Glasses were raised and toasts were delivered on December 2, as cybersecurity elite from around the world gathered at NYU to celebrate the publication of Distinguished Research Professor Ed Amoroso’s latest book, Reaching the Chasm: How to Drive Your Early-Stage Start-Up to Scale.
One of the courses Amoroso teaches in the NYU School of Law-NYU Tandon School of Engineering Master’s in Cybersecurity Risk & Strategy program concerns the study of emerging innovations, themes, risks, challenges, and technologies in the evolving discipline of modern cyber security. As the founder himself of a research firm that advises companies in cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, he has a bird’s eye view of what’s coming next.
That experience shapes his new book. If it seems anomalous for a computer scientist to offer management advice, for Amoroso it was just another manifestation of his wide-ranging expertise. He founded TAG Cyber —now renamed TAG Infosphere— in 2016 to explore what the experience was like. “I’ve spent a lifetime in and around business,” he explains, “and I had never really decoded how startups work, so I started by dipping my toe in—and then it became very real.”
With his father a computer science professor, Amoroso grew up with the cyber age. He graduated from Dickinson College as the Internet was beginning to grow, and he then finished his PhD at Stevens Institute of Technology in 1991, when computer viruses were beginning to replicate. In fact, the infamous Morris Worm of 1988 (the year Amoroso began working at AT&T Bell Labs) had presaged the coming tsunami of malware that triggered the thriving cybersecurity industry. In 1999, he became chief information security officer for AT&T and finally, capping that stage of his career, senior vice president and chief security officer for the telecom giant.
Throughout this period, Amoroso continued to teach computer science at Steven Institute. For the past eight years, he has served as a Distinguished Research Professor at NYU, where he supervises a data collection program of cybersecurity sentiment metrics, and teaches two courses for the MSCRS program. He also occasionally lectures to students participating in NYU Stern’s entrepreneurial initiatives.
Reaching the Chasm combines Amoroso’s philosophy and experience with real-world examples. It can be considered, he explains, a prequel to Geoffrey Moore’s landmark book, Crossing the Chasm, which has been described as “the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to larger markets.” Amoroso’s insight is aimed at innovators who want to get to that point of scaling up, who are in the very early stages of starting a company to launch their idea. “Startups should begin with excitement, a sense of anticipation, that you can’t wait to do this—to go from startup to growth, you’re selling that excitement and the ability for somebody to join with you on that journey,” he explains. “Selling the why, not the what, changes the whole equation.”
Amoroso has spent decades securing some of the world’s largest networks—now he’s helping entrepreneurs secure their futures.