Employee Spotlight: Vincent Maglione on turning a Finance degree into a career in IT, trusting your colleagues & staying ahead of the hackers

Next up in our Employee Spotlights series is Vincent Maglione. Vincent is an Information Security Manager and joined us nearly 2.5 years ago — in the early days! We chatted with Vincent about his passion for technology and how this has led him to a career in Infosec and what companies in the space get him excited.

How do you explain to your family what you do?

I try and protect people’s money and information from hackers.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in banking? And what did your journey look like?

I am a Finance major, so I’ve always had an interest in managing money in some way, but my passion was technology. I was bartending one night and overheard a woman say she was the CTO of an investment bank. I never thought about the technology behind a bank so I asked her what that was all about. She invited me to NY for a tour of the office, and at the end of the tour I was offered an internship in their IT department. I then hit it off with the CISO of the company doing various projects. Back at school, I get a call out of the blue from that CISO, letting me know he was now working at Nasdaq and needed an intern. After the internship was over I was offered a job in the Infosec department Nasdaq and the rest is history.

A stranger just asked you to describe Grasshopper Bank in one sentence…you say:

I work for a startup digital commercial bank that caters to startup companies and venture capitalists.

Walk us through a typical day in your life.

I typically start by checking my email and slack to make sure no one is talking about blocks due to security tools. I then check to see if my tools are alerting me to any potential attacks. After that I look at various security forums of the government groups I am part of to see if there are any new vulnerabilities in the wild we may be susceptible to.

Why did you join Grasshopper?

I have always worked for very large companies that had all of their IT programs built, and policies in place. I wanted the chance to help build an IT team from the ground up, I knew that would help me learn about the intricacies of IT that aren’t apparent when you are thrown into a developed program.

What do you consider to be the most important thing you’ve learnt since joining?

The most important thing I’ve learned since joining GHB has been that it is ok to rely on other people to get a job done. Too many times in my career I have been the “dont worry I’ll just do it” guy, and thanks to my extremely competent coworkers here, I am now comfortable handing off a project and feeling confident it will get completed.

What accomplishment (personal or professional) are you most proud of?

My accomplishment I am most proud of is how I managed to turn a Finance degree that I was pursuing solely for the fact I was told “that’s where you make money!” into a career in IT, which has been my passion since I was very young. I recognized late in my college career that finance was not what I wanted to do, but felt a bit trapped due to my major not having much overlap with IT. Luckily, I was in the right place at the right time, and was able to turn my knowledge of technology into something that I am passionate about, and happy to wake up and do every day.

What makes a good Information Security Manager?

Never becoming complacent. There will never be a time when enterprise level information security is ahead of the hackers. We will always be playing catch-up, it’s just the name of the game, so always being on your toes and ready for any new tactic that the bad guys will employ.

You often look at new solutions to keep the bank safe! What are some of the startups in the space that excite you?

The startup space in cyber security is so impressive. A lot of tools that I am seeing starting to pop up and pique my interest are those that use industry intelligence and correlate it with your internal lateral traffic to help you find the bad guys that are already in your system. Some of these tools set up “vulnerable” servers in your environment that act as a virtual fly trap and lure the attackers to it so you see the attacks and patterns they are using, and they then get locked into those servers.

And to finish, here some quick 🔥 questions

What’s your most used emoji?

Smiley face, classic.

Most used app on your phone?

Robinhood.

What is the last show you binge-watched?

New Girl.

What are you reading right now?

Comic books, currently, Spider-man Life Story.

What’s your next vacation destination when things are back to normal?

Really interested in taking the family to Boston, never been and we like to keep things low key, plus I’m dying to take a tour of the Sam Adams Brewery.

If you could have lunch with anyone, what would it be?

Probably my grandfather. I never got to meet any of my grandparents, and from what my father says, I would have really gotten along with Grandpa.