Too Good to Waste

Providing a bridge between business and technology requires vast amounts of human intelligence, and WM is leveraging that to deliver excellence in essential services

“Security should strengthen innovation, not slow it down. Cyber should be an accelerator of business confidence. AI should make our teams more productive. It should eliminate repetitive tasks but elevate human capability.”

As head of the Business Information Security Office (BISO) and Cyber Project Management Office for WM, Monica Taylor Boggan, MBA, CISSP, CISA, CRISC, drives a fundamental component of a corporate mission that balances technological excellence with visionary leadership.

“Our goal is to pivot our workforce forward but not push it out,” she added. “The future of cybersecurity leadership in particular is integration, visibility, disciplined execution – but always people-centered innovation.”

Since its founding in 1968 as a provider of waste collection and disposal services, WM has evolved into North America’s leading provider of comprehensive waste management environmental solutions. Operating throughout the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico, WM serves as many as 22 million residential, industrial, municipal, and commercial customers annually.

In addition to operating the largest trucking fleet in the industry, they manage a massive network of transfer stations and active landfills. By focusing on sustainability, repurposing material, and creating and using renewable energy, the communities they serve stay healthier and cleaner.

“A lot of people think of WM as just a trash company, but there’s so much more than that. We do the full life cycle,” Boggan said. “We literally pick up your trash, drop it off at the landfill, capture gases that we’re required to capture, and turn that methane into gas to power our trucks. That kind of sustainability is what drew me to the company.”

That, and a relentless focus on people. “We always put our frontline folks first, the drivers, the collectors, without them, we’re nothing,” she added. “That’s definitely the feeling and the culture of the company. Our people always come first in every decision.”

A specialist in governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), third-party risk intelligence, enterprise risk exposure management, and secure AI adoption at scale, Boggan equips executive leaders with a comprehensive view of cyber and AI risk exposure so they can make informed decisions that balance speed, innovation, and protection of enterprise value.

CISO Jerich Beason initially tapped Boggan to develop the business support side of WM’s GRC practice, which rapidly evolved into a full-scale BISO. She describes BISO as the “extroverts” of the cyber team who understand the needs of the business and effectively communicate cyber risk issues on both sides of the equation. “We’re enablers instead of saying no,” she stated.

The BISO translates technical risk into business impact and ensures cyber security is embedded into initiatives at the early stage. They make sure that the business environment and the enterprise is protected while enabling the cyber team to comfortably innovate within carefully constructed guardrails.

“One of the most valuable benefits of the BISO has been bringing clarity and moving from delivering isolated findings to delivering contextualized insight to the business,” Boggan said. “Instead of handing them technical control gaps, we communicate the impact, the likelihood, and any recommended action that they can actually digest and act upon.”

Rather than granting approvals or denials, the BISO recommends courses of action. As such, context is key to explain the basis for their advice. “If we say yes, then everybody’s happy. There’s no problem with that. It’s the times where we don’t recommend, where we need additional context with a third-party risk exchange.”

In the early days of the office, scale was the primary challenge. They had a risk assessment tool, but it wasn’t meeting the needs of the enterprise. “At that time, we had one, sometimes two people performing risk assessments, which again for organization the size of WM is just not sustainable,” she recalled. “There were static assessments where every vendor got the same questionnaire, which I recognized immediately was not going to work. It had to be a risk-based process.”

To that end, a risk register was created. As third-party risk assessments come in, they are sent into the register. When remediated, the platform eliminates them and communicates the status across the board.

Of course, the complex security challenges of system integrations impact GRC, and as the leader responsible for governance in the enterprise Boggan is responsible for. “Humankind has never seen this kind of velocity in technological advancement,” she declared, adding that the rapid acceleration of agentic AI brings with it tremendous risks and the need for unparalleled visibility.

“Being able to see these agents, what they do, their runtime, all of that, is necessary in order to allow safe innovation with AI by the business. We must have that control and be able to see to protect the rest of the environment,” she noted.

“Things are moving at astronomical pace, so at enterprise scale If an agent is making a mistake or doing something it shouldn’t do, it is exponential in impact. We need to be able to get in front of those things, and automation removes repetitive tasks like manual tracking, and It frees up our teams to focus on analysis and meaningful conversations – the human side of it.”

Automation without human oversight is dangerous. At enterprise scales, small inaccuracies become very large exposures. Automation removes repetition, but humans remove ambiguity.

“AI should eliminate the mundane but not eliminate people. It should elevate capability,” she stressed. “The organizations that succeed will invest in training their teams to supervise automated systems, validate those outputs and refine controls continuously, but sustainable governance requires disciplined automation paired with informed human oversight.”

Boggan credits WM’s leadership for the resounding success of the BISO. “They believe in our competence, they believe in our guidance and our recommendations. They look to us for advice, and you can’t buy that. It’s just invaluable. And I give all the credit to my team on building those relationships and making sure that they are there when the business needs them,” she said.

“The fact that WM has given me that level of support speaks volumes about their understanding, and I really appreciate leadership for giving me those resources. Many BISOs are out here trying to do this work alone and I just don’t understand how that’s possible.”