Challenges CISO Must Endure in an Increasingly Perilous Age

In today’s risk-laden technology ecosystem, the responsibilities can seem devastating. The chief information security officer (CISO) is living and succeeding in the novel and challenging times. The solution to sustaining and flourishing is identifying the most vital CISO challenges and adopting strategies to stay on top of them.

CISOs have a bird’s-eye view of information security strategy and work intimately with c-suite executives, like the COO, CFO, CTO, CIO, and the CEO. To thrive in this profession, CISOs have to overcome a host of challenges. Here are some of the most critical CISO challenges.

Sophisticated Attacks

Every year, the world makes considerable development in cybersecurity regulations, tools, and standards. When an attack occurs, everyone across the organization, starting from the board, must reach out to the CISO for solutions and management. Therefore, CISOs should apply themselves to the security of the company’s digital assets against such attacks. This involves planning out mission-critical operations, developing robust technical and procedural controls, and connecting with ethical hackers.

All Employees to be on the Cybersecurity Bandwagon

CISOs have to be at the vanguard of fostering employee awareness and buy-in. This can be successfully accomplished by involving the leadership of the company, percolating down for awareness campaigns and significant cybersecurity-related communication.

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Moreover, as a policy, organizations should make security training and awareness activities engaging. They must also honor and reward employees who possess the right cybersecurity behavior. Organizations should get the employees to understand their responsibility towards safeguarding their usernames and passwords. Employees should also be aware of how to report discovered or speculated cybersecurity events.

Furthermore, organizations should create an escalation plan beginning with line managers and help desk support staff then move up the command chain depending on the importance and rigor of the incident.

Cybersecurity Regulations

Regulators worldwide are striving to develop regulations that can keep in step with the enormous volume of private data in the hands of the organizations. The regulatory landscape can become exceptionally dreary for multinational companies due to region-specific cybersecurity laws. In such conditions, recognizing the lowest common denominator and developing a business cybersecurity policy with this baseline may be the best strategy as long as it doesn’t breach any specific regulation.

The Ransomware Threat

Recently, ransomware has emerged to be one of the growing threats and stands out for its capability to jeopardize the survival of the whole organization. It’s the CISO’s responsibility to ensure their company’s security infrastructure is mapped out to prevent and overcome ransomware attacks. However, this has to be aligned with the assurance that all employees know how ransomware can enter a company, like email attachments or clicking on malicious links.

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Lack of Cybersecurity Expertise

The demand for cybersecurity skills exceedingly surpasses the supply. According to ISC, in 2019, the global cybersecurity workforce was at 2.8 million experts. This was a huge 4.07 million less than the needed headcount. The industry required a 145 percent rise in 2019 solely to bridge that gap. Hence, it is obvious this drastic shortfall is bound to be around for years to come. This is an opportunity for security experts to grow, and serve the industry with innovative solutions for securing their data, networks and infrastructures.