Joel de la Garza
VP of Operations Security | Box
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
While growing up in McAllen, Texas, Joel de la Garza was fascinated with the Atari video game Pong. In fact, if he hadn’t played the game, he might not be where he is today.
“That began my life-long love of technology and innovation,” he says. “It was amazing to me, very early on, that tech was only limited by our imagination.”
Since then, he’s built his life and career around technology. After graduating high school, he went on to study computer science at Stanford University with coursework at Princeton. He has since built a career focused specifically on cybersecurity, working as the security services manager at Securify, global head incident management at Deutsche Bank, head of security architecture and engineering for the global consumer business at Citigroup, and then director of cyber intelligence at Citigroup.
In his first position at Citigroup, de la Garza was responsible for all information security technology for the global consumer business, which covered more than 150,000 employees and hundreds of millions of customer accounts. At his next position at Citigroup, he was responsible for identifying emerging threats, developing both tactical and strategic responses to those threats, and managing any security incidents that occurred. In February 2013, he transitioned to his current role at Box.
Since it was founded in 2005, cloud storage company Box has grown to include more than 41 million users and 74,000 businesses—including 59 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Today, de le Garza oversees cybersecurity for the entire organization, which he says is under constant review by the US Department of Defense to ensure the company is maintaining the highest level of security possible.
Security in the Age of the Cloud
If you want insight into the future of cybersecurity, look no further than Joel de la Garza. He writes posts for Box’s blog, and he even contributes to Medium on cybersecurity issues.
When thinking about the future of cybersecurity, he knows it’s a changing field, but he believes the future will hold stricter regulations and hold organizations more accountable.
“Security is a feature, not a product,” de la Garza says. “If car companies sold cars that went up in flames the way computer software goes up in flames, most automotive CEOs would be in prison for life. As everything moves to the cloud, the liability equation will change, and service providers will be held accountable.”
