https://www.protocol.com/bret-arensault-microsoft-ciso-profile
By Tom Krazit
Protocol.com
June 9, 2020
Bret Arsenault doesn't like cheese.
But for Microsoft's chief information security officer, a distaste for dairy
produce isn't born out of a limited diet from two months of stay-at-home
orders. No: He grew up in a housing project, dependent on food assistance that
included 5-pound blocks of "government cheese." Which, believe it or not, he
says isn't very good.
It's a telling anecdote about how the trappings of success can mean less to
someone who is amazed at how far he's come in life. Over several interviews
with Protocol this year, Arsenault described how he grew up on government
assistance. That experience pushed him to take work where he could find it,
including stints as a janitor, a commercial fisherman and laying asphalt before
getting into graphic design technology. Now, more than four decades later,
Arsenault is entrusted with protecting the secrets of one of the world's most
valuable companies.
This is his 30th year at Microsoft, two-thirds of the lifespan of one of tech's
most iconic companies. He's worked on all sides of its security efforts,
mapping its early network security strategy, defending company assets and
helping to build security products for Microsoft's customers.
Now, he's in the middle of what he thinks could be his most ambitious and
influential project: paving the way for Microsoft employees, and perhaps
eventually Microsoft customers, to ditch one of the weakest links in security,
the password. At one point Arsenault envisioned this strategy taking years to
put into place at Microsoft, but the company's work-from-home edict during the
pandemic accelerated the work to a point where he thinks almost all of the
company's 150,000 employees will be passwordless by early next year.
[...]
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