Get to Know Executive Cyber Leadership

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Define executive cyber leadership terms.
Describe the goals and tasks of executive cyber leadership.

Executive Cyber Leadership Glossary

When you transition from mid-level manager to leader of a whole team, a lot changes —especially when you’re working in a dynamic field like cybersecurity. This module is all about helping you develop skills that’ll make you a top-notch cybersecurity leader who can use your experience to meet C-suite expectations. What can you expect during this new phase of your career? We’ve drawn from the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Cybersecurity Workforce Framework to offer insight.

In this unit, we discuss some cybersecurity terms you should know. Then we show you the goals and tasks of executive cyber leadership to help you produce measurable cybersecurity results for your organization.

Executive leaders manage employees in an organization and influence and guide these individuals. Those who are responsible for executive leadership processes typically oversee business activities such as fulfillment of organizational mission and vision, strategic planning development, and overall decision-making.

Security leaders—often called chief information security officers (or CISOs) at large companies with a C-suite—are seasoned cybersecurity veterans with an ability to manage people and projects. While the CISO manages an organization’s overall cybersecurity program, other C-suite executives such as the chief executive officer (CEO), chief information officer (CIO), and chief financial officer (CFO) also have roles in leading cybersecurity for their organization. Together, these individuals impact the strategic execution of the organization’s goals to reduce risk.

The changing world relies on cyber leaders to manage through the known unknowns. These leaders demonstrate they can promote, design, engineer, implement, and execute an efficient and risk-aware information security program while meeting the organization’s mission and vision.

Let’s take a look at a few terms relevant to the role of a CISO to help us better understand the landscape of executive cyber leadership.

Term	Definition
Cyber resilience	The ability to anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to adverse conditions, stresses, attacks, or compromises on systems that use or are enabled by cyber resources
Risk management	The program and processes to manage information security risk to organizational operations (including mission, functions, image, reputation), organizational assets, individuals, other organizations, and the nation, and includes: list-style-type: decimal; Establishing the context for risk-related activities and setting expected risk tolerance levels for the organization. Assessing risk. Responding to risk once determined. Monitoring risk over time.
Governance and oversight	The policies and processes that determine how organizations detect, prevent, and respond to cyberincidents
Cyber strategy	The framework that guides the execution of cybersecurity responsibilities over a specific time frame (for example, the next 5 years) to keep pace with the evolving cyber risk landscape
Strategic plans	The plans that define how the enterprise will realize its long-term ambitions by defining the road map of initiatives and portfolio of investments required to achieve strategic objectives

An executive holding a flag and leading other business people up an arrow, which symbolizes leading a strategic plan

Goals, Tasks, and Benefits of Executive Cyber Leadership

Goals of Executive Cyber Leadership

Today’s cyber leaders must be able to integrate security throughout the company’s operations, respond rapidly to threats, and influence fellow senior leaders. As a cyber leader, you execute your decision-making authorities to establish the vision and direction for an organization’s cybersecurity program and cyber-related resources and operations. In doing so, you establish a cyber-secure culture of individual employees who are aware of cybersecurity risks, practice safe behaviors, and actively support your organization’s security processes.

Additionally, you maintain awareness of the risks and assume ultimate accountability and responsibility for the organization’s cybersecurity activities and personnel. You also identify resource gaps in cybersecurity personnel and implement an access management program based on least privilege for all staff.

Executive Cyber Leadership Tasks

Here are some typical responsibilities that would be part of your day-to-day as an executive cyber leader.

Serve as the senior cybersecurity expert, consultant, and advisor within an organization.
Develop cybersecurity policies, plans, and strategies in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, policies, and standards in support of organizational cyber activities.
Advocate the organization’s official position in legal and legislative proceedings.
Prioritize and allocate cybersecurity resources to meet the organization’s needs.
Ensure that senior officials within the organization identify and provide sufficient security controls for their information and systems.

Let’s look at a more detailed example.

Anjelica is an executive cyber leader at an international law firm. She wears multiple hats, and performs a variety of tasks daily. One of her primary tasks is acquiring and managing the necessary resources, including leadership support, financial resources, and key security personnel, to support the firm’s information technology (IT) security goals and objectives.

Anjelica works with the law firm’s CFO to acquire financial resources to develop and implement an effective enterprise continuity of operations plan (COOP). She also leads the firm’s information security budget, staffing, and contracting, including the development of staffing plans to meet critical needs.

Additionally, Anjelica advises the law firm’s other executives, such as the CIO, on the costs and benefits of their information security programs, policies, processes, systems, and elements. She monitors and evaluates the effectiveness of the enterprise’s cybersecurity safeguards to ensure they provide the intended level of protection. She also supervises protective or corrective measures when a cybersecurity incident or vulnerability is discovered.

Benefits of Executive Cyber Leadership

Anjelica recognizes that building a successful cybersecurity program is about more than having the right technology in place. She knows that a mature cybersecurity program relies heavily on gaining the trust and buy-in of other C-suite leaders to promote and influence a cyber aware culture throughout the organization.

To help promote a cyber aware culture at her firm, she meets with other C-suite executives and regularly engages them on the value of cybersecurity, and how it impacts the overall mission of the firm. In coordinating with the firm’s other executive leaders, she encourages them to discuss cybersecurity across the organization so all employees recognize how critical cybersecurity is to the firm’s success.

Knowledge Check

Ready to review what you’ve learned? The following knowledge check isn’t scored—it’s just an easy way to quiz yourself. To get started, drag the description in the left column under the matching term on the right. When you finish matching all the items, click Submit to check your work. If you’d like to start over, click Reset.

Great work!

Sum It Up

Now you understand executive cyber leadership terms, goals, tasks, and benefits. In Unit 2, you learn more about the responsibilities of an executive cyber leader and discover the skills that help executive cyber leaders succeed.

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