Steve Genders has joined Thentia as the Director of Information Security and Risk Management. Genders is a recognized expert in cloud computing, infrastructure, and application security, and brings over two decades of experience in information security from major tech and financial firms, including IBM and BMO Financial Group. As Co-Chair of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Control’s (FS-ISAC) Cloud Security Workgroup, Genders has supported security industry innovation at the forefront of implementing industry-leading security standards to protect sensitive information.
Throughout his career, Genders has been involved in introducing new and advanced technology to improve efficiency, streamline workflows, and bolster security. While working for IBM Global Services, Genders led a team that built web portal software to manage user information and requests. Although web portals were a relatively new technology at the time, under Genders’ leadership his team recognized the benefits and developed a workflow that was consistent, repeatable, and highly efficient to solve their daily challenges and achieve policy compliance. Genders continued his track record of advancing technological development at BMO Financial Group, where he led a team that performed over 200 complex or higher risk assessments during the development of the bank’s Cloud First strategy. This experience highlighted the significant benefits gained by organizations that use automation and GRC systems over traditional email or phone workflows.
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Genders also have prior experience building security and compliance protocols for a growing company. While at Trustwave, the company grew from 50 to over 1100 people. “I missed the entrepreneurial environment … I’m a builder,” he said. As for his enthusiasm for Thentia, he had a prior experience during his tenure at BMO as a client of Julian Cardarelli, the CEO of Thentia. “Julian’s commitment, willingness, and just passion and knowledge about his own environment shined through and really helped my story at BMO,” Genders said. “Julian helped me to help the CISO of the bank realize that the cloud technology that we were nervous about was comfortable if handled well and managed right.”
With Thentia’s ongoing technological development and growing client list, Genders is confident that Thentia will meet its challenges with industry-leading security and control maturity to match its innovative speed. As Genders explained, “Managing Change in the software-as-a-service environment is important to your end-users’ happiness. And that’s one of the advantages that I see in Thentia: we are a dynamic platform by nature.”
