When Norway decided to go into lockdown for COVID-19, 我当时就坐在新加坡, preparing to travel to the island countries of Palau and Micronesia, where I had lined up a couple of weeks of diving the reefs and chatting up the locals. Being part of the Disaster Recovery Management in my organization, 相反，我被立即召回, 十小时内就能坐飞机回来. 那天是3月12日, and three months later I'm an expert in all things videoconferencing and my office is still on the kitchen table. I take comfort in the fact that we are all in this together globally, but am so looking forward to when we can go back to seeing each other face-to-face again instead of through a camera lens.
更好的是，我迫不及待地想再次旅行. It might have been a coincidence that I was in Singapore when Norway’s lockdown came about, 但对于那些了解我的人, 我在某个地方旅行一点也不奇怪. So far, I've been to more than 120 countries on all seven continents. There’s a saying that “travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer,我相信这是千真万确的. Going somewhere to see things with your own eyes and speaking with the people there beats anything you can ever read from a book or watch in a documentary. 我从旅行中学到的东西最多, and it’s something I strongly recommend everyone to do. 每一次旅行, you’ll learn something new and be a better version of yourself upon returning to your daily life.
I first heard about ISACA while I was studying for my bachelor’s degree in the late 1990s. I had a few older friends who entered into an information security startup, delivering 24/7 intrusion detection and response services, 我也想做同样的工作. At that time there weren’t specific courses available at the university that delved into information security or risk management – everything was about either software development or systems administration, with none of them having any particular focus on security. Looking back, that’s almost unbelievable, but it’s how it was. We had to look outside our curriculum for the information we were after, 我就是这样找到了ISACA. I decided I would pursue formal certifications as soon as I had sufficient practical work experience to earn them after completing the exams.
我很早就看中了首席信息安全官的职位, and worked my way in that direction for more than a decade before reaching that goal in 2014. Reaching that milestone is one of my career highlights, and I’m glad to be living proof that dedication and hard work pay off in the end. I now have a team of 10 people working on securing the largest private pension fund in the Nordics, 直接向董事会汇报.
虽然我为我所取得的成就感到自豪, 我仍然有更多的职业发展空间, which is why I recently added ISACA’s CDPSE as my latest certification. I’ve been looking into data privacy as an important part of my line of business for many years, and living and working in Europe with the arrival of the GDPR in 2018, 重点进一步加强. When addressing information security these days and trying to build digital trust, it’s no longer sufficient to be looking at the old CIA triad of Confidentiality, 完整性和可用性. 现在我们要添加透明度. I believe trust is one of the most important elements in creating a healthy and effective society – both between businesses and between people. Good intentions alone will never be enough to go all the way, so it is very important that we also have the right data privacy tools, controls and technical capabilities in place to support and implement those intentions, and this is where CDPSE can be part of the solution.
直到我能够做我最喜欢的事情(旅行)!)，今年感觉不太对劲. One question I am often asked when people hear how many countries I have been to (and maybe you are curious, too?就是我是否有最喜欢的目的地. 我的答案是澳大利亚. 我哥哥还住在那里, I’ve had the opportunity to visit Australia several times since my first trip back in 2005, 一次比一次更爱这个地方. I’ve learned that the expression “beauty is only skin-deep” applies to destinations as well as many other things in life, and it’s only when spending a bit of time in a place that you really get to discover its inner qualities. 乘船去南极洲是另一次难忘的旅行, but not one I’m in a hurry to repeat as there is a limit to how interesting ice is after a while. 菲律宾, 另一方面, is a place that I’m eager to return to because it has it all: beautiful scenery, 好客的居民和美味的食物. I'll stop myself here as I could probably write a small book on my favorite trips.
I’m fortunate to have had so many memorable experiences. Living in Norway, I enjoy five weeks of holidays each year that I predominantly spend on travel. 除此之外, I'm lucky to have a job with an international footprint that also lets me travel quite a bit. 最后但并非最不重要的是, my involvement with ISACA on a global level has led me to many interesting destinations and allowed me to meet interesting people all over the world.
