Case Studies - Secutor Cybersecurity

Steve Blanding

CISO Consultant

CISSP, CISA, CGEIT, CRISC

Steve is an IT management consultant living in Dallas, TX. Steve has over 35 years of experience in executive IT leadership, IT governance, risk and compliance (GRC), systems auditing, quality assurance, information security, and business resumption planning for large corporations in the Big-4 professional services, financial services, manufacturing, retail electronics, and defense contract industries. He has extensive experience with industry best practices for adopting and implementing new technologies, IT service management frameworks, and GRC solutions that have dramatically improved customer satisfaction while reducing cost.

Industry Experience

State Government: 5 years
Retail: 5 years
Defense Contract: 5 years
Manufacturing: 2 years
Health Care: 2 years
Local Government: 2 years
Public Accounting (Big 4): 7 years
Insurance: 3 years
Financial Services: 5 years

Key Career Accomplishments

Conducted a full-scale ISO27000 audit 4 times over the past 6 years. Also, conducted a “light” ISO27000 review of a small Dallas-based company in 2007.
Developed and authored a comprehensive IT security policy manual, incident response plans, training programs, security contingency plans and configuration management plans for FedRAMP regulatory compliance.
Conducted multiple DR and operational backup and recovery IT risk assessments of critical business systems on mainframe, LAN, and distributed system networks located across North America.
Conducted data centers audits for Tyco Corporation (Brussels, 2005 and Denver, 2006), Farmers Insurance (Los Angeles, 2006), Zurich Financial Services (Chicago, Kansas City, and Grand Rapids, 2006), and Convergys Corporation (Dallas, 2010, 2011, and 2012).
Led a project to remediate segregation of duties and streamline user access system security and HIPAA compliance administration across 5 regions in North America, resulting in cost savings of $700,000 per year (Kaiser Permanente).
Implemented Sarbanes-Oxley Section 302 and 404 IT general and application controls, reducing security administration costs and improving operational performance by 50% or $500,000 annually (Tyco Corporation).
Led the global SAP business-IT alignment, process re-design implementation initiative for financial accounting, materials management, production planning, quality management, sales and distribution, warehouse management, and plant maintenance, which resulted in creating $2,000,000 in cost savings.
Engaged by Arthur Andersen in Houston to transform the local IT organization and then direct 3 organizational mergers/consolidations, which resulted in a 25% reduction in operating costs, or $3,250,000, while improving customer satisfaction by 30%, and improving employee morale, technology availability and the quality of IT infrastructure and service delivery.
Assigned by Arthur Andersen global leadership to lead global project teams responsible for data center and customer support call center consolidation, which resulted in annual operational cost savings of 45% or $4,000,000.
Implemented ITIL service management practices for problem management, incident management, help desk, project management, and operations management.
Conducted SOX 404 audits at Duke Energy (6 months), Red Hat (3 months), Tyco (9 months), Zeon Chemicals (4 months), and Convergys (2 months). Experience includes control design/documentation and effectiveness testing.

Publications:

Author, various articles in EDPACS and Auerbach’s IT Audit Portfolio Series, 1981 – 2001

Author, various articles in the Handbook of Information Security Management, 1993 – 1995

Editor, Auerbach’s Enterprise Operations Management, 2002

Editor, Auerbach’s IT Audit Portfolio Series, 2000 – 2002

Consulting Editor, Auerbach’s EOM Portfolio Series, 1998 -2001