Due to the rapid shift to digitization and cloud infrastructure, the traditional responsibilities of CISOs and SecOps have witnessed a major shift worldwide
Cyber threats are impacting businesses worldwide, and cybersecurity initiatives have never been more important. Currently, high-profile threats, including data breaches, ransomware, supply chain attacks, and security management have challenged global CISOs and SecOps.
Cyber hackers tried to capitalize on the rapid shift to remote working and take advantage of the lax security policies and regulations. Most breaches are caused by a malicious attack. IBM’s 2020 data breach report revealed that it takes approximately 20 days to recognize and manage a breach and the average cost of each in the US is $8.64 million. With such alarming statistics, industry experts reckon that the increased zero-day threats worldwide have led to major transformations in the responsibilities of CISOs.
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Back in the day, CISOs played a secondary role in business growth and security considered a good-to-have segment of the business. At that point, CISOs were only considered technical experts for a part of IT that was about security, and not business influencers. Technical expertise was also not required much as data breaches and ransomware were not as rampant and destructive as they are today.
However, at this point, security and cybersecurity are at the top of every company’s priority list. The rapid digital transformation has led to several large-scale ransomware attacks over the last two years. The SolarWinds and Microsoft supply chain attacks have indicated the increasing sophistication of cyber-threats.
Research reveals that 73 percent of all ransomware attacks were successful in 2020. Many companies that had already invested in cybersecurity also suffered major data breaches. The increased utilization of technology- from AI-solution to cloud solutions -has massive potential for cyber-attack vulnerabilities, and it can disrupt companies for days, months, or even, permanently. Cybersecurity is not just a technical system anymore, it has become a major part of business growth.
The other C-suite executives can no longer afford to keep CISOs away from major business decisions. CISOs have critical responsibilities now and must involve themselves in business risk management and be part of the leadership circle. They need to be the ones to educate the organization about cybersecurity, possible initiatives, investments, and get the team to keep track of every data movement within the cloud infrastructure.
Security is now a business enabler rather than a blocker, as considered in the past. Although CISOs no longer need to possess in-depth expertise in one specific security issue, they are expected to have a reasonable understanding of all possible security threats, develop strategic security protocols that could enhance the business process.
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Meanwhile, SecOps who were traditionally involved in the defence mechanism tasks of companies, including incident response, perimeter and network security, incident response, and threat intelligence, has also witnessed a change in their requirements. They cannot afford to use manual and reactive techniques anymore. Today, they are expected to be more proactive and offensive. They must strive to be two steps ahead of hackers.
While the primary responsibility of CISOs and SecOps remain the same, their process and priorities have been drastically altered. Their ultimate goal is to equip companies for better methods of zero-day attacks and help reduce downtime.
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