From Chef to CISO: Unlocking the Recipe to Security Leadership

About this episode

Myke Lyons shares his unique journey from culinary arts to becoming a CISO, highlighting the parallels between cooking and security leadership.

What does sharpening a knife over a case of onions have to do with incident response? For Myke Lyons, CISO at Cribl, the answer is everything. Myke trained at the Culinary Institute of America — learning speed and accuracy under the clock of a professional kitchen — before a summer IT job in Manhattan set him on an entirely different path. In this episode of The New CISO, host Steve Moore traces that journey and the surprising parallels between culinary craft and security leadership. The conversation moves through a career that evolved organically: a summer job moving refrigerator-sized printers in a Manhattan ad agency, a crash course in executive white-glove IT support, a breakthrough moment finally cracking subnetting, and a slow expansion from NOC operator to global security leader. Myke credits the kitchen — its insistence on precision and calm under fire — for instilling an operator's mindset that still defines how he leads through incidents today. Mentorship, both formal and accidental, threads through Myke's story. A curmudgeonly colleague who threatened to "replace him with a script" taught him the value of continuous improvement. A trusted mentor reframed the CISO's…

People in this episode

Host: Steve Moore

Guest: Myke Lyons

Topics covered

• security leadership
• incident response
• career journey
• mentorship
• culinary parallels
• IT support

Keywords

• CISO
• culinary
• incident response
• mentorship
• IT support
• security leadership
• career development

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Culinary Institute of America, Cribl, NOC

Places: Manhattan

More episodes of The New CISO

• Rogue Agents: The New Era of AI Insider Threats (part 2) · June 4, 2026 · 43 min
• Lessons From a Spy Hunter: The Real Cost of a Breach (Part 1) · May 14, 2026 · 35 min
• Your Most Valuable Skills Aren’t Technical · April 23, 2026 · 53 min
• Architect and Firefighter: How a Modern CISO Leads in Crisis · March 12, 2026 · 49 min
• Six Steps for Better Communication as a CISO · February 19, 2026 · 49 min
• The Four Cs: Why a Schoolteacher Makes a Great CISO · January 29, 2026 · 54 min