Overview
#045 – Today’s guest is Michael Gips, Managing Director of Enterprise Security Risk Management at Kroll and founder of Global Insights in Professional Security. Mike holds both the CPP and Chartered Security Professional designations, and his path to security is one of the most unconventional I’ve come across — starting with a Harvard Law degree, a clerkship reviewing death penalty cases at the New Jersey Supreme Court, and a stint in litigation before pivoting to journalism. That pivot launched a nearly 13-year career at ASIS International, where he ultimately served as Chief Global Knowledge and Learning Officer, overseeing the magazine, certifications, standards, the CSO Center, and the organization’s own security program. He’s also a published security leadership author, professional media trainer, and one of the most active voices in the online security community.
In this episode, Mike walks us through his career journey and the lessons it produced, including the inside track on professional association pathways that can accelerate your rise into senior security leadership. We dig into why communication and storytelling may be the highest-ROI skill a security professional can develop, regardless of where they are in their career. Mike shares what the process of writing and publishing a security book actually looks like, and what practitioners with a body of written work should consider if they’re thinking about doing the same. We close with an honest conversation about AI — where it genuinely helps, where it creates more work than it saves, and how to use it without sacrificing your credibility. Let’s get into it.
