I was talking with a colleague about a week ago on this very important subject. This person is a top-notch cybersecurity expert with decades of experience, and he works for one of the top cybersecurity firms. And I asked him point blank who do you work with? It was a rhetorical question but I asked it earnestly to get his unabridged response.
He promptly said he works with CEO’s, Board’s, CFO’s, COO’s, and CISO’s. Then I asked him another question. Why don’t you work with IT people or technical folks, such as CIO’s IT Directors, and CISO’s? He immediately said, “because I am dealing with a business issue and not a technical issue.” Cybersecurity is not a technology problem, it is a business problem.
What I Knew
I already knew this but I wanted to get an honest opinion from my esteemed colleague. This was music to my ears. If only more executives felt this way we would have far fewer cybersecurity breaches. He went on to say that “really good leaders recognize that cybersecurity is an accelerator for their business, that building that trust up front is what will help make you a market leader.”
I could not have said it better myself. In fact, I did right here. And I have been saying it all along. When you have a very secure environment from a technology perspective such as perimeter security, encryption, monitoring, etc. that is a good thing and you should be commended for it. But it is not the only thing. It is only part of the problem. There is not a perimeter security solution made that will stop an employee from talking to the wrong people, or unwittingly divulging company sensitive information. Or even worse a bad employee walking out of your company with your critical data. Just look at some of these media company breaches.
Get The Upper Hand
So my recommendation to my readers gets the upper hand on the cybercriminals, and your competition today. Start looking at your cybersecurity as a holistic process, a business process. Because the hackers are looking for every opening they can find. A word about my colleague’s message above about building trust as a market accelerator.
Every day we go out there and we try to figure out how we can win against our competition. We come up with new advertising, we offer incentives to sellers, we change our packaging, or product messaging. But many times it is sitting right there in front of us. People do business with people they trust. If you had a way of building trust with potential new customers quickly, you would have more new customers doing business with you. So here is The Cybercreed Trust Builder so you can build trust with your supply chain as well as current customers and potential customers:
The Cybercreed Trust Builder:
- Build a strong security posture and write it down, in readable format.
- Build a complete set of cybersecurity policies and procedures and have a shareable synopsis available for business associates and clients and supply chain partners.
- Perform complete regular cybersecurity audits a minimum of bi-annually or ideally quarterly. And have a shareable synopsis of this report available to business associates.
- Recruit, hire and retain a top notch CISO to run your cybersecurity program, and introduce them to your business partners.
- Ensure that your leadership, such as CEO’s and Boards are regularly talking about their commitment as well as actions on strengthening cybersecurity.