The Smartest Person in the Room

The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity

By: Christian Espinosa

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith

Cyberattack - an ominous word that strikes fear in the hearts of nearly everyone, especially business owners, CEOs, and executives. With cyberattacks resulting in often devastating results, it’s no wonder executives hire the best and brightest of the IT world for protection. But are you doing enough? Do you understand your risks? What if the brightest aren’t always the best choice for your company?

In The Smartest Person in the Room, Christian Espinosa shows you how to leverage your company’s smartest minds to your benefit and theirs. Learn from Christian’s own journey from cybersecurity engineer to company CEO. He describes why a high IQ is a lost superpower when effective communication, true intelligence, and self-confidence are not embraced. With his seven-step methodology and stories from the field, Christian helps you develop your team’s technical minds, so they become better humans and strong leaders who excel in every role. This book provides you with an enlightening perspective of how to turn your biggest unknown weakness into your strongest defense.

©2021 Christian Espinosa (P)2021 Christian Espinosa

Great Resource

I highly enjoyed the sheer density of actionable information. Whether it was references to methods, ideas, or thought leaders I've learned or heard, "new to me" books cited that offered more depth, or immediately discernable truths that could be implemented on the spot.

The flow of the audio book made it simple to ingest, but I determined it to be woefully inadequate if desiring to fully realize the value provided. A physical copy of the book is a great accompaniment as a direct reference capability.

Most relevant book for today

An excellent read! I found this book to be very relevant. The practices which are talked about in this book can be put to practical use in business and in your personal life. Very well written and read .

a must read

loved it. made me think differently about a lot of things. I'm going to have to unlearn a few things and make some adjustments for the new year.

Waste of time.

The author gives useless fluff, over and over ... I kept waiting until something useful comes in but it never came.

Bland

Kept waiting for them to mention something interesting but the first half of the book goes on and on about people who hire poorly qualified people because they themselves are poorly qualified… just so they can be the smartest person in the room. Had very little to do with cyber

Looking down his nose

Christian has an ego that is hard to get past. He structures this like it’s going to guide you to perspective changing issues in cyber security and It’s just him complaining people are lazy and just chase the money and don’t have his passion. He says he has 26 certifications but targets those who go for them because they are lazy and looking for shortcuts for easy money. At the same time he rips the technical people for not having leadership skills and the CISO should have ten qualities and none of them technical. Then in the same hand he rips leaders for not having the technical background to secure data.

Skip this unoriginal attack on neurodivergence

I hated this book! I'm pretty sure it's a hate crime. He just rants ignorantly about neurodivergent and ASD individuals. He even gives tips for screening neurodivergence out of the hiring process and for firing people that display ASD symptoms "quickly". I don't know if he knows that he's singled out a protected class but regardless I don't think this book is going to age well. At the core, the idea that busiess skills trump technical skills for CISOs is correct but he doesn't real8ze that the strongest teams are built on diversity and strong leaders help indivoduals put their unique skills and talents to use where they are most effective. There are a lot of good ideas in this book but they are all lifted from better books Exteme Ownership, Can't Hurt Me, Hight Performance Habits, Personal Power 2 just read those books and skip this one.

May be too much of himself

In the book, he might say the right things but seem and sound to me like he forgot how day one look like. The author seem to against all security certificates but focus on actions, that might be a good way to learn. However, how all people go to that point without starting somewhere. The certification and college and university teach people how to initiate and learn in properly ways, is that wrong?