Talking to Boards and C-Suites, Leadership Debt, and Adaptive Leadership – BSW #272

Five Tips to Ease Communication With the Board 1. Start with the basics 2. Know the difference between the board and leadership 3. Come prepared to talk about the following: - How issues affect your business - Current events - “What’s that red thing?” - The historical perspective - The risk narrative 4. Don’t do the following - Don’t go into minutiae - Don't complain - Don’t pretend everything is great if it isn’t 5. Seize an opportunity, if you can

Here are some basic questions that CISOs need to answer for the board and C-suite: - What are the risks we are facing? - What is the cybersecurity team doing about it? - Does the team have what it needs to make the right decisions and act quickly? - Are company assets, data, and systems secure? - How would we know if we have been breached? - How does our security program compare to other companies in the industry? - Do we have enough resources for our security program? - How effective is our program; is our investment correctly aligned?

You can avoid incurring too much leadership debt by: 1. Take ownership of your leadership debt 2. Work on your leadership skills 3. Develop a strong leadership team 4. Watch out for leadership debt symptoms, including - Team conflicts and team members blaming each other - You must approve too many decisions - High employee turnover - Teams work in silos

How leaders within an organization decide issues is an important part of that organization’s success. This is because that decision-making process flows down to other parts of the organization; others emulate these actions and processes within the group (Offergelt et al., 2019). This article will discuss a leadership approach called adaptive leadership theory through the examination of a senior leader of a Fortune 500 firm during the early stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic. It will also describe an alternative theory of leadership demonstrate why it was not an optimal choice during this time.

Which comes first, security or compliance? In an ideal world, they work together seamlessly. Here's how to achieve that: 1. Focus on data protection 2. Make security auditors your friends 3. Use compliance as a base to build better security 4. Fix the vulnerabilities you find 5. Measure improvements in security and risk posture

Below are three key barriers facing companies interested in implementing a zero-trust approach today: 1. Cost 2. Complexity 3. Scale

The communication tip is this: ALWAYS clarify the point(s) you want to discuss. How do you clarify these points? ASK QUESTIONS. No matter how simple it may seem, do not assume what you think something means matches what the person meant.