Jim Coyle spent over two decades protecting the federal government, with the last 15 years on the front lines of cyber warfare. Now the U.S. public sector chief technology officer at Lookout, he draws on deep cybersecurity expertise to help agencies strengthen their defenses. But his path to cyber wasn’t straightforward.
Coyle started out as a helpdesk technician, eager to learn and solve tough problems to advance his career, he told WashingtonExec.
“Eventually, I found myself becoming completely enthralled in cyber threat intelligence,” he said. “I landed my current role utilizing my love of cyber threat intelligence and aligning it to our business strategy providing a focus and creating new go-to-market strategies.”
Below, Coyle discusses his connection to Lookout’s mission, his commitment to giving back, his focus on mobile security and government protection, and how Lookout is aligning its work with the administration’s priorities.
Why was this the path you chose, and how influential was it to your career?
I was lucky enough to have grown up during the computer age in the ’80s. I learned how to program spaghetti code in Basic and QBasic, as well as learn how the internal systems worked in order to find 640,000 of conventional memory to play video games. Combine this with the era of testing, poking and prodding various computers to understand how they work, and function and movies like Wargames, Sneakers and Hackers, and I knew there was going to be a strong career.
Do you have a personal connection to the current mission you support? If so, please explain.
I grew up with both parents working for the federal government. When I came of age, I was not able to serve the government in the same capacity, but I eventually found a way to serve: protecting the government in cyberspace. Looking back over the two-plus decades of my career, that personal mission has never changed, and never wavered. It was always paramount as I’ve seen first hand on many occasions the results of failure. It’s more than just civic duty, and more about giving back.
What are your current top priorities and responsibilities? How do these relate to your company’s overall mission/growth strategy?
Today this is two-fold: Mobile security is still not being seen as a priority despite threat actors making the shift to attack mobile, so education is a top priority. Both in terms of what the attackers are doing, and letting people know that there are defense mechanisms for this modernized threat and how those defenses work.
Second, is to focus on protecting the customers who need it most. For my area of the business that will be government organizations who collect, store and use sensitive data, or data which could be damaging to national security as well as the individuals whose mobile devices are being targeted.
Where do you and your team see growth opportunities in your current field or portfolio you support, or what do you anticipate to be your customers’ top pain points?
Today, the government under the current administration is trying to focus on a few key areas, of which, modernization and reduction of costs are top priorities. This makes technologies powered by Android and iOS prime candidates for these efforts. Securing them, however, is not like securing your regular desktop and this is where we can help.
Whether it’s through providing the leading mobile defensive capability to not just protect the end user but also the device itself, and connecting our vulnerability and alert data to their SOC or through providing our rich mobile threat intelligence to better understand the adversary in a holistic manner, we stand ready to help launch the government into a secure, modernized workforce.
How are you and your team planning to address/prepare for these opportunities?
We have recently brought on a brand new team who knows the government inside and out and the challenges they face. From putting feet on the street and helping educate to setting the record straight on mobile security, we’ve already made a big push in just a quarter’s time. Combined with a feature rich roadmap to combat the challenges we are all facing when it comes to mobile security as the attackers shift tactics to the human factor — us — I feel we are more than ready to answer the government’s call to help modernize their workforce, increasing security and reducing costs.
What is something most people don’t know about you?
When I’m not working, I’m typically found either on my tractor, working on my truck, learning something new in my lab or just enjoying the surrounding nature in the mountains. This is something that I’ve only really started doing in the last few years since the pandemic and has been life changing in a positive way. When dealing with nation state adversaries and cyber criminals on a regular basis, combined with the high stress of the business world, you need to be able to relax and take a break for yourself. I’ve finally found that peace.