| | CAREER OUTLOOK
Technology Titans CYBERSECURITY
C
omcast Senior Vice President Myrna Soto is a focus-and detail-oriented person. Her favorite sport is golf, where concentration and consistency are crucial.
Those attributes assist Soto as the chief information secu- rity officer (CISO) of Comcast Cable, the nation’s largest video, high-speed Internet and phone provider to residential customers and businesses. In 2011, Comcast became major- ity manager of NBC Universal. The combined company’s revenue was $58 billion in 2011 making it number 49 on the Fortune 500 list.
Comcast has 22 million video subscribers, 19 million high- speed Internet users, nearly 10 million phone subscribers and about 126,000 employees in the combined firms. Soto manages employees for Comcast Cable in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Virginia and Colorado, and her infrastructure team handles the security of the enterprise and service delivery network for products and customers.
Soto is also responsible for cybersecurity of all infrastructure, network, design, enterprise, access and controls and over- sees the management of all security oversight to maintain the company’s IT compliance, governance, and data security requirements.
Prior to joining Comcast, she was vice president of IT gov- ernance and CISO for MGM Resorts International, formerly known as MGM Mirage, based in Las Vegas. She provided IT security and guidance for 16 wholly-owned Las Vegas casino resort properties, and supported the development and open- ing of the $9 billion “CityCenter” complex.
In 2004, the recipient of several of Hispanic Engineer & In- formation Technology’s Most Important technologist awards joined the Mandalay Resort Group, which merged with MGM Mirage. At that time, Soto was promoted to vice presi- dent of IT governance and chief information security officer for MGM Resorts International.
Soto has tips for prospective cybersecurity professionals to use. She recommends focusing on analytics, as skilled forensic security engineers must digest security event data efficiently, and acquire knowledge of information analytics, mathematical algorithms and technical engineering (software and hardware based engineering), and cloud-based technol- ogy and architecture.
54 WOMENOFCOLOR | SPRING 2013
Myrna Soto Senior vice president and chief information and security officer, Comcast
Plus, work to understand the behavioral sciences. “Very often to be a good security professional you need to think like a potential hacker. This is where the entire focus of ethical hackers came into play,” Soto says.
She understands the value of obtaining security certifica- tion of different types, but prefers to hire techs who will see a problem that may appear to be software, hardware, or architectural in nature but who know those systems are intertwined and must be seen from all angles. She suggests students check out three magazines, Information Security, CSO and Information Week, and read a CSO magazine writer’s blog: “Salted Hash”
Soto, a native Miamian whose parents are from Cuba and Puerto Rico, received her bachelor’s degree in psychology
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