Anguish and Antidote – Overcoming Top CISO Challenges

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Anguish and Antidote Overcoming Top CISO
Challenges
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Introduction

• Being a CISO should come with a disclaimer like a
  pharmaceutical ad. May cause insomnia, chronic
  pain, and a generally gloomy outlook. At least,
  thats how the headlines read.
• But where are the answers? Plenty of research is
  done to illuminate what is holding CISOs back. If
  diagnosing the problem is just the first step
  where is a CISO to go from here?

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Heres Whats Keeping Your CISO Up at
Night CISO Survey Paints a Grim
Picture Thirty-seven CISO Pain Points
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Anguish Lack of Sufficient Staff

• Two-thirds of cybersecurity leaders say they
  dont have the staff necessary to handle the
  daily barrage of alerts they receive. With a
  well-documented talent shortage and a pervasive
  approach in most organizations of trying to hire
  from a small candidate pool, many security roles
  sit unfilled for three to six months, if not
  more. This leaves CISOs with teams that are
  understaffed and missing critical skills.

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The Antidote Better Enable Train Talent You
Have

• If your main challenge is not having enough
  bodies, you should first look at whether the team
  you already have in place is working at their
  full potential. Are you trying to hire more
  people because your current volume of alerts is
  too high to be managed by your current staff?
  Instead of opening that new job req, look at ways
  to improve your existing teams capacity.
  Evolving from investigation and triage of
  individual alerts to case management supported by
  context-driven insights can go a long way to
  increase what your staff can address in a given
  day.

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Security Orchestration Solutions

• Maybe youre looking to fill gaps in specific
  technology expertise. Security orchestration
  solutions can provide a consistent fabric and
  interface that allows your team to effectively
  use each security tool without having to
  understand the underpinnings of each.
• Perhaps its skill level thats your challenge.
  Already have a staff of some solid Tier 1
  analysts? Look for additional training that can
  help work their way up to Tier 2 and Tier 3 tasks
  while exploring ways to automate Tier 1 tasks to
  reduce the need for backfilling those roles as
  the team starts to progress.

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The Anguish Getting Leadership on Board

• The prevalence of high-profile breaches, incident
  response missteps, and emerging threats would
  seemingly be enough to make cybersecurity a top
  priority at the highest levels of any
  organization. However, most CISOs find they are
  still fighting an uphill battle to engage their
  companies boards and executive leadership, with
  most saying cybersecurity remains overlooked as a
  strategic priority among the top brass.

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The Antidote Improve Visibility and Reporting

• More than half of CISOs report to a CIO, who has
  a broad spectrum of responsibilities extending
  far beyond security. As such, cybersecurity
  issues have a tendency to get lumped in with
  other topics in the realm of information/data
  management and technology and not get the
  necessary attention. Organizations are starting
  to change this long-held structure and give CISOs
  the direct line to the CEO the role needs. If
  this is happening in your company, great! Now you
  need to figure out how to make the most of this
  new executive access.

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The Anguish Emerging Threats and the Next Breach

• Sixty-seven percent of CISOs believe their
  organization will be the victim of a breach this
  year that will decrease shareholder value and
  have long-term ramifications with regard to
  reputation and brand damage. The rise of
  artificial intelligence, the lower threshold of
  knowledge required to mount a successful attack
  and the profitability of cybercrime all point to
  a continued uptick in threat actors and new
  exploits. No wonder CISOs arent sleeping.

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The Antidote Tighten Up Incident Response

• If a breach is a matter of when not if, then the
  incident response is of paramount importance to
  minimize impact to the business both internally
  and externally.
• Take cues from your organizations business
  continuity plan (you have one, yes?) and detail
  the communication and collaboration that will be
  required in the event of a serious breach. You
  will want a digital war room that can be used not
  only by your SOC but also by teams in legal, HR
  and communications to automatically keep everyone
  up to speed and on the same page.

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Conclusion

• Dont forget the feedback loop. Make sure your
  team is using the intel gained through the
  response and remediation of prior incidents to
  prevent similar issues later on. Each alert,
  case, investigation, and analysis provides vital
  context that can help your organization more
  quickly identify attacks as they come in the
  future.
• While there may not be a single magic cure,
  solutions do exist to treat the symptoms that
  plague the average CISO. Applying the right mix
  of resources and shoring up processes can help
  security leaders start getting a little bit of
  relief. And maybe even a little bit of
  much-needed shuteye.

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Refferences

• https//www.siemplify.co/blog/overcoming-top-ciso-
  challenges-2/
• https//www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cisos-s
  ee-incidents-growing/
• https//www.wsj.com/articles/companies-cut-ciso-re
  porting-ties-with-technology-1524515201
• https//www.siemplify.co/resources/choice-solution
  s-mssp-case-study-download/
• https//www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/02/14/ciso-wo
  rry/