CB Customer Spotlight: Q&A with MEDNAX’s Don Cox

With over 30 years of experience in the technology landscape, Don Cox knows what it takes to be a leader in the industry. Currently residing as the CISO at MEDNAX, the physician-led healthcare organization headquartered in Sunrise, FL, Cox is responsible for cyber operations and engineering, identity access management, and risk and compliance for the company.

Read on to hear how Cox has gotten to where he is today, and what’s in store for him next.

• How did you get started on your career path?
  I always wanted to be a cop growing up, so my first job was serving in the U.S. Army military police doing physical security, which was my first experience with communication security. Years later, I moved to Washington, D.C. to work in a fraud and computer crimes unit to help them collect data and do analysis on seized computers and phones.
  I enrolled in graduate school to earn a master’s degree in IT, and completed an executive CIO program. At the time, CIOs were starting to get a seat at the table, and mentor CIOs recommended I go into the federal government, which is when I moved to the State Department to help build out their computer forensics.
  After several years working in the public sector, I was recommended for the CISO position at MEDNAX and I jumped at the chance to work there.
• How has the industry changed since you first started?
  The challenges in the cybersecurity industry have become enormous, but fortunately the people in this industry are becoming a lot smarter, as there are more training opportunities for individuals to get the right skill set. Another thing getting smarter are the tools we use, their capabilities and their integration capacities. For example, with Carbon Black, if I buy CB Protection, CB Response and CB Defense, not only am I getting cost savings but I’m also getting a product suite that integrates with other products.
• Why did MEDNAX choose Carbon Black and what is the value you’ve seen since using it?
  With a nationwide presence, we wanted to standardize and simplify our environment to get all of our endpoints under one umbrella. Since integrating the entire Carbon Black product suite into our security stack, we’ve seen a lot of value with our security hygiene. We have some applications that can be very temperamental and our previous antivirus (AV) was impacting performance. When we put Carbon Black on those applications, it didn’t interfere with the performance — it worked seamlessly.
• How did you instill your security practices onto your team?
  I advise my team to read, follow blogs and attend trainings at least two to three times a year for the products we’re using. I tell them, “Never think you know it all because there’s always somebody out there smarter than you.” It’s important to me that my staff try different things and discover what their passions are. When people are passionate about something they are 100% committed and they’ll go the extra mile to learn more and innovate.
• What would be your advice to other CISOs?
  I believe that it’s important to experience every role that a CISO oversees. Start out at the service desk to learn what it does and its features and functionalities. Then move into network operations, because that’s where a lot of the traffic traverses in the organization. Finally, move into the engineering side for even more depth. Ultimately, try to get training and experience in as many tools as you can, and always be learning.

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