The role of the chief information security officer – or CISO for short – is to understand a corporation’s cyber threat landscape and know where vulnerabilities lie. And given the relentless increase in sophisticated hacking, their clout and importance to the CEO and Board is increasing exponentially. Given COVID-19, as millions of American white-collar workers have moved from the office to their home to work remotely and stay in touch with colleagues solely online, it has been CISOs who have been charged with making sure this eruption of new endpoints isn’t compromising corporate network security.
CISOs have evolved from a human cost center to a critical protector of the lifeblood of the corporation – the workforce. Conversations in the C-Suite about the impact of the first pandemic in a century quickly focused on the uncompromising reality that a remote, digitally-powered workforce was the only way many companies could continue to operate.