Editor’s note: The ISACA Now blog is featuring a series this year profiling ISACA professionals who are in pursuit of digital trust. Today, we profile Mea Clift, a cybersecurity program manager at Woodard & Curran. For more digital trust member stories and resources from ISACA, visit h0snu.hataselektrik.com/digital-trust.
Yes, Mea Clift has a collection of more than 80 vintage sewing machines. Yes, there was a year in which she spent 30 weekends a year traveling to participate in historical re-enactments – most notably in character as an 18th century surgeon. Yes, she is a frequent dog adopter. And yes, she finds time for her many hobbies despite a demanding role as the lone dedicated cybersecurity professional for her company.
“I don’t do anything half-way,” Clift said. “They call me a force of nature in footie pajamas because I get very giddy and kid-like when I’m learning something new, but I’m also very much a force of nature because I don’t do anything half. I get into greyhound adoption, and I don’t just adopt one, I adopt four. I quilt, and I do it by hand, and then I don’t just get one sewing machine, I end up with a massive collection of sewing machines. I put both feet in whenever I do something because life is too short to not.”
Clift, an ISACA member who resides in Minnesota, USA, also applies that mindset to her professional life. She is evangelizing the concept of digital trust at her company, Woodard & Curran, a water management and civil engineering company at which she serves as cybersecurity program manager. Focusing on cyber risk is a relatively new emphasis for the company, and she is working to gain buy-in and support across the organization – something she considers a common mission throughout the ISACA professional community.
“I think all of us have a duty to the security community as a whole, and to our companies, in engaging in this effort that security can be a partnership and it doesn’t have to be ‘us against them’,” Clift said. “In doing that, all of the roles that play into the ISACA community – whether it’s an auditor, whether it’s a risk manager, whether it’s a security manager or a controls person – we all have to have a level of integrity that stands up and says we have a role to play, but here’s what we’re doing and why it’s important, and here’s where we can meet in the middle and provide that support if you’re not compliant or you have a risk, and help you. We want to be that guiding principle.”
Clift has three ISACA certifications, which she considers valuable “because you have to understand the why before you do the how.” She said her CRISC-reinforced risk management expertise is important in underscoring the potential impact of her daily work.
Among her many responsibilities at Woodard & Curran, she helps to implement monitoring and emergency response policies, evaluates supply chain risk, and coordinates extensively with the IT and legal functions – a range of activities she believes is preparing her well to eventually become a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), a future career goal. As something of a one-person cybersecurity department, she has a great vantage point of how the digital trust professions come together.
“Having that title (of CISO) and actually having a budget and a staff to really build out and progress the organization is a goal of mine,” Clift said. “I’m really loving being able to bring the entire program together and build it from base. It’s really cool to be able to combine things like doing a risk assessment on the environment using NIST, and then using that to start a compliance program and taking it to document for our annual audit. It’s just really cool and a really adventurous thing.”
It can also be exhausting at times, which is why Clift sometimes needs a restorative nap at the end of the workday, alongside her four greyhounds. Greyhounds are known for their world-class speed when in their prime, “but when they retire, they take it very seriously,” Clift said. “They sleep 16 to 20 hours per day, so they are my office-mates.”
Just so long as they don’t shed on any of Clift’s especially cherished quilting projects. Clift’s 80-plus vintage sewing machines come from as far back as 1863, and none are more recent than 1968. Her quilting hobby dates back about a decade, and it soon evolved into a keen interest in old-fashioned sewing methods and equipment.
“I have machines that are 150 years old – I give them a little bit of sewing machine oil and I polish them up, and they run just like they came off the production line yesterday,” Clift said. “And they will run for another 100 years if I take care of them. They’re so much more fault-tolerant (than modern ones), they’re not easy to break. It’s also very serene. When I’m working a treadle, there’s a rhythm to it, and I just get in my zone, and I’m enjoying every minute – and it’s not technology, there’s no electricity. It’s just so peaceful, so it’s a very zen thing in a lot of ways.”
Even better is when Clift can take her show on the road, finding community events in which she can share her passion with others – particularly young people.
“People aren’t learning how to sew anymore,” she said. “But if I can take a hand-crank machine out and let a kid play with it and they get excited about learning how to sew, I can carry on a hobby. There’s this saying that says we’re only one generation away from most crafts being extinct. I’m keeping these generations going as much as I can.”
