Doris Ratliff 
Founder & CEO, Corix Associates | Author “The Cybersecurity Management Handbook for the CISO and the CEO” | Board Advisor | Non-Exec Director
For as very long as I have been associated in cybersecurity, I have listened to prime executives asking for benchmarking details about their cybersecurity observe. It may well have been in conditions of maturity, protection shelling out or frequency of breaches, but “how are the other individuals doing” has generally been a pretty common problem.
I assume this goes way outside of “herd mentality,” and context is important to positioning the correct reply. So right before going any additional, CISOs going through this form of problem will have to request on their own the place the issue is coming from.
Take into consideration the context.
If the concern is coming up in a context of budgetary or strategic orientation conversations, it frequently displays a need to have for reassurance, if not plain irritation, with regard to what is becoming proposed.
Prime executives need to know that every corporation is diverse, even throughout the identical field (a lot of would have built their careers relocating from a person firm to an additional throughout that spectrum).
They should really also fully grasp that variances in cyber maturity and chance appetite can drive different strategies and that corporations do not very easily share sufficient quantitative knowledge at that stage to permit meaningful comparisons: They—themselves—may not be comfy observing disclosed to opponents how much they are budgeting for cybersecurity for illustration.
Companies normally don’t have sufficient data for an accurate comparison.
The objective could be to travel the CISO’s ambitions up or down, but in most instances, the benchmarking issue is politically loaded, and it has never ever been a uncomplicated one particular to respond to quantitatively with any diploma of accuracy.
I’ve noticed most CISOs have historically experimented with to handle it in a qualitative manner dependent on anecdotal evidence gathered at conferences or via field discussion boards, but window-dressing a handful of anecdotal data points to make them glance bigger than they are can be a risky and deceptive game.
Only a modest range of very large management consulting companies may possibly have the needed features of data—or the access to acquire it. But even that arrive at is likely to be limited to the huge companies in a position to find the money for their companies, and they will have to anonymize or combination the results to regard the confidentiality of their shoppers.
CISOs may well be much better off in numerous scenarios by sidestepping the question. For most companies, there is just no defendable, adequately exact, quantitative solution to the cybersecurity benchmarking query.
CISOs should really emphasis as an alternative on the underlying motivation of the senior executives behind the query.
Have confidence in concerning executives is of paramount importance to any transformative initiative around cybersecurity, and the benchmarking dilemma could be a symptom of have faith in erosion. That is a significantly much more really serious matter to address than the assortment of illusory comparative facts.
Trust—at this level—will have its foundations in mutual regard, and that has to start off for the CISO by listening to the genuine priorities and constraints of the management workforce and being familiar with the implications these may perhaps have on cybersecurity orientations, for good or for lousy.
They will have to elevate their game to search convincingly outside of the tech horizon and showcase their comprehension of the key governance and management matters at the heart of the cross-practical nature of cybersecurity in substantial companies.
As the “when-not-if” paradigm all-around cyberattacks gets commonplace across the boardroom, CISOs need to also concentration their notice on demonstrating their extended-expression capacity to execute transformative steps and prevent relying only on their brief-phrase firefighting capabilities to create up their situation.
It is likely that benchmarking will cease to be a problem for senior executives if they have the sense cybersecurity is in organization hands and pushed in a direction that matches their expectations and the demands of the agency.
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