Jordan Fischer leads the global compliance and regulatory practice at Octillo, where she works with clients on pre- and post-incident risk mitigation around technology, security, contracts, insurance and regulation.
Chiefly, in a world where nearly every company collects and stores valuable digital information that can make them a target for hackers, she teaches them how to manage and treat their data collection to reduce the size of the target on their backs.
Her work tends to focus on questions like “how do we innovate and leverage new technologies?” while staying within the law. That gets even more complicated as data flows across borders where companies are subject to different laws, cultures and political realities.
“Today it’s AI, tomorrow it’s quantum computing. How do we think about those technologies from a business perspective, understanding that there’s going to be data flowing throw them and that data is most likely going to have legal obligations or contractual or regulatory risk,” Fischer told SC Media.
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The work requires an international perspective, and Fischer often draws on her experience as a clerk for the European Court of Justice, which she credits for shaping her worldview on data privacy. The stark differences between the U.S. and European consensus on data privacy often put her in the position of being a translator between the two perspectives when a company must do business on both sides of the Atlantic.
“I was trained as a U.S. attorney, but I learned privacy from an EU perspective, and I think that allows me to speak the two different cultural languages around privacy and cybersecurity in a way that I often find my colleagues in Europe or the U.S. just really can’t find a meeting of the minds,” she said.
She also feels strongly about fostering the next generation of women in security or law. Fischer is on the board of the Women in Cybersecurity Delaware Valley affiliate, mentors other female entrepreneurs and has visited local Girl Scouts troops to talk about starting a career in IT security and teaching them how to create coding bracelets.
Part of the impact comes from the specific work, but just as important is giving younger women a real-life example they can point to when pursuing their careers in cybersecurity.
“I think to myself when I’m saying to a little girl, ‘This is what an IT professional looks like, this is what a cyber lawyer looks like’ – that alone can really change perspectives,” said Fischer.
