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December 10, 2024 15 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
iHeartMedia Presents CEOs you should know.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hi.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
I'm John Denkele, founder and CEO of Dinkle Business Development.
This is iHeartRadio CEOs you should know and I'm here
today with Hasha Kornish, executive director of Cybersecurity Association Incorporated.
Welcome Tasha, and thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome, Thank you so much for having me. Delighted to
be here.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Yeah, WECo look forward to our conversation and catching up.
I thought maybe we could start by just getting to
know you and the organization a little bit more so
for those who aren't familiar, could you tell us more
about the Cybersecurity Association Incorporated. Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
So, we are a membership and trade association based here
in the Mid Atlantic region. Our mission is to advance
cybersecurity through advocacy and collaboration. We have corporate members that
represent your small companies from one to two employees, all
the way to your international cyber companies. We have individuals

(00:59):
as well as students. That's becoming a larger part of
our organization as well.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Awesome. And I understand you recently went through a name change.
Could you talk to us about why you decided to
do that.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Absolutely. So, we've started our journey in Maryland. We've been
headquartered here for the last ten years, and we were
really a thriving organization throughout the state. We've built wonderful
relationships with our state government, our legislators, and all decision
makers to really make sure Maryland is a wonderful place
to do cybersecurity. Over time, we discovered that many of

(01:36):
our members had gone throughout the country. Our Maryland businesses
had expanded, our students, you know, we're doing work elsewhere.
Our leaders were, you know, being relocating to other states.
So we've decided that our name didn't really represent who
we were anymore, and it was also limiting our ability
to be a resource to cybersecurity customers everywhere.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Gotcha, thank you, appreciate you going over that. And I
know you mentioned your membership a little bit. How many
members do you have?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, so we currently have six hundred and fifty members.
Most of those are corporate members, but we do have
some individuals and students as well.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Wow, And I imagine it's not you know, I guess
when people think of the Cybersecurity Association, they think of, oh,
the cybersecurity companies. It's technology, But what's the diversity of
your membership. What's that look like?

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Great question. We love that cybersecurity is a really diverse industry.
So we have plenty of technologists, as you mentioned, we
have many folks involved in the legal fields and in law.
Privacy law and cybersecurity law has really become a growing industry,
so we're very excited when we grow memberships there. We
have plenty of insurance agents because cyberliability has become a

(02:51):
huge topic, a huge need for all business owners. Yeah,
so we really Yeah, we have a great diversity and
then you know, going off into different areas from there.
But it's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
That's awesome, all right, thanks for sharing that. And when
it comes to like the programming you offer for members,
could you talk a little bit about that, And in
particular I saw that you have these kind of three
centers of excellence.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yes, so in two thousand and two, say twenty twenty two,
we organize our organization to three main centers of excellence
so that those who are looking to interact with the
association had more direct ways to come in to our work.
So our Center for Business Growth and Innovation is all
about giving our cyber and IT companies everything they need

(03:39):
to grow, to gain new clients, to become more operationally excellent,
and also to network with each other because a huge
part of their growth is through teaming and is through partnership.
We also have the Center for Talent Acquisition. We do
a lot of advocacy and awareness building around this center

(04:04):
to make sure that you know we are aligning our
programs and our investments with what the industry actually needs
in the future workforce. And then we have our Cyber
our Center for Cyber Resilience, which is where we do
a lot of our education and outreach. This is a
great way for non members to interact with our organization

(04:25):
to receive knowledgeable and reliable resources.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
That's awesome, Thank you. I appreciate sharing that. And talk
to me about your events. I know Cybersecurity Association does
multiple events throughout the year in the mid Atlantic area.
Talk a little bit about those and maybe your kind
of goals of expanding on that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Absolutely, our events typically align with our different centers of excellence.
We launched, for example, a seminar series this year called
why didn't I did? Why didn't you investor me? Why
didn't you buy my company? And we'll say why didn't
I know that soon, so really candid conversations around business

(05:10):
growth and innovation in the technology sector. And that's been
all in person. We do a lot of our events
for the Cyber Resilience Center online because again we know
that a really broad audience should have this information. We
also do some of those in person. We've done events
around AI and machine learning, very hot topic right now,

(05:31):
especially as there is a cybersecurity and software development as
well as you know, various other topics around supply team
and specific areas in state, local education, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Very cool When when's your next event?

Speaker 2 (05:47):
So throughout the fall. In September, we just had a
large event celebrating our industry at was our eighth annual
awards ceremony. But throughout the fall we'll have a variety
of events. Especially as CMMC becomes rule. This is a
huge deal for anybody doing work with the Department of Defense,
so we'll be doing a lot of work around that

(06:10):
and many of the other kind of topical cybersecurity topics.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
That's awesome, And just a quick question around your funding,
how how does that work? As you know, the cyberse
Security Association Incorporated is that members DOS is that through events.
Is that do you get funding from the state or
federal government. Talk a little bit about your funding model.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Sure, much of our revenue comes from membership. We have
sustaining sponsorships as well for those companies who really want
to set themselves apart. We also have a lot of
our running comes a lot through events, and we do
have a couple of contracts. One of the goals of
the Centers of Excellence is also to do research, to

(06:57):
do continuous improvement and continuous work. So we do have
some contracts with state governments to do work around talent
acquisition as well as cyber resilience for small businesses.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
Got it neat? Thank you? Thanks thanks for sharing that.
I just pushed gears a little bit. Tell us a
little bit about your personal background. How'd you get to
this point in your career.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Sure, I have started out my career really in the
life sciences and public health realm. I've spent several years
in different hospital systems at the National Institutes of Health
doing clinical research and community research. In twenty seventeen, I
became the executive director of a human services nonprofit in

(07:39):
Baltimore City named Saint Mary's Outreach Center. Love me, and
when I was looking for a new adventure, I applied
to Cybersecurity Association. Because of my nonprofit backgrounds, I obviously
knew about cybersecurity and all of my work with health
care and clinical research, so I was very passionate about
it from a user interview, but very excited to work

(08:02):
on on the economic development and workforce development we get
to do as well.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, yeah, I bet, thank you appreciate that. And then
I was like, talking about leadership on the show. You know,
how would you describe your leadership style.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
I certainly am a dive in head for its leader
at times. I spent a lot of my time as
an individual contributor and working on small teams, so I
certainly like to roll up my sleeve when it's necessary.
But I'm a huge fan of hiring people who are
better than me in certain domeans and really letting them

(08:39):
take the reins and empower them to really bring value
to the organization in the ways that we need to
grow and we need to continue to make a bigger
impact for our members and beyond. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
I think that's a good point. I got a lesson
in that early in my career, I had a super
or she was actually the head of sales and marketing
for this particular organization and that was the frontline sales
manager at the time. But getting to know her and
see how she hired her uh her you know, her team,

(09:16):
her team of managers. It was all around uh areas
where you know, she knew she wasn't the best end
let's put you know that way, and but she she
recognized that, and which was really interesting to kind of see.
I was pretty young at the time and and it
was interesting to kind of see why and how she

(09:39):
did that because because even to this day, I've seen
you know, other CEOs or other business owners, you know,
they they they don't hire that way. They almost you know,
feel that, you know, kind of like I have that
I know all that mentality and aren't you know, continue
to try to develop and hire people smarter than they

(10:00):
are so they can continue to learn. And so yeah,
that's that's a that's a good point. When in your
career did you feel like you kind of learned that
or can you mean bed points like a time or
me saw that I.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Think because I you know, I went from getting my
bachelor's degree, I spent a year at the NIH and
then I moved to do a master's in public health
at Hopkins, and I think just being around really dedicated,
really smart but diverse teams. I learned that pretty quickly
that I was going in order to succeed in anything,

(10:36):
I was going to have to surround myself I really
smart people who thought diversely, and maybe sometimes they'd be
smarter than mean areas. And that's okay because I bring
my own skills and together it's that teamwork, right, that's
greater than the some of its parts.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, that's great, that's great. Thank you. So obviously the
pandemics behind us were still kind deally with it and
probably well for you know, for the for the near
future or but when you look back over the past
couple of years, what did you learn about managing or

(11:13):
communicating with people during that time.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Certainly, I think the association world, I don't mean to
sound dramatic, but will be forever changed by the pandemic
and by the way that people work and changing demographics.
I think for us, we learned that these kind of
large level, generalist events, they might work sometimes when it

(11:40):
comes to things like our award ceremony, but people are
looking for a more personalized experience from their associations. They're
looking for more curated events, They're looking for communication that
matters to them. So I think becoming really smart about
how the frequency exactly what we're communicating to our members

(12:01):
has become increasingly critical as people are bombarded by information
they don't need or want.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I appreciate that. And
what gets you excited about the future of the Cybersecurity Association, Inc.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
I think we have a lot of excitement and energy
right now about our expansion throughout the Mid Atlantic region.
I think that we are unique and that we bring
together folks across the gamut. We don't just care about
educating businesses about cyber or economic development or workforce development.

(12:40):
We really care about all three of them. And I
think that will make because a unique offering in some
of these new areas we're expanding to. And I think
that we are at the stage in our growth where
there's a lot of ways for people to get involved.
I think there are probably things that we'll get excited
about that we don't need know about right now in

(13:01):
six months, because we'll find somebody who will be willing
to roll up their sleeves and jump in with us
and really build out a specific interest group in Virginia
or a student group in Pennsylvania. Who knows the future
is very exciting.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, that's really exciting. Well on
the other side, but what keeps you up at night?

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Certainly, I think there are a lot of cybersecurity threats
that keep me up at night. Working in this field,
you can't escape them. The foreign threats are getting very
scary by the day. The use of AI to commit
such atrocities is very frightening. I think as an association,

(13:48):
I wake up every morning thinking what greater value can
we bring to our members, because at the end of
the day, that's really who I want to make sure
is feeling satisfied and is getting what they want, want
and is getting what they need, whether that's again individual
services or that's advocacy at the state or federal level.
Every day I think about how can we be different

(14:10):
and how can we bring more value to our members.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, that's great, we'll check you up. Thanks for sharing that.
So wrap things up. Is there anything else you'd like
our listeners to know about you and the Security Association?

Speaker 2 (14:23):
In one of the benefits that we offer now to
the larger community, which we'll be building on, is our
speakers Bureau. So many groups gather together for a variety
of reasons, and sometimes you need that specific cybersecurity expert
who can explain to you the threat landscape and how

(14:47):
increasing international threats can impact your construction association, for example,
we are happy to provide that service to the community.
We're very excited about building that out so that our
members can get more engaged, but also folks in the
community have a place where they can turn to.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Nice that's cool. Thanks for sharing that. And lastly, tell
us how to find more information about the Cybersecurity.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Association, So you can search Cybersecurity Association Incorporated at any
major search engine and you will be navigated to our
site and we are on very active on LinkedIn as well.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Great, awesome, Well, thank you so much, Josh. I really
appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.
Very excited about the future of the Cybersecurity Association. I've
been following to you guys for a long long time,
ever since the organization started many years ago, so I'm
very excited for your future and thanks again for being
here today.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
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