The Cyber Exec: A New Concept?

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Don Proctor, Cisco's senior vice president and leader of the company's cybersecurity task force in the Office of the CEO.

Though little information about the task force can be found online, Proctor's executive bio includes this vague description about his role: "works with Cisco customers and partners, and government leaders to advance the safety, privacy and integrity of their critical network infrastructure."

Still unclear on what exactly that entails, I asked him. He described himself as the cybersecurity "executive sponsor" inside of Cisco.

Drawing my own conclusions, I gather that Proctor's role is one part technologist, one part advocate, one part evangelist and one part lobbyist -- participating in a public-private dialogue and promoting partnerships to improve the overall state of cybersecurity and (as a valuable byproduct) further establishing Cisco as the authority in all things that touch the network.

So is this a legitimate job description or just a good corporate marketing strategy? Perhaps a bit of both, though based upon Proctor's qualifications, he understands cyber and is a legitimate techie, having spent the better part of his last 15 years at Cisco in software development.

Expect other vendors to follow Cisco's lead, as this concept of 'cyber executive' catches on. But beware of imposters.