The evolution of the CIO’s role: From tactical ops to transformational leader

Over the course of the last decade, enterprise-wide cybersecurity has increasingly become a business priority. With a renewed focus on each organization’s need to protect itself from a wide range of threats, board-level professionals have realized the value CIOs can bring to their business.

As a result of this perception shift, CIOs have been shifted into the public eye and must be more aware than ever of the decisions they make. After all, when security is one of an organization’s key priorities, every security-related decision can impact processes, changing the way people work, often with profound business implications.

The mixing of security considerations with business results has led to a transformation of the CIO’s role in three distinct stages. Which stage you are at will depend on your organization’s security maturity, with smaller organizations likely being closer to the first stage, while enterprise-size organizations will almost certainly be at the final stage. Of course, security will always be at the core of the CIO’s role, but they are increasingly taking a public-facing role as their organization’s security policy leader. These CIOs play a part in shaping the perception of security across their organization, ensuring teams see security as an asset, not a liability, and that a security-first mindset is implemented across their organization.

Stage 1: Fixing things at a tactical level

Every CIO – and, in fact, most security professionals – have found themselves at this stage at some point in their career. This is the firefighting stage, where incidents receive responses as they arise. The organizations that employ security “teams” – often consisting of one engineer – to work in these environments are small and will be forced to take a reactive approach to cybersecurity.

In these businesses, it is extremely difficult for CIOs to make any meaningful impact. Their focus is on low value, tactical operations, and keeping their organization safe on a day-to-day basis. Simply put, they are too busy – and the organization gives too little thought to cybersecurity.

 Stage 2: A seat at the table

Once a business hits a certain size or maturity – often when its operations have expanded to the point of needing a security department – CIOs find themselves included in decision-making processes by their board. With the amount of security work CIOs undertake, executive teams are more aware of the fact that they can provide wider input/leadership on effectively implementing a security strategy.

This is the stage of security maturity that most businesses are currently at. They understand that security has wider implications, and so are eager to engage the CIO in better positioning the business to remain secure, while balancing the risks they are willing to accept. At this stage, security is more of a concern for organizations, but their strategy will still have a reactive, tactical focus. 

Stage 3: Setting the tone for transformational policy

The final stage for CIOs requires a major mindset shift for the business. The CIOs who are leading the way at this stage are focused on delivering high-impact work, are maniacal about measurement/benchmarking, and have a risk program that clearly communicates where the organization is related to risk, especially cyber risks. In practice, this means that they are actively invested in the work that their security team across their organization is undertaking, and are willing to investigate how security work feeds business success. This allows them to identify redundancies in their security tooling, and any processes that introduce vulnerabilities, and proactively work to remedy these to both increase their organization’s profitability and improve its security posture.

The roadmap for change 

This proactive approach is key if CIOs are to take the leap from Stage 1 to Stage 3. To do this, they must take the time to assess their current security posture, identifying its strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement, and identifying the areas where their organization can shift from reactive to proactive to make significant gains. Following this assessment, CIOs can begin to view their organization’s business goals and objectives with a cybersecurity lens, ensuring alignment between business success and security. This can be a lengthy process, and it can take time to implement these changes. However, change management is an ongoing process, and those CIOs who embrace the need to adapt will be the most successful.

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