CIOs may increasingly be butting heads with CMOs, but there may be an even older and more important adversary: the chief information security officers who report into them.
In “CISOs are from Mars, CIOs are from Venus,” Barry Caplin suggests that even though they are nominally on the same team, the struggle to protect data and the pressure to derive value from data don’t always make for harmonious relationships.
“The CIO must deliver IT, automation, innovation and efficiency,” explains Caplin, a CISO with Fairview Health Sciences in Minneapolis. “The CISO is tasked with assuring adherence to security frameworks and regulatory standards, and protecting against, and responding to, vulnerabilities and incidents. These mandates can conflict.”
Perhaps there’s no better way to diffuse such conflicts than humour, and there are some wonderfully geeky images here that poke fun at the various “weapons” CISO or CIOs use to wield power (my favourite: the Light Saber of Endpoint Protection). Slide 21 gets at the common issues that can bring both sides together and is well worth remembering.
See the full deck below. Even if there aren’t a lot of CISOs in Canada yet, to what extent do you see skirmishes between security and managing data? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
