What The Hell? 8 Skills of the Hellacious CISO

Copyright © 2009 What The Hell? Security

CISOs, let’s face it, are a dry breed.  But some really know how to raise hell.  In a good way.  Here are eight skills to, ahem, emulate.

1. Abate - The bad rep security has among people who like to deliver projects on time.

2. Automate – In-house.  Because some problems, vendors just can’t solve.

3. Delineate – Isn’t afraid to say “Improving the security of  _____, while desirable, is admittedly beyond the scope of this project.”

4. Disappropriate – Surrenders a slice of the security budget for the greater good.

5. Elucidate – Pick a policy.  Any policy.  Unhesitatingly rattles off the business driver behind it — without uttering the word security.

6. Pollinate – Exports a security engineer to the networking team.   Imports a database engineer to the security team. Antonym of Isolate.

7. Resonate – Promotes the flavor of security that blends with the established grain of the business.  Antonym of Intimidate

8. Violate – Occasionally does this to a security policy when it just makes sense to.

Leave a Reply