SELLEST OSAST
Kevin Lewis has a political science degree, a career that started while he was waiting to hear back from the NYPD, and a job today that puts him inside a stack of companies at once. He is the CISO at E78 Partners, a boutique consulting firm serving small and mid-size private equity funds and their portfolio companies, where he also sits in fractional CIO and CTO seats for clients, most of them in med spa and healthcare.
In this conversation, Kevin and Taylor get into why the industry's biggest win is that security stopped being the department of no, how to translate risk for a CFO who has already decided what security should cost, and what private equity's two-day definition of "fast" teaches you about scoping honestly. Kevin walks through the AI reporting pilot that pulled 15 systems into one data lake and replaced a week-long report request with a real-time answer.
Then the harder stuff: why he thinks the talent shortage is partly a spending decision, why he does not tolerate gatekeeping on his team, what he actually screens for when he reads every resume himself, and why the network is the middle layer most career-changers skip. He closes with the culture playbook, including the reframe worth stealing: phishing simulation results measure how well the security team communicated, not how bad the employees are.
Whether you run a program, advise one, or are trying to break into the industry, this one is full of things you can use on Monday.
- What's working in security: the shift from "no, you can't" to "let's make this work"
- Why the seat at the table matters for the information, not the title
- Selling to a CFO: the daily cost of zero work, remediation, and reputation
- Security dashboards with business metrics attached
- What private equity's timeline teaches you about honest scoping
- The AI pilot: 15 systems, one data lake, and an agent that builds the KPI report
- Why mentoring faded, and why Kevin requires it from his leads
- Gatekeeping, the scarcity mindset, and the tools-instead-of-people trap
- Hiring without certification or degree requirements
- The network: the middle layer between "no computer experience" and "security analyst"
- Why "we're not a target" is the sentence that makes you one
- Security awareness without fear, and phishing as a metric on your own team
- Responsiveness as the real control for shadow IT and shadow AI
- Retiring a rogue tool without making an enemy
Kevin Lewis is the CISO at E78 Partners, a boutique consulting firm that works at the intersection of the CEO, CFO, and CIO for private equity funds and their portfolio companies. Alongside running E78's internal security program, he takes fractional technology leadership roles with client companies and handles pre-close technology due diligence for PE deals. His career spans a DOD contractor, fashion and apparel, and now consulting across whatever industry walks in the door, which suits him: to Kevin, it's all bits and bytes. He holds a master's in cybersecurity and a bachelor's in political science, came up through help desk and networking, and mentors relentlessly because that is how he got in.
- Kevin on LinkedIn: Kevin Lewis
- Email: klewis@e78partners.com
- E78 Partners: e78partners.com
