Kevin Coleman is a dynamic speaker, author, advisor, and visionary that provides riveting insight on strategy, innovation, and the high velocity technology. He was Chief Strategist at Internet icon Netscape and at another startup that grew to be BusinessWeek’s 44th fastest growing company. He has spoken at some of the world’s most prestigious organizations, including the United Nations, the U.S. Congress, at U.S. Strategic Command, and before multiple Fortune 500 organizations and briefed executives in 42 countries around the world.

Another Chief to Answer to!

December 12, 2016

Kevin Coleman

Let’s face it: we have all entered the digital age, and with that comes change!

Organizations must transform themselves and embrace digital technology, and that means change. Organizations that embrace and apply digital technologies to all aspects of their operations will be transforming all aspects of business. It should be noted that it goes far beyond business: it is impacting society as well. Many believe this will be the most profound change we experience during our careers. Given the career implications of digital transformation, CSOs and CISOs must realize that digital transformation is far more than digitization. Digital assets are flowing between all components of the enterprise. Basically, it fills the white-space between the boxes of the organizational architecture. Looking at it that way you can easily see why we are now talking the data universe in terms of zettabytes. A zettabyte equals 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. That's a lot of digital assets!

A recent document produced by management consultants at Accenture found that about 1/4 of business executives call them organization’s a digital business currently. In addition, more than 1/3 of those business leaders are well prepared for the digital transformation in terms of the right leadership and management practices. There is fair amount of work to be done. Arguably, this is why many organization have chosen to expand the C-level and add a new position: Chief Digital Officer, or CDO, who is tasked with assisting others inside the organization with the conversion of analog business assets into digital ones. While some believe this is a short-lived position, (in fact they believe the position is already started to go away) others are of the opposite opinion. Management Consultants at McKinsey refer to the CDO as the transformer in chief.

CSOs and CISOs are on point to protect all of these digital assets. In researching for this piece, I reviewed several diagrams illustrating the process of digital transformation and associated materials. Very few even mentioned cybersecurity or protecting all the digital assets of those called digital enterprise. So much for building security in rather than treating it as an after-thought and bolting it on later!

As the analog information is transformed into digital assets the total value of which CSOs and CISOs are responsible for increases. And sometimes dramatically! If you are not familiar with the CDO movement, I recommend you read the following article, "How to tell if your company needs a chief digital officer." (http://www.cio.com/article/3091829/leadership-management/how-to-tell-if-your-company-needs-a-chief-digital-officer.html)

It may help you determine if a CDO is in your enterprise’s near future. If you determine a CDO it is, I strongly recommend reading “Warning: CDOs can be hazardous to your CIO's health.” (http://www.cio.com/article/3085604/cio-role/warning-cdos-can-be-hazardous-to-your-cios-health.html) By looking into the challenges that CIOs face, you will get a solid foundation for evaluating what the appointment of a CDO might mean to you in your particular situation.

It should also be noted that many organizations have not created the position or use the CDO title, but they have already begun to establish metrics and measures to quantify the digital assets value (DAV). That means CSOs and CISOs will have a much more solid $$$ figure for use when articulating what is at risk, and what is not.

The total digital asset value is likely to become a contrasting metric as well. Cyber Security was commonly illustrated as a percentage of the overall IT budget. Once the DAV is established, it is highly likely that the cyber security budget will be articulated as a percentage of the overall organization’s digital asset value. That should help justify the dollars needed to protect all these digital assets. So are you ready for big changes? Has your organization’s transformation already begun? Do you know you have a or will you have a Chief Digital Officer to assist? So many questions!

A critical event is defined as an incident that disrupts normal operations, such as severe weather, crime, violence and critical equipment or technology failures. Business continuity and crisis response plans can only go so far if there isn't buy-in across functions, with executive-level support.

In this webinar, security expert Pieter Danhieux explores how CISOs and CIOs can inspire real change, fostering a positive security culture that enables their development teams to become more security-aware, more aligned with internal AppSec specialists and, ultimately, securing code as it is written.