CISOs Challenge The Conventional

We asked veteran security practitioners and CISOs from some of the world's largest companies, "If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?" Responses suggest that philosophical changes are afoot within the psyches of progressive security professionals.

Take the ever popular top-down policy approach: "I'll never take the 'start with the policy' route again. Yes, you need them, but until you've assessed risk and understand the business objective, you shouldn't be authoring policies."

We also got an earful on the knee-jerk reaction of throwing pricey technology at the security problem: "As an industry, we need to move away from the point-solution methodology and behave/react like true risk management professionals," says one. "Playing the patch game. Wow, did we get suckered on this one. We've spent millions on patching without a way to measure how effective that was, but with numerous measures of how ineffective--and disruptive--it is!" Other themes include thinking creatively to reduce attack surfaces, investing more in end user awareness, and pegging security initiatives to business success. May we say, it's about time.

Albert Einstein photo: US Library of Congress, photo illustration by Viktor Koen

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Risk Management: Do It Now, Do It Right