Diligent Q&A - Introducing Fred Kneip, Head of Platform Adoption at Diligent
Fred Kneip, Head of Platform Adoption at Diligent, discusses how cyber risk has evolved in the last five years, learnings from RSA and what he’s most excited for with the Diligent One Platform.
Tell us about how you got here — what attracted you to Diligent?
Prior to joining Diligent, I founded and was CEO of a company called CyberGRX which provided third party risk management built on the concept of a one-to-many exchange. As CyberGRX grew to assessing over 15,000+ third parties, several of them reached out to see how they could use their CyberGRX assessment to report to their board of directors, and if we would be able to assist them with the process.
I ended up presenting to quite a few boards and saw how disparate the approaches were across companies, with varied levels of impact.Diligent is attractive as it offers an opportunity to build a level of consistency in how board materials are presented, improving the experience for the CISO or other risk practitioner, but also for the board member.
Board members often sit on 3 - 5 boards with data presented in 3 - 5 different ways, making it all the more difficult for them to fully engage with the materials and conversations. It’s exciting to be part of the company changing this dynamic!
You have deep roots in cyber risk management. How has cyber risk evolved over the last 5 years?
A lot of the evolution has been in the migration from a compliance mindset to a risk management mindset. Said differently, 5 -10 years ago the primary focus of most Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and risk practitioners was meeting regulatory and compliance requirements.There was not much investment beyond that minimum threshold.
As the threat environment has evolved substantially faster than the regulatory environment, this has flipped. Today, many risk practitioners are focusing on how to drive down risk for their organizations, meeting compliance standards as a byproduct along the way. The transition is still underway, but the mindset shift is visible.
You were recently at the RSA Conference with the Diligent team. What were some of the top issues discussed?
Security practitioners are consistently highlighting reporting to executive management and the board as an area of difficulty. Diligent hosted a dinner at the conference with CISOs and corporate board directors from some of the world’s most prominent companies for an “off the record” conversation about what was working and what was not when it came to CISO and board communication. It was fascinating to hear the breadth of topics and it was clearly an area of interest (for both sides) as nearly all participants stayed an hour past the scheduled end time.
CISOs today are faced with an overwhelming amount of IT and cyber risk data. Aggregating this data and organizing it into a meaningful, consumable format is no longer feasible without reporting tools.
In your role you head up adoption of the Diligent One Platform. What excites you about the platform most?
The Diligent One Platform is the true realization of the potential across all of our solution sets. At Diligent, we have the unique ability to connect day-to-day practitioners with the c-suite to the board through a single integrated platform. That doesn’t exist anywhere else and is pretty exciting.
A former sales colleague once shared with me that one of the most fun moments in his job was when he had a “wait stop” moment with a prospective customer, where they stopped the demo because something really resonated with them.We have been presenting the Diligent One Platform on a world tour with stops in over 25 cities across the globe. It has been a constant series of “wait stop” moments with the customers in the audience, and it’s been really thrilling to see how the platform can solve so many common pain points for organizations.
What new capabilities can users expect?
First, I am very excited about the way our product team is incorporating LLMs and Generative AI into the core Diligent offerings.We have been demoing some of the beta releases with our customers, and I can confidently say this will be transformative to help organizations understand, anticipate and handle risk with certainty and clarity. More to come on that very soon!
Second, integrations. We recently announced our partnership with Moody’s on a new Enterprise Risk Management dashboard to provide a comprehensive view of external risk, and there will be several more this year. These integrations add to the breadth of the Diligent One Platform.
Lastly, what are you most excited about for the year ahead?
I am excited to watch the trajectory of the Diligent One platform usage and to engage with customers on that journey and how we can continue to improve upon it. Our Elevate 2024 conference in September is going to be a fantastic opportunity to connect with customers to hear their experiences, discuss industry trends and predictions and demonstrate some of the innovations within the platform.
