Former White House CIO Theresa Payton. Photo: Cybercrime Magazine.

Former White House CIO Theresa Payton on Responding to Legal Matters

Here’s how to think ahead and prepare 

Di Freeze, Managing Editor

Northport, N.Y. – Aug. 6, 2019

Theresa Payton is a globetrotting cybersecurity CEO, author, keynote speaker, and actress. Her company, Fortalice Solutions — a cybersecurity intelligence and operations provider — has been on the front lines of hundreds of incident responses.

This week, Theresa talks about legal matters as they relate to CISOs. You may find at some point in your career that you have to get involved in legal matters. Maybe it’s an incident that occurred that your team responded to or an accusation that you don’t have duty of care of data. It could be that some reporter is saying that your data is on the dark web. That may start a chain of events where you must respond to legal inquiries. This could be affidavits, depositions, or could mean doing a court case and going to court as an expert witness. How do you think about this and how do you prepare?



Do your homework. Be yourself. Write out the facts. Always let the facts lead you.

Rely on the lawyers for their guidance on how to present the facts. You’re often going to be presenting the facts either in your written documents or orally to people who really don’t understand our tradecraft, so it’s really important that you think about how you talk to the board, how you talk to your family members. That’s how you want to talk about these matters.

Then, study. You may have it all top of mind but you really need to go back to your old documents, old status reports, so make sure you always keep your incidents that you work as case files.

Watch Theresa’s short video to learn more. 

Stay tuned for more cyber lessons from Theresa! Until next time, be safe out there.

Theresa Payton Archives

Di Freeze is Managing Editor at Cybersecurity Ventures.