Vanessa Redman
I am a seasoned Cybersecurity professional with 15+ years of leadership and technical experience, currently working as the Vice President of Information Assurance. I have lead teams in Cyber Strategy, Cyber Risk Policy development, Threat Assessments /Analysis, Cyber Vulnerability Prioritization & Validation, and Cyber Controls Testing. I have 10+ years of DoD and Military Cybersecurity experience with the U.S. Air Force, including working as a Cyber warfare operator and instructor with in-depth, hands-on experience in analyzing and defending against nation-state and organized crime adversaries. Other experience includes using MITRE ATT&CK matrix for analysis, control testing, and planning. I also love talking about Algorithmic Game Theory and have spoken at several conferences on the subject.
Session
Security teams love policies, frameworks, and well-intentioned controls—but when those efforts lack product or business context, they’re often just… theater. In this talk, I’ll share what happened when I joined a security program driven by compliance rather than clarity, and how that led to friction, rework, and wasted energy. Through real-world examples from a fast-moving startup, I’ll walk through how we started rebuilding trust with teams who didn’t want to work with us—by first learning how our product actually worked and what the business actually needed. You’ll leave with questions every security team should be asking their product counterparts, tactics for embedding security into the roadmap without slowing it down, and ideas for transforming from checkbox-driven blockers into true partners. Whether you’re leading a program or just trying to get un-ghosted by your engineers, this talk will help you make security relevant, respected, and real.