Certified in Sounding Official

Some people rise through competence. Crispin Lockwood-Fetch had a different strategy.Crispin never set out to become a CISO. He simply discovered, quite early on, that he was exceptionally good at one thing: sounding official.From helpdesk hero to boardroom favourite, Crispin charts his accidental ascent through the world of cybersecurity, armed with little more than a sharp suit, an impressive collection of buzzwords, a carefully maintained LinkedIn profile and an unshakable belief that most problems can be solved with a confident PowerPoint.As Crispin moves from IT support into security leadership, his talent for translating other people’s work into reassuring executive language takes him ever upwards. Policies multiply. Teams acquire increasingly strategic names. Dashboards become reassuringly amber. And somewhere behind the presentations, his increasingly indispensable colleague Lauren Barnell is quietly doing the work that keeps everything functioning.Told through Crispin’s supremely confident memoir and interspersed with Lauren’s increasingly exasperated logs, Certified in Sounding Official is a workplace satire about cybersecurity, corporate culture, management jargon, professional credentials and the curious organisational power of looking as though you know exactly what you’re doing.Then the ransomware hits.As a serious incident exposes the difference between security that sounds impressive and security that actually works, Crispin is finally forced to confront the consequences of a career built on presentation, proximity and plausible terminology.For anyone who has sat through a corporate briefing, endured an inspirational leadership email, watched a PowerPoint become a strategy, or wondered whether confidence was doing more work than competence, this may feel uncomfortably familiar.