As director of cybersecurity operations, Sharon Finney leads her team in executing an array of challenging yet crucial initiatives at Children’s National Hospital. Even more impressively, she never loses sight of the young patients at the heart of the institution’s mission.
By Natalie Kochanov
Thirty plus years into her career, Sharon Finney has seen it all. She got her start at Diversified Computer Services—a small consulting firm in Atlanta—in the late eighties, when the technology landscape looked quite different.
“Everybody wanted a computer on their desk, but nobody really knew what to do with them,” Finney says with a laugh. “I was a computer science major in college because I liked to build and create things, and this was challenging and new. Little did I know that I would go from writing my first program on a punch-card system to working with artificial intelligence.”
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is just one of the challenges that Finney faces as director of cybersecurity operations at Children’s National Hospital. Since joining the renowned pediatrics institution in 2022, she has led initiatives that span the security operations, security analytics, and incident response services that her team provides. At the same time, she has increased cohesion within the team itself, to ensure their readiness to meet whatever the day brings.
Finney first entered the healthcare space as a security administrator at DeKalb Medical after eighteen years with Diversified. From DeKalb, she moved first to Advent Health and then to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. Each institution exposed her to different aspects of the healthcare industry while giving her the chance to put her skills to use and build something—features that also attracted her to her current role.
“Keeping up with the massive amount of technology infusion into the healthcare ecosystem is very challenging. I must be able to communicate with each team in its own language. They don’t need to understand cybersecurity; I just need to communicate in their language how it impacts them.”
“I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to come to Children’s National and build their security operations program,” Finney says. Upon arriving, she wasted no time establishing her daily routine—if you can call it that. “Every day starts the exact same way for me, but it never ends the same way,” she says. “The first thing that I do is bring up several different tools and assess our enterprise security posture. From there, I equate it to being a pinball in a pinball machine where somebody pulls the lever and I start clacking around addressing all sorts of issues and questions. But my doing that keeps my team very steady and focused.”
That line of thinking reflects Finney’s overall leadership style. “My being a leader is not about me being the best. It’s about making everyone I encounter a little bit better, whether by listening to them, sparking a different vein of conversation, or imparting some piece of wisdom or knowledge,” she says. On that note of imparting wisdom, she adds, “You need to chart your own course in this field based on who you are as a person. Just because a bunch of other people did something a certain way doesn’t mean you have to do it that way.”
Ryan Kalember, chief strategy officer of Proofpoint, recognizes Finney’s expertise in cybersecurity. “Proofpoint is honored to be working alongside Sharon and Children’s National Hospital in their mission. The healthcare sector, especially pediatrics, demands a uniquely human-centric approach to cybersecurity. Protecting patient data and ensuring uninterrupted care is paramount, and we’re committed to supporting Children’s National in achieving these goals,” he says.
To keep her hybrid team at Children’s National at the top of its game, Finney has instituted a standing Microsoft Teams call that runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day, leaving her available for her team to contact her when needed. “We used to be really isolated from one another, and that is not how you build a high-reliability team or a high-reliability organization, which is an initiative for our hospital,” she says. “We need a space to be open and honest with each other to build trust amongst ourselves so we can then build trust with the organization.”
“This isn’t just a job to me, and when it feels like it’s just a job, that greater purpose keeps me going. What I do every day is part of the overall protection of the hospital. If I’m thinking about security, our clinicians can focus on what they do best, which is caring for our patients.”
Finney maintains regular touchpoints with teams throughout the hospital as well, to learn from clinical first-responder, emergency response processes, and to stay one step ahead of emerging cyberrisks. “Keeping up with the massive amount of technology infusion into the healthcare ecosystem is very challenging,” she says. “I must be able to communicate with each team in its own language. They don’t [have] to understand cybersecurity; I just need to communicate in their language how it impacts them.”
Among her initiatives at Children’s National, Finney has prioritized driving down security vulnerabilities, strengthening the incident response program, and exploring the security implications of AI adoption in healthcare. No matter which area has her attention, she bears in mind that security will always come second to the wellbeing of the hospital’s patients. “In a healthcare institution, we as IT and security professionals constantly have to think about how to do a lot without consuming more resources than we should. I want as much to go back into our care as is possible,” she emphasizes.
Working in healthcare—and in pediatrics in particular—imbues Finney’s day-to-day with a sense of purpose that has kept her in the industry all these years. “This isn’t just a job to me, and when it feels like it’s just a job, that greater purpose keeps me going,” she says. “What I do every day is part of the overall protection of the hospital. If I’m thinking about security, our clinicians can focus on what they do best, which is caring for our patients.”
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Photos: Kenson Noel (Finney)