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Bringing the Board On Board for Cybersecurity, A Day in the Life

Bringing the Board on Board for Cybersecurity

Jessica Gulick, Chief Strategist, CSG Invotas

Who hasn’t seen a team with the top players in the sport—a seemingly undefeatable team—lose when it’s all on the line? Ultimately, despite their many advantages, the team’s strategy unravels.

This same thing happens all too frequently in security. You’ve hired the very best people that money can buy and implemented the latest and greatest systems for detection, remediation, etc., but breaches still happen. Worse yet, these breaches can go undetected for months resulting in the loss of data and eroding customer trust.

In my experience, I’ve found that the first step in winning the cyber wars is bringing the Board of Directors onboard. As with elite athletic teams, hard-pitched contests in the cyber domain create headlines and can bring significant attention to the brand. Unfortunately, for enterprises, they’re unwilling combatants and face even higher consequences for losing the battle. A data breach creates significant costs for businesses which must try to resume operations, recoup profits and repair trust. Companies can no longer be content to consign cyber defense to a low-level IT issue. Cyber-attacks merit board oversight as they are one of the most formidable operational risks to an enterprise today.

Operational risk—a term being refined in the security community to mean the convergence of interdependent risk from all core areas of business to include digital—needs to be addressed at the highest levels of the organization. This high level of visibility is required in order to understand and mitigate the true impacts. For example, decisions around how to merge or divest company facilities, personnel, systems and data requires leadership to consider what new risks they are taking on and creating, and at what cost.

Negative impacts from cyber-related attacks are not always technical; they are brand, consumer confidence and financial stability. Thus, the response and defense should not be solely technical in nature. Gaining the support of the Board of Directors and embracing a holistic enterprise risk management—inclusive of network defense—is imperative if Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are to optimize their available resources and gain ground in the fight against cyber attackers. With the Board onboard, an enterprise can acknowledge that cyber attacks and data breaches are no longer a matter of “if,” but “when,” and develop an equally robust, winning enterprise risk strategy for resiliency and cyber defense.

A Day in the Life at CSG Invotas

Marianne Rosenbaum, Chief of Global Security Staff, CSG Invotas

The cybersecurity business is booming. Every day, new companies emerge in response to the growing threat of cyber attacks and present skilled cybersecurity workers with a plethora of new business ventures from which to choose. Unlike other companies, however, there is a special sort of magic at CSG Invotas that is experienced only once in a lifetime.

Imagine a room of talented cybersecurity subject-matter experts, from business leaders to CISOs to security analysts, speaking candidly, openly, and respectfully about security orchestration and ways to speed the evolution of our platform. No idea is a bad idea; rather, each idea fuels another and lays the groundwork for ongoing brainstorming that allows us to develop evermore improved configurations, implementations, and solution features. There is no ego. There is no fear. There is only collaboration and teamwork because all voices are heard. An inviting culture and acceptance of mistakes gives everyone the confidence to be innovative and bold.

That room is CSG Invotas.

At CSG Invotas, we are all entrepreneurs. We accept the mission because we aspire to be part of something big, something disruptive. We actively participate in the mission because each day, we are given the opportunity to do what we do best. We have access to the resources that enable us to demonstrate our unique talents. We succeed, not only by our common bond, but because our values and goals are aligned to Invotas’s values and goals.

We are more than a team. We are a family.