Stevan Bernard, the head of Bernard Global and a former security executive at Sony Pictures, is planning to make Sioux City his home base this year. Bernard served for several years as a Sioux City Police officer and as a security official with IBP.
SIOUX CITY -- The head of security at Sony Pictures during the 2014 North Korea hack is returning to Sioux City, where he graduated from high school and once served on the police force.
Stevan Bernard, the head of Bernard Global LLC -- a firm that specializes in "risk, awareness, preparedness and mitigation," said he is planning to make Sioux City his home "base" sometime this year, after decades traveling the world in high-profile security roles. He's taking a break from California, where he lived for a portion of his early years and most recently.
"Other than the harsh winters, it’s a good place to be," he said of Sioux City in an email. He has clients in metro Sioux City, including IBC and Elite Staffing.
In email and phone conversations with the Siouxland Business Journal, Bernard described his life, career and some next moves. In addition to the entertainment field, he has also held key leadership roles in energy, food, and hi-tech. During his career, he has lived overseas for long stretches and traveled in over 50 countries.
The son of Sioux City natives Martin J. Bernard and Geraldine D. DeWall, Stevan Bernard was born in Seattle and spent portions of his childhood in Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Stevan Bernard (second from right, in leather coat) served as a Sioux City Police sergeant in the 1970s and as a security official with IBP in the 1980s, decades before he became a security executive with Sony Pictures. He was at Sony during the 2014 hack perpetrated by North Korea.
The elder Bernard was a Navy veteran of World War II who achieved great success and traveled widely in the postwar years. In 1953, he went to work for Chrysler International and was managing director with the company from 1961 to 1971. In the 1970s, Martin Bernard retired to Sioux City from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he lived for some time on a work assignment, according to his 1983 obituary.
Stevan Bernard spent a roughly six-year stretch of his youth in London, where his father's work had taken the family in the 1960s, before he came to Sioux City to finish high school, graduating from Central High School in 1966.
The next year, he joined joined the Iowa National Guard 2/133rd Infantry Regiment and spent 1969 on active duty in Vietnam.
After returning to the U.S., he joined the Sioux City Police Department in August 1971 and was promoted sergeant in the fall of 1975. There were some colorful incidents in his time on the force -- late one night in February of 1978, Bernard arrested two burglary suspects at a Highway 75 spot called Grandpa's Disco, where "he was working in an off-duty capacity," according to a contemporary Sioux City Journal report.
During Bernard's time with the department he took numerous law-enforcement courses, graduating from the FBI National Academy, the DEA drug enforcement program and the Dade County Organized Crime Institute command school, as well as obtaining degrees in criminal justice and psychology from Morningside College.
"I enjoyed it so much that for years after I left I would dream that I was still able to 'suit up' and hit the streets," Bernard wrote in an email of his days with the Sioux City Police.
He's long maintained relationships in the Sioux City law-enforcement community -- current Police Chief Rex Mueller is a friend, and he was a supporter of Chad Sheehan in his successful bid to become Woodbury County Sheriff. The prominent Sioux City photographer George Lindblade is another longtime friend.
By 1983, Bernard had left the SCPD to work in the private security field. His first job in that capacity was with the former IBP, where he was the director of corporate security. The company during the 1970s was the subject of frequent, lengthy, and often rather intense strikes by the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union at its Dakota City plant.
"I’m sure most readers will recall the turmoil of the 70’s and 80’s with labor disputes," Bernard recalled of his time with IBP, which was acquired by Tyson Foods in 2001.
Later, he went to work with Occidental Petroleum, followed by a stint with US Robotics, which was later acquired by 3Com (another tech firm). By this time the problems he was faced with in his work had magnified considerably -- he'd gone from dealing with small-time street criminals to labor disputes to major international security issues in the oil and tech fields.
Stevan Bernard, seen here in Vietnam in this circa-1969 photo, is a former Sioux City Police sergeant who went on to become an executive at Sony Pictures. Bernard is now planning his return to Sioux City.
"We had 30,000 employees around the world. Our manufacturing and supply chain issues were large. We also battled with counterfeit product issues mostly occurring in Asia," Bernard wrote of his time with US Robotics/3Com.
In 2002, he joined Sony Pictures Entertainment as an executive vice president in charge of global security. His wheelhouse was protecting Sony's "people, data (and) property."
He was still in that role in 2014, when he was faced with what he described as one of his "most memorable" career moments. "I could write a book on that incident," he said.
Shortly before Thanksgiving of that year, hackers in North Korea -- whose leadership was apoplectic about the depiction of Kim Jong-un in the Sony film "The Interview" -- stole troves of sensitive information from Sony Pictures, with the intention of frightening the film studio into nixing the film's release. The hack prompted international outrage, with then-President Barack Obama saying at the time that Sony should not kowtow to North Korea's demands.
"Their intent was to exfiltrate key data, embarrass, confuse and destroy us," Bernard wrote.
Sony "went dark worldwide" in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the company's digital infrastructure.
Stevan Bernard, shown here with a "trojan horse" sculpture (made of many computers) is a former Sony Pictures executive who's planning to move to Sioux City this year.
"No connectivity. Imagine running a business that is so dependent on digital connectivity and all of a sudden, you’ve lost it. What happened concurrently included assessment, activating the crisis team, the investigation in partnership with the FBI and my global team, the continuity of our business (operations, payroll, accounts payable/receivable, communications, legal, insurance, preservation and recovery of data, addressing the victimization of our employees in concert with HR, considering the worry expressed by our clients and exhibitors, and much more)," Bernard wrote. "Over months of effort we survived, and we rebounded."
Bernard stayed on with Sony for four years after that adventure. In 2018, he left to form Bernard Global. The firm specializes in cybersecurity (which he has plenty of firsthand experience in), vulnerability analysis, BCP/CM, business and competitive intelligence, physical security and organizational transformation. In recent years he's also embarked on a speaking career.
His clients have included the FBI, the U.S. Department of State, academic institutions and Fortune 1,000 companies.
And, as many people learned during the pandemic, he has the freedom to choose to live and do his work wherever he pleases. In this case, he wants to set up shop in Sioux City.
"In this virtual world I am able to run much of my business remotely," he wrote.
February 21, 2021 at 08:43PM
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Former head of Sony Pictures security plans return to Sioux City - Sioux City Journal
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