Compliance Team Spotlight: ‍Brian Odian

‍Brian Odian

Director, Compliance & Risk Services APAC + VikingCloud Cybersecurity Podcaster

Brian Odian is VikingCloud’s Director, Compliance & Risk Services APAC, based in Sydney, Australia. Brian manages a team spread across the APAC region that  provides security consulting and compliance assessments. On a day-to-day basis, Brian reviews assessment reports, meets with clients to conduct reviews, and assists with sales. Brian also produces industry video materials and articles.

Brian’s journey began in IT back in 1988 as a computer operator with plans to become a programmer, until a conversation with his boss about setting up a network team completely changed his career trajectory. Brian then spent 14 years at HP managing some of the most significant programs in the region and globally. After this, Brian moved to VikingCloud, where he has been for the past 7 years. Brian currently holds CISM, CRISC, QSA, PMP, CDPSE, ACCISO, and ISO27001 IA certifications.

Brian contributes immensely to the cybersecurity and compliance space as the creator of VikingCloud’s CyberIntel podcast, which is approaching 100 episodes across six seasons. Brian has been invited to speak at some of the largest cybersecurity and compliance conventions, including the PCI SSC community meeting and Cybercon.

One thing Brian didn’t see coming from his career? The travel!  He once completed an around-the-world trip from New Zealand to Sydney in under 2 weeks, including stops in Singapore, Frankfurt, Hamburg, London, Los Angeles and Mexico. His love of travel - and flying in particular - saw him take pilot lessons to the point where he was flying solo!

Get to Know Brian Odian

Q: What gets you most excited/passionate about your job right now? Any examples?

A: New technology always gets me excited. I love looking into moonshot technology like quantum computers or the evolution of AI and how we can apply it to cybersecurity —not only from a technological perspective, but also a scientific one, such as entangled particles or superpositions when discussing quantum computers. That forward-thinking helps us determine what we should advise clients to do now to be better prepared for what may soon impact them in the future.

Also, I love it when we have a round table discussion on a solution—listening to all the views and circling the target until we nail it. It’s always satisfying to come up with a new idea, approach, or solution to a problem.

Q: What is the biggest challenge clients are experiencing when you first speak to them?

A: Their ability to provide the resources necessary to comply with a standard, whether it be people or solutions. Also, clients often become overwhelmed with the standards they sometimes must comply with.

Q: If you could give one piece of advice to VikingCloud customers, what would it be?

A: Don’t wait. Technology, like quantum computers, will become a reality.  The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has said that large-scale quantum computers, if ever built, will be able to break many of the public-key cryptosystems currently in use. They have also said, “Historically, it has taken almost two decades to deploy our modern public key cryptography infrastructure.” The issue with this is, and most professionals in this space agree, we don’t have two decades before quantum computers that can break public-key cryptosystems become a reality. NIST have released post-quantum cryptography that they encourage all to use now.

The “don’t wait” advice also applies to so many other situations. Don’t wait to apply urgent patches, don’t wait to replace end-of-life systems, don’t wait to see what everyone else will do before you pick a path, don’t wait to comply with something just before compliance is due rather than maintaining compliance throughout the year.

In Closing

Brian’s knowledge and expertise of compliance standards and new and existing technologies has made him an integral part of the compliance and risk services team at VikingCloud. His “don’t wait” view on new technologies, like quantum computing, makes him the leader VikingCloud customers deserve.

Learn more about Brian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianodian.