A common misunderstanding with cyber risk management is that only the CISO and security practitioners should be concerned about cyber and information security. Instead, the state of the cybersecurity program is critical to all business leaders, including the CEO. CISOs and CEOs should collaborate on cybersecurity strategy as cyber becomes a core business function. Regular reporting on cyber risk posture and trends should be communicated using a CEO cyber security dashboard.
Key Cyber Communication with the CEO
Cybersecurity is essential to a CEO for several reasons, the first being the security of the company’s assets. CEOs are responsible for the company's assets, including data, intellectual property, and financial resources. With a robust cybersecurity program, organizational leaders can protect the safety of these assets from cyber threats such as hacking, malware, and phishing attacks.
Cybersecurity incidents such as data breaches and ransomware attacks can disrupt business operations, leading to financial losses and reputational damage. CEOs need to ensure that their companies have robust cybersecurity measures to ensure business continuity and minimize their impact if they occur.
Whether your organization is subject to industry-specific regulations like NERC-CIP or HIPAA or data protection laws like GDPR or CCPA, it’s critical that your organization actively monitors compliance with these frameworks using automation. CEOs must be aware of gaps in their compliance posture and what is being done to mitigate them to avoid legal and financial consequences. Automated technology like Continuous Control Automation (CCA) enables security practitioners to manage compliance in real-time and select the appropriate remediation solution if/when a control failure occurs.
CISOs can deliver updates on compliance using the Executive Dashboard, which has sundial gauge tables to illustrate alignment with compliance goals. Leaders can select their most relevant frameworks for the dashboard and drill down by unit to compare high and low-performing units.
CEOs can track historical maturity to the NIST CSF if the organization benchmarks against this gold-standard framework for further granularity on compliance and maturity.
Cyber Success is Business Success
Cybersecurity is a core pillar of business success. With a robust program that delivers clear and actionable insights, your organization can avoid malicious threats, non-compliance, and reputational risk. CEOs and organizational leaders can build customer trust by proving that the company can protect consumer information from security incidents.
With real-time insights, CEOs can make cyber-informed decisions that extend business success. This hinges on clear communication between the CISO and CEO and can be supported using a cyber security dashboard, like CyberStrong’s Executive Dashboard. Contact us to learn more about board reporting and our automated platform.
