Cybersecurity has had a heightened impact in 2019, made visible by the growing responsibilities of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). A decade back, cybersecurity was a function looked at by Chief Information Officers and IT teams. However, cybersecurity has become so critical nowadays that enterprises are appointing a specific C-suite executive, the CISO, devoted exclusively for this.
The role continues to evolve — companies are evaluating CISOs and in certain cases, ensuring that they directly report to the CEO. Board members too, are expected to be aware of the threats that come with doing business in the modern, digital era indicating the importance businesses are giving to cybersecurity.
Although, encapsulating the entire paradigm of cybersecurity can be exhausting for the modern-day CISO.
A CISO’s action item list can be extensive considering the complex nature of cyberattack mitigation and the fact that cyber threats do not have an expiry date.
Experienced CISOs though, do realize that it’s important to look at cybersecurity from a wider, broader perspective to ensure that the best methods are leveraged to defend the enterprise from every possible threat.
Mentioned below are three crucial points that CISOs should look at while building a businesses’ cybersecurity roadmap –
An organization’s cybersecurity mindset
As most security experts reiterate, cybersecurity is no longer just an IT problem, it’s a business problem which expands it into a cross-organizational issue.
Currently, businesses are required to have a security-first mindset if they intend to be serious about cyber defence — without this mindset, even the best CISOs will not be able to safeguard against cyber threats.
A security-first mindset stipulates that every stakeholder in an organization, from the board to the employees understand and recognize the importance of cyber and information security. For CISOs, it’s essential to cultivate this culture from within so that the organization can contribute towards bolstering cybersecurity in their own ways
Business domains and cyberthreats
Certain business domains are more prone to cyberattacks as compared to others.
Seqrite’s comprehensive Threat Report from Q2 2019 observed that the manufacturing industry had the maximum number of detections in the period, followed by the education and professional services industries. The report also postulated that threat actors are increasingly targeting non-information technology sectors such as manufacturing because these industries give secondary preference to cybersecurity.
This is all relevant from the perspective of a CISO, especially if they are part of these aforementioned industries. It’s imperative for CISOs to understand the fact that they are more at risk in such cases, in turn alarming them to quickly come up with a set of actions to neutralize these very real threats, very fast.
Data storage and privacy
How companies control data has become one of the most talked-about topics of this decade.
The world’s biggest search engine Google is facing an antitrust probe in the US about anticompetitive behaviour in the form of a lawsuit — data privacy is one of the components of the same.
Social networking behemoth Facebook has had a troubled last few years, mainly due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The crux of this issue was/is the handling of user data — courtesy Facebook, Governments all across the world are rolling out a plethora of regulations to safeguard user data.
Every CISO anywhere in the world has to now be extremely cautious while dealing with any type of business-sensitive data. Clear and detailed policies have to be engraved in an organization about the processing of data and communicated internally via all possible and relevant channels.
When choosing a cybersecurity solution, CISOs can explore Seqrite’s range of world-class enterprise solutions to keep organizations safe from cyberthreats. Seqrite develops security management products across endpoints, mobile devices, servers and network, providing solutions that are a combination of intelligence, analysis and state-of-the-art technology, designed to provide better protection for businesses of all sizes.
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