Stephen Ward on Why Great Cybersecurity Leaders Think Beyond Technology

**Stephen Ward** (0:00)
I think cyber security CEOs need to need some more practice at building real businesses. But why is it that we can build these huge infrastructure companies, but we're not building these huge cyber companies?

**Peter High** (0:22)
Welcome to TechnoVenture, I'm your host, Peter High. My guest today is Stephen Ward. Stephen is the co-founder of Bright Money Partners, a venture capital firm focused on early stage cybersecurity companies. His path to the investment world is unlike almost anyone else in it. He began his career as a US Secret Service Special Agent, hunting cyber criminals at a time when almost no one in law enforcement knew what that meant. He helped take down ShadowCrew, one of the most dangerous criminal networks of its era, by turning its most notorious hacker into an informant.
From there, he moved into the private sector, eventually becoming CISO of TIAA and the Home Depot, two of America's largest companies, before joining Insight Partners, and then ultimately founding Brightmind. He's seen the cybersecurity challenge from almost every angle, as a federal agent, as a practitioner defending major enterprises, and now as an investor backing the founders building what comes next.
Stephen, welcome to TechnoVenture. It's great to speak with you today.

**Stephen Ward** (1:19)
Oh, thank you for having me. Good to see you.

**Peter High** (1:21)
Likewise, so nice to see you.
It's been fantastic to get to know you and get to know your story a little bit better. I want to talk about your early foray into cybersecurity. It wasn't necessarily like something you aspire to as a kid, as who does, but you began through fraud investigations as a secret service special agent, and worked cybercriminal cases, I should say, as a result of that. Talk about the early days of getting into this world, if you would.

**Stephen Ward** (1:57)
Yeah, I started out like most agents when they come out of training, you get put in fraud squad, counterfeit currency squad, and you get to learn the street a little bit. We've always said that a really good protection agent starts out as a really good investigator. It just creates this sixth sense and this ability to see things and see around corners. Most of us as young agents started out in investigations. I bounced between fraud, counterfeit currency, and then back into fraud. When I started in the fraud squad the second time, I opened up a file and saw some ATM photos of someone who was clearly wearing a disguise and they were just taking out a bunch of money out of ATMs. We used to call it banging out ATMs. It was in the New York City, New Jersey area.
I think the movies and things like that portray things a little differently than when they happened. I've always said over the years like his face just irritated me.
And it was that that I turned to another agent, Dave, and was like, hey, let's go find this kid. Like this guy's just taken out way too much money. He's irritating me with his disguises and all of that. And that was the beginning stages of, it started out as a fraud case. We eventually found him and grabbed him in New York City and in midtown. And didn't realize that he was going to end up being at the time, the most notorious hacker fraudster ever in the US.

**Peter High** (3:35)
Extraordinary. I can't imagine how satisfying it must have been to bring him to justice.

**Stephen Ward** (3:41)
Yeah, it took a while. I mean, we, you know, how things work sometimes is if you can, there are certain people that you can profile, that you look at and go, oh, I think we can use them. And Albert was one of those of rather than go to jail for 20 years.
He was looking at 10 federal and then he had a bunch of drugs in his apartment in Carnegie, New Jersey. So he was in a school zone. So he was looking sort of 10 state, 10 federal. Rather than have him do that, we had never seen anything like it before and neither had the FBI. So my first hope was, hey, let's get him out of jail, get him working for us. And at a minimum, he teaches us a world that we were not aware of. And that's really how it started. Tell me how you do all the things that we're used to doing in the physical world, but you're doing it online. And teach me. So got permission from headquarters and turned them into an informant for about three years and worked with them for a couple of years in New Jersey and then about a year in Miami. And the story goes that he was doing a lot behind our backs while we were using them. So caught them once, became a civilian at JP Morgan, was taking the Acceleratrain down to DC a lot as a civilian to catch them again.