The last SASIG meeting in London on 8th May 2018 examined the role and career of the CISO. It is hard to walk out of an event like this one not feeling that a number of things are seriously going round in circle in the security industry.
So … May 25th came and went, quickly followed by the football world cup and a heatwave which wrecked most of Europe and many other parts of the world …
Around GDPR, bureaucracy claimed birthrights over the act and things went back to normal: Snake oil vendors packed their stalls and alleged experts headed for the beach … The anti-climax was predictable, and we are still going through that phase where all players are expecting regulators to set their first fines and wondering “where the big one is going to come from”.
Driving security transformation is becoming key; not justifying investments
The age-long debate around security metrics and dashboards seems very much alive within the CISO community. But it is often positioned in an outdated historical perspective.
For many CISOs, it seems to be still about “justifying investments” or articulating some form of “return on security investment”.
It is being challenged by emerging new regulations such as GDPR, which are impacting all industry sectors, and the arrival on the scene of the new role of the DPOin many firms.
There is some form of management reality beyond the “100 days” journalistic cliché: How does an incoming executive make an impact in a new role? What are the real timeframes to look at, and what can be expected and over what horizon? What are the key issues that should raise a red flag during the first few months in a new senior position? and those which can be ignored?
Through this series, we have examined how an incoming CISO can create the conditions to truly make a difference in their new job.
Of course, as we stated in the introductory article, all companies are different from one another and so are most individuals. Each will be at their particular stage in terms of security or managerial maturity.
This is the point when you really get stuck in. By now, you would have been in the new CISO job for about 2 months and it should start to feel less and less like a new job. Of course, this is not really about 100 days, and you should also start to realise it.
This is really the time-horizon over which the new CISO must start assessing their new position. Once again, many of the management tips we will be building up in this series could apply to any executive taking up a senior job in a new organisation.
Many of the management tips we will be building up in this series could apply to any executive taking up a senior job in a new organisation. But the role of the CISO is particularly sensitive in many aspects and has its own dynamics. It is often poorly understood by management and still seen by some as a necessary evil, or as an imposition by auditors or regulators.
There is some form of management reality beyond the “100 days” journalistic cliché: How does an incoming executive make an impact in a new role? What are the real timeframes to look at? What can be expected, and over what horizon? What are the key issues that should raise a red flag during the first few months in a new senior position? and those which can be ignored? Those are the themes we will be exploring in this new series around the specific role of the CISO.
The Person, the Role and the Culture of the Firm