Immaculata News

Congratulations to Theresa Major Payton ’89 for being named Cybersecurity Crusader of the Year.

If you were to conduct a master class on how to position yourself as an expert within your industry, Theresa Major Payton ’89 would be your woman. In the male-dominated field of cybersecurity, she has had to fight for recognition of her accomplishments. However, when she feels underestimated by her peers, she remembers her father’s encouraging words: “Being underestimated is a secret weapon. You get to work in stealth mode, and they’ll never see you coming.”

Her father was right. Payton’s ascension to the top of her profession was something that even she could not have imagined as a student at Immaculata in the late 1980s. While pursuing a double major in economics and business, Payton completed a computer certification program that helped her recognize that technology is built for a process rather than for the people who use it. She has since determined that complex systems that rely on extensive training may make a non-techie person shy away from complicated security measures that companies spend big money to implement.

“I wanted to leverage my passion for the business world while also creating system designs that were simple and elegant to use,” says Payton. She would have an opportunity to test her assumptions on one of the biggest stages in the world: the White House.

As the first woman to serve as White House Chief Information Officer, Payton oversaw IT operations for President George W. Bush from 2006 to 2008, supporting the 3,000 staff members that served the Executive Office of the President. During her tenure, cyber security threats grew in volume and complexity so she and her team improved the data center operations and implemented an enhanced information assurance and secu­rity plan.

Payton’s invitation to apply for the prestigious CIO position at the White House was a direct result of her successful career implementing innovative technology solutions while mitigating cyber security risks and measures within the financial services industry, notably at Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

You may be wondering how someone from Immaculata, a small Catholic university in suburban Pennsylvania, became a leading technology expert. Payton explains that Immaculata reinforced everything she needed to become successful: practice your faith, ethical, follow through on promises and don’t let others speak for you or over you!

“Immaculata is the perfect place to grow academically and personally. It gave me a sound foundation for intellectual growth, the beginning of lifelong adult learning, a firmer grounding in my faith and a set of lifelong friends,” Payton comments.

Gaining a solid foundation in liberal arts and exposure to leadership roles at Immaculata, Payton thrived at the University of Virginia, where she earned a M.S. in management information systems. Payton continued her education, receiving a graduate certificate in banking from The Graduate Banking School of the South at Louisiana State University.

With this core foundation and a desire to help people secure their private information and identity, Payton founded Fortalice Solutions, LLC, in North Carolina. As president and CEO, she has led the company to become a leading national security company, employing 30, including a small team in Europe. For Payton, no matter how large or complex a problem seems, at the crux of every solution is the end-user.

“Our focus is on human-centered design,” she explains. “For every solution we work on, we first ask, ‘What does the human need in this scenario?’ before we move to a technical design.”

With this in mind, Payton recently gained approval for a new patent for a system that anonymously detects and blocks threats within a telecommunications network. Her goal for the new system is to provide people intelligence in real time that blocks threats, but is very easy for users to share. Throughout Payton’s career, she witnesses that information sharing typically only happens if there is trust. With her patent, she will be able to document how to design a system that can be fed information and intelligence from any source, and not put the onus on the person or organization sharing the information to anonymize their inputted data.

As you can see, Payton is passionate about her career. She regularly conducts media interviews for TV, radio and print regarding cybersecurity issues. In addition, she is the co-author of two books on how to protect privacy online. Her third book, Manipulated: Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth, recently hit the #1 Hottest New Book listing on Amazon’s elections and politics category.

No matter how much notoriety Payton earns, she will always empathize with people and companies who are victims of hackers. “When you stop a hacker from stealing someone’s identity, you’ve made a difference in someone’s life or business,” she says. “At the end of the day, victims of hackers are people.”

Recently, Payton has noticed an increase in female cybersecurity professionals. At Fortalice, the ratio of men to women employees is nearly equal. Although Payton is an advocate for women in STEM fields, she acknowledges that the technology industries, especially cybersecurity, need to do a better job of attracting women to the profession.

There is no doubt that Payton had plenty of female role models as a student at Immaculata University. She is now dedicated to supporting others who wish to pursue cybersecurity as a career, including her son who is a freshman at Immaculata – majoring in cybersecurity!

What is Fortified Security?

Fortalice was founded to be the security company that was lacking when we were in senior levels of government and industry. Fortalice is defined as a small fort, fortified house, or outwork of fortification. Informally around Fortalice, we have two inside jokes – first, it’s “Fort-a-liss”… not “Fort-alice” or “Fort-a-leeeese”; second – the verb form of Fortalice is “Fortified”.

Offensive Perspectives

Over on our Vimeo, Fortalice Director of Offensive Cybersecurity Operations (OCO) Paul Brandau talks the red team’s perspective on cyber threats and exploiting them on behalf of our clients.

Election Security and Cybersecurity Best Practices

CEO & Founder Theresa Payton spoke to Julie Mason, Host of the Press Pool with Julie Mason on SiriusXM, following the historic 2020 election. Theresa and Julie had a general catch-up covering election security and cybersecurity best practices.

Fortalice Services

Commercial Cybersecurity

A single misstep in your security program can disrupt your organization’s business continuity, erode brand reputation, and cost valuable time, resources, and money to resolve.

We provide personalized, end-to-end services built on a proven methodology that integrates the following cybersecurity disciplines: offensive cybersecurity, security engineering, risk and compliance, and strategic communications. In times of crisis, our incident response and open source intelligence teams can swiftly handle an incident from triage to remediation.

Our team works collaboratively to create actionable recommendations for all levels of the organization—from the board to the server room.

At any point, Fortalice can present board briefings, create webinars, and establish executive coaching to fortify your security across every level of your business across various platforms. Our goal is to keep your company abreast of modern cyber threats and create a defensive strategy with practical solutions to strengthen and support your key business objectives.

Government Cybersecurity

Every government executive faces a set of unique challenges to answer the call of the country you are trying to protect. Executing the mission, while managing budget pressures with a series of unfunded security mandates, while protecting taxpayer and sensitive data, and trying to employ cutting edge technology access across the organization, is no easy feat.

Our teams of experts have walked in your shoes at the highest levels of government. This unique experience can be harnessed to help advise you on the best approach to improve your security program, suggest implementation plans and assist with chosen implementation pathways. Our offensive cybersecurity, security engineering, risk and compliance, and strategic communications teams stand ready to fortify your security.

Personal Cybersecurity

All of us are vulnerable to opportunistic online predators. We provide a way to attack the attack before it happens. We solve the challenge of data and alert overload through our unique delivery of human-curated threat intelligence, investigation, and analysis.

We assist with crisis management for those that fall victim to online predators – we can triage the situation swiftly and restore your digital footprint. We work directly with you or join the team already helping.

We work to design and implement digital and phsyical security fusion centers. We will assess your current approaches and suggest integrated approaches for bringing your protection into the 21st century.

Fortalice Interview with an Expert: CEO Theresa Payton

Over on our Vimeo account, CEO & Founder Theresa Payton discusses why she founded Fortalice Solutions; the “Fortalice difference;” and her new book, “Manipulated Inside the Cyberwar to Hijack Elections and Distort the Truth.” She describes how COVID-19 has changed the cybersecurity game and offers tips to help businesses fortify their cyber defenses during the pandemic. Take a look: https://vimeo.com/472075507