8 Cybersecurity Managers & Influencers To Follow For Thought Leadership

If you’re looking for some thought leadership in the information security space, searching #cybersecurity on Twitter isn’t going to give you clear advice or direction.

But if you follow these seven cybersecurity managers, influencers, and thought leaders (organized alphabetically by last name) you’re sure to gain some new insights and perspectives daily.

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8 Cybersecurity Managers & Influencers To Follow For Thought Leadership

1. Andrew Hay 

Andrew Hay is the chief information security officer for Data Gravity, a storage security startup. Previously, Hay held positions as a director of research, a senior security analyst, and an information security officer—so he brings a great deal of industry knowledge to his Twitter account. He tweets “suggested readings” on cybersecurity-related topics to his 11,000 followers regularly, making his account a great follow.

2. Mikko Hypponen

Mikko Hypponen is the chief research officer of Helsinki-based cybersecurity firm F-Secure. He and his team have worked for over twenty years debugging some of the largest viruses in the world, including the SoBig.F worm. His work has appeared in numerous large publications (like the New York Times and Wired magazine), and he has given several noteworthy TED talks on cybersecurity. His number of followers—over 132,000—speaks for itself!.

3. Michael Kaiser

Michael Kaiser is the executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA). The NCSA leads StaySafeOnline, which helps businesses, schools, and individuals learn more about cybersecurity and data privacy best practices. Kaiser regularly retweets information from the the NCSA, opinion pieces he’s authored, and other bits of cybersecurity news.

4. Gene Kim

Author, researcher, and DevOps-devotee Gene Kim is the founder and former chief technology officer of technology solutions provider Tripwire. He’s also a cybersecurity researcher who has written numerous texts on IT operations, security, and compliance, including “The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT.” Take a look at his website for more information about him, and follow him on Twitter for his tweets about DevOps and IT operations.

5. Wendy Nather

Wendy Nather is the research director at the Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center. She brings over 30 years of experience in IT and cybersecurity to the Twitterverse, and her Twitter feed is chock-full of her own opinions as well as industry retweets. She also writes on her personal blog at Idoneous Security, and the infrequent entries are worth the read.

See Also: The Top 22 IT Security Blogs Of 2015

6. Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier is true veteran in the information security community. Schneier is an expert on cryptography and has written numerous books on network security. Currently, Schneier is chief technology officer for Resilient Systems, and IBM-owned incident response company. Follow himto get the latest on his blog and to see what he’s currently reading.

7. SwiftOnSecurity

Have you heard that international superstar Taylor Swift is also an InfoSec expert? Well, she isn’t, but this Twitter account is still a hilarious parody on that topic. SwiftOnSecurity has over 137,000 followers—the most of anyone on this list—and is well-known for satirical, cantankerous tweets and GIFs on everything from IT security to today’s political climate.

8. Parisa Tabriz

Parisa Tabriz manages Google’s information security team and has been dubbed the company’s “Security Princess.” Her job—detailed in this CNN article—“is to hack into the most popular web browser on the planet, trying to find flaws in the system before the ‘black hats’ do.” She’s very active on Twitter, so her 15,000+ followers gain a good deal of real-time information about hacking and IT security.

Which cybersecurity managers and influencers are we missing?

We know this list is just the tip of the iceberg as far as thought leaders in the cybersecurity space are concerned. If you know someone that should appear on the next iteration of this list, tweet us @BitSight and let us know!