely published in academic journals and speaks frequently for industry organizations such as AIIM-The Enterprise Content Management Association, The Association of Legal Administrators, Gilbane Conferences, The Association for Work Process Improvement, ILTA and Cohasset Associates/MER.

The winner in the WOI corporate category is Nuala O’Connor Kelly, chief privacy leader of General Electric. O’Connor Kelly leads global privacy policy and practice for one of the world’s largest, diversified multinational companies. Prior to joining GE, O’Connor Kelly was appointed chief privacy officer of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in April 2003. As the first statutorily required chief privacy officer for any federal agency, O’Connor Kelly had oversight of all privacy policy matters for the Department, including compliance with the Privacy Act of 1974, the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 (as amended), and the completion of Privacy Impact Assessments on new programs and data collection technologies. Before joining DHS, O’Connor Kelly served as chief privacy officer for the U.S. Department of Commerce. While at Commerce, she also served as chief counsel for technology and as deputy director of the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning.

The 2010 ‘One to Watch’ winner is Caroline Wong, strategic security manager at Zynga Game Network. Prior to Zynga, Wong was chief of staff for the Global Information Security Team at eBay. Wong developed eBay’s security metrics program from the ground up and has contributed to several industry events and projects, including a speaking on a panel at RSA on Security Metrics and contributing to the CIS Consensus Metrics definitions. Wong is currently writing a “Beginner’s Guide to Security Metrics” with McGraw-Hill.

**An earlier version of this story incorrectly named Dr. Lorrie Faith Cranor as the winner in the academia category. We regret the error.