Global Impact
Akamai’s Tony Lauro goes far beyond his role. He is a sought-after cybersecurity expert that is more than willing to share knowledge with his coworkers and industry colleagues.
By: Bill Peden
Tony Lauro has 20 years of Information Security operations experience. The Minnesota native has worked in many fields, including automotive, healthcare, and finance. He is currently responsible for Akamai Technologies’ American clients, as well as the training of an elite cybersecurity task force designed to research, identify, and prevent online attacks. Lauro is one of the world’s leaders in cybersecurity, but it’s hard to believe he almost took a different path. Luckily passion and ambition can supersede the road most traveled and Tony found his true calling. It just took longer than most.
It was the 1980’s and cybersecurity was not on Tony Lauro’s radar. It wasn’t on anyone’s in the public sector. Lauro was raised by an Italian father and a mother of Puerto Rican and Spanish descent. Growing up, he was instilled with the ‘immigrant’ mentality’ and credits this mindset to his omnipresent work ethic. A mentality that gained him recognition as one of the top high school wrestlers in Minnesota. Lauro was given a full scholarship to the University of Wisconsin to wrestle, but to the surprise of his mother and father, declined the free tuition and decided to follow his heart, attending Texas Technical University. This is when he hung up his wrestling shoes and regained his passion for computers.
“I saw the writing on the wall”. Lauro was enamored by technology since the days of the Commodore 64 and the TSA-80, and says he always had an interest in hacking and knowing cybersecurity would be an exponential problem in the future. Not to “come off as a Nostradamus figure” but he saw the ‘big picture’ and it was cybersecurity.
Taking his first professional computer job at a telecom company that worked for Microsoft Lauro seized all the opportunities he was given. While making some of his own. He studied the tech admin and their cyber security practices, or lack thereof. Eventually the young IT approached his boss at the company with a serious question, one that is rhetorical today. He asked his boss if he could start holding a weekly security meeting with the staff. It being the 1990’s, his boss was accepting but unappreciative of his employee’s interests in cybersecurity. It was a different time.
As Lauro began educating his then coworkers on the do’s and don’ts of cyber safety he began to catch more and more flaws in their system. After the company’s first major security incident a year later, his volunteer gig became his official title. In the aftermath his boss was asked, “Who is in charge of security here?” This is when the executive turned to Lauro and said “Tony is”. This cemented Tony Lauro’s future and gave him the confidence to follow his dreams.
Lauro’s advice is heeded by hundreds of clients in North, South, and Latin America and he is asked to educate the world’s security community on the new techniques and dangerous trends. This March he will speak at a cybersecurity conference in Rome, Italy, his father’s home country, building a stronger community while learning from the best in the world. Tony Lauro says a holistic approach to cybersecurity is the best way to prepare for the major cyber attacks in 2020. Strength of community and the sharing of information should be at the forefront of efficient cybersecurity. “There is no silver bullet” or one size fits all defense to prepare his clients for the attacks on their valuable data.
A true Latino leader, Lauro believes diversity in cybersecurity is the only way to gain new perspectives on cyber threat prevention. “I think any good company is focusing on gender and ethnic diversity,” he says. “The role of Latinos in this industry is extremely important. Having multiple cultural backgrounds deal with problems gives valuable perspective. If you get the same people to work on a problem, you will only get the same list of solutions.” With 1,000,000 cyber security jobs to go unfilled this year, here’s to hoping, through scholarships and following their passion, more Latinos find their way into cybersecurity in 2020, just like Lauro.