Sean McClanahan’s life revolves around helping others. Whether he’s ensuring his organization remains compliant, supporting the Air Force as the Civil Air Patrol’s Chief of Staff for the Iowa Wing, or volunteer firefighting, Sean is constantly serving those around him.
Fun Fact: The three residents of Sean’s home make up 10% of the population of his city of Dana, Iowa.
Originally from Virginia, Sean moved to rural Iowa in late 2021 with his wife and mother-in-law. Sean has settled nicely into rural life, raising chickens and helping his neighbors with cattle roping practice for rodeos. With five grandchildren, a full-time job, two volunteer positions, and a YouTube channel, Sean certainly keeps busy.
Becoming a Compliance Manager
Formerly a deputy sheriff, Sean was drawn to work in information security and compliance because of his desire to keep others safe. Sean joined SumTotal Systems in September 2011 as part of their Cloud Operations team, but moved to the InfoSec team a year later to ensure that firewalls were set up correctly and audits were managed. Since 2012 Sean has been working diligently to write policies, oversee external audits, and train employees on maintaining safety and compliance standards for SumTotal, now part of Cornerstone.
“My favorite part about working in InfoSec is the satisfaction of knowing that what you're doing is helping to keep the network safe,” said Sean McClanahan.
Moving From ZenGRC to ROAR
Three years ago, SumTotal’s InfoSec team moved from spreadsheets to ZenGRC, which Sean describes as a “game-changer.” Sean is now so well-versed in the ZenGRC system that he can create a new program from scratch and have it running within a week.
Despite their love of ZenGRC, the SumTotal team is eager to adopt the new functionality of the RiskOptics ROAR platform.
"The biggest thing I want to do this year from a risk and compliance perspective – and I’m not trying to sound like a RiskOptics fanboy – is switching us to RiskOptics ROAR. You get to bring all of the facets of compliance together and build a great picture of risk. That’s huge for us.”
Fun Fact: Sean is most excited about user control, continuous monitoring, and evidence reuse in RiskOptics ROAR.
“When I saw RiskOptics was bringing those three things to the table in ROAR? I was thinking, ‘holy crap! Where do I sign up?’ I am so looking forward to that.”
Tips for Success
Sean’s biggest tip is leveraging the resources that are available to you as a RiskOptics customer: the RiskOptics Community and your Customer Success Manager.
One of the top users of the RiskOptics Community, Sean is constantly answering peer questions and interacting with the latest published content from support articles to RiskOptics ROAR roadmaps.
“Use the Community. Learn from your peers and read the training material that RiskOptics releases. Those are so important to making a successful program and they are the things I would lean on more than anything else.”
For anything you can’t find in the Community, Sean recommends reaching out to your CSM.
“Working with the RiskOptics team is fabulous. If I ping my CSM, I expect to hear back within 24 hours. I had a question about ROAR functionality and my CSM got a product leader on the phone.
“To know that for 45 minutes, I had that guy's ear and we went over ‘I need this, I need that,’ and he would ask ‘Well, what if we did it this way? Does that work for you?’ That shows a lot of commitment to the customer. It's amazing. Working with RiskOptics has been just phenomenal. I can't say enough about how happy I've been!”
More About Sean
Sean is from a family that gives back to their communities. His brother gave his life in firefighting, driving Sean and his wife to volunteer as local firefighters to honor his brother’s sacrifice. Sean also launched a YouTube channel about Irish whiskey, a fondness for which he discovered during his brother’s celebration of life when he brought his brother’s favored drink to share with his family members.
Fun Fact: Sean has released 30 episodes on his YouTube channel in the last six months.
You can subscribe to Sean’s Irish Whiskey Shelf here.
