Oct 25 2021

CISO Interview Series: Investing in Frameworks, Humans, and Your Technical Skills

Category: CISO,vCISODISC @ 7:24 am

The journey for someone to the role of Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) isn’t often straightforward. Take Sandy Dunn, for example. Per SailPoint, Sandy started as a paper delivery kid at 10 years old. She then worked her way through software sales, insurance, and even horses before becoming the CISO of a health insurance provider in Idaho.

All these “entry-level” jobs share one thing in common. They gave Sandy the experience to fulfill a CISO’s multifaceted responsibilities. But don’t just take my word for it. Check out my conversation with Sandy below.

“One skill I think every CISO needs is business acumen.”

Joe Pettit: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today, Sandy. I would love to hear some of your views on the role of the modern CISO. How is it changing, and what are the essential skills that a CISO should have now?

Sandy Dunn: The required skills for a CISO is an interesting question. Every business is different, so really every CISO role will be slightly different with different expectations for where they fit in the organization. One skill I think every CISO needs is business acumen. You need to be able to understand how security fits into that specific business. Having some level of technical skills is important, too. It helps you with effective communication with your cybersecurity team about issues, tools, proposed remediation, and then to be able to explain everything they just told you back to the business or put it into a business context. Technical knowledge will benefit you in understanding the severity of a problem, too (independent of the volume of the voice who is bringing it) and determine if a situation is a one-alarm fire or a five-alarm fire.

“…one of the things I really had to (Read more…)

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from The State of Security authored by Joe Pettit. Read the original post at: https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data-protection/ciso-interview-series-investing-in-frameworks-humans-and-your-technical-skills/

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Tags: CISO, Fractional CISO, vCISO

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