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    Selling Information Security to the Board: A Primer
    Selling Information Security to the Board: A Primer
    Selling Information Security to the Board: A Primer
    Ebook68 pages1 hour

    Selling Information Security to the Board: A Primer

    By Alan Calder

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    About this ebook

    Information technology plays a fundamental role in the operations of any modern business. While the confidentiality and integrity of your organisation's information have to be protected, a business still needs to have this information readily available in order to be able to function from day to day. If you are an information security practitioner, you need to be able to sell complex and often technical solutions to boards and management teams.

    Persuading the board to invest in information security measures requires sales skills. As an information security professional, you are a scientific and technical specialist; and yet you need to get your message across to people whose primary interests lie elsewhere, in turnover and overall performance. In other words, you need to develop sales and marketing skills.

    This pocket guide will help you with the essential sales skills that persuade company directors to commit money and resources to your information security initiatives.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publisheritgovernance
    Release dateMar 31, 2016
    ISBN9781849288019
    Selling Information Security to the Board: A Primer
    Author

    Alan Calder

    Alan Calder is a leading author on IT governance and information security issues. He is the CEO of GRC International Group plc, the AIM-listed company that owns IT Governance Ltd. Alan is an acknowledged international cyber security guru. He has been involved in the development of a wide range of information security management training courses that have been accredited by the International Board for IT Governance Qualifications (IBITGQ). He is a frequent media commentator on information security and IT governance issues, and has contributed articles and expert comment to a wide range of trade, national and online news outlets.

    Read more from Alan Calder

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      Selling Information Security to the Board - Alan Calder

      Resources

      INTRODUCTION

      C-suite IT and information security executives have usually attained their responsible positions by being good at the technical aspects of their functions. Their background, schooling and higher education are mostly in science or technology disciplines. They understand information technology, they’re usually up to date with the latest threat developments, trends and risks, and they know their way around the network infrastructure. They may have a good understanding of IT-related best practice frameworks, such as ITIL®, COBIT®, PRINCE2® and ISO27001. They understand information risk.

      Boards, however, across most business sectors, are mainly made up of people drawn from a wider educational background, and whose business experience is primarily in commercial operations or sales. The chief executive is almost always someone whose career includes at least a significant stint in general operations, sales or marketing. His or her primary interest is the overall performance of the business: top-line growth, customer acquisition and maintenance, new product/service development, and bottom-line progression. The second most influential person in the top team is usually the chief financial officer, or finance director, someone whose primary interest is the financial representation of the business performance.

      Other senior directors are usually directly interested in their line of business or area of functional responsibility whether, for example, sales and marketing, or senior divisional roles. Non-executive board members tend also to be there for reasons other than their interest in, or awareness of, emerging technologies: it might be finance or compliance, but it is usually related more to what they can offer around customer acquisition, sales and marketing, or stakeholder management. Other than in technology businesses, few if any members of the senior management team, have a direct role or interest in IT or in IT’s role in business operations.

      Information technology is fundamental to business performance today. Information and information technology has to be appropriately protected: confidentiality and integrity must be preserved, while ensuring that information and technology resources are available to those who need them to perform their roles. IT and information security requires investment – of money, time and resources – by the business. Decisions about where and how to invest business resources are made by top management, people with little awareness of, and less interest in, something about which you, the technology or security leader, may be extremely knowledgeable, and the benefits of which are, to you, as plain as the nose on your face.

      The problem, in a nutshell, is that for the good of the organisation, you have to find some way of getting uninterested managers and directors to understand enough about a potential technology risk to commit money and resources to applying effective controls. This is a problem faced by sales and marketing people every day: it’s how your organisation’s products and services get (eventually) into the hands of customers.

      You’re not a sales and marketing professional. You may even think that sales and marketing professionals swim in the shallow end of the relationship pool. A significant part of the senior management team is made up of people with sales and marketing backgrounds and you need to find a way of getting your message to

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