The everyday life of a CISO: From crisis manager to strategist

You are a CISO and therefore responsible for the cyber resilience of your company. Your daily tasks require you to solve acute security problems and develop a long-term strategy at the same time.

You may find yourself facing these challenges:

You have never created a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.
You lack dedicated budgets or positions.
You have difficulties sensitising management to IT security measures.
The workforce is not consistently implementing security requirements.

These problems are not uncommon. But what is the best way to proceed?

Set clear priorities

The basis of any cybersecurity strategy is to understand the most important business processes. It makes good business sense to focus on the critical processes rather than trying to secure everything. An overview of the dependencies between business processes and IT assets enables you to assess risks in a targeted manner and prioritise the necessary measures.

This version emphasises the logic behind prioritisation and highlights the connection between processes and IT assets more strongly.

Structured risk management helps you to decide: Which risks can you accept, and which require immediate action? The aim is not to cover all eventualities, but to make targeted investments in the availability, confidentiality and integrity of IT assets.

Gain conviction

Even the best strategy is ineffective if the management does not release a budget. To gain support, you should clearly emphasise the benefits of the measures:

Protecting critical business processes: How can you prevent production downtime or protect supply chains
Competitive advantage: What can your company do when others fail in an emergency?
Gaining trust: What role does IT security play in collaboration with partners and customers?

Instead of general threat scenarios, it is important to present specific use cases that are tailored to your company. In addition, a selection of options, e.g. graded into basic, medium and high protection measures, helps to facilitate decision-making processes.

Involve the corporate culture

Security measures often mean additional work steps for employees - for example, through more complex login procedures. It is crucial to communicate to people why these measures are necessary.

Acceptance increases when employees recognise that security measures are necessary: IT security not only protects the company, but also their jobs. Clear and transparent communication and training help to create a cyber-sensitive corporate culture.

The everyday life of a CISO: from crisis manager to strategist