Macias, a Rocklin resident with more than 25 years’ experience in tech, has held senior account executive roles with companies including Dell, One Identity, CyberArk and BeyondTrust.
“I've been in cybersecurity, selling to the state for about 12 years now. A goal of mine, which has kind of persisted through the 12 years, is just being able to make sure that the data of California citizens are protected and secured,” Macias told Industry Insider — California in an interview. “And that means that I am in a role with an opportunity to help state departments secure this data.”
“If you're familiar with Active Directory, it is a necessary platform for all of us to be able to log into our computer and be able to have the access to our files and folders for administrators to set policies,” he said. “It's a critical piece of everyone's infrastructure. And the funny thing is that Active Directory has been around for 25 years, and we kind of just take it for granted. I can't think of any other IT application that has been around that long. It's embedded in everybody's fabric, and we take it for granted that it's going to be up and running, that it's going to be secure every single day? Well, that's not the case.”
He said that because of California’s unsettled budgetary status, “they are now focused on what we call resiliency. … How do we bring it back up immediately if it goes down? And so the state departments that I've been talking to with that resiliency focus in mind are worried about their downstream applications. They've been coming to me and saying, ‘Hey, we realize that our application synchronizes with Active Directory. We've got to make sure Active Directory is up and running all the time, and if a catastrophe happens and it does succumb to a cyber attack, how do I recover it as soon as possible?’”
Macias said Semperis — which recently got on the state’s Software Licensing Program — uses Active Directory and its cloud version, which is called Entra ID. He noted that many departments in state government have a hybrid of both on-prem Active Directory and the Entra ID cloud version.
Macias graduated from California State University, Fresno with a Bachelor of Science in marketing.
Off the job, Macias said: “My wife and I are empty-nesters, and now I am obsessed with pickleball. I'm trying to keep my golf game up to speed, but I should be devoting more time to it. We just love exploring California. The kids live in the Bay Area in San Diego, and we have a place in Tahoe. I think California, geographically speaking, is one of the best places on Earth, and so, yeah, doing a lot of traveling, but just enjoying family and friends.”
He added: “I’ll be at the CIO Academy* as well, so please stop by.”
*The California Public Sector CIO Academy is presented by Government Technology, sister publication to Industry Insider — California. Both are part of e.Republic.
