Your CISO should be integral to your company’s growth planning

February 14, 2022

Your CISO should be integral to your company’s growth planning

When the outbreak of the pandemic moved school, business and socializing online in 2020, the platform Zoom, whose user base increased 20-fold in three months, saw a large increase in cyberattacks and data breaches. This phenomenon was, and is, not contained to Zoom; any companies experiencing rapid growth, or increased attention, are also at greater risk for cyber attacks. That partly explains why there was a sharp increase in attacks on the healthcare sector, which obviously became more prominent during the pandemic; and why attackers used ransomware against fitness brand Garmin, which had seen several successive years of business growth. From acquiring a new company to hiring more employees to entering new markets and verticals, all of these expand the attack surface; any change in situation — or planned change in situation — requires a new quantification of cyber risk.

Cybersecurity being a cornerstone of growth also means that the CISO should be participating, along with other executives, in any discussions involving growth. Whether a company is growing from within, by hiring more employees or making acquisitions; or from the outside by expanding its markets and customers, the CISO and cybersecurity need to be at the heart of the discussion, along with the traditional C-suite executives and traditional risks, including competition, regulatory concerns, and the level of consumer demand.

Read more >