Get ahead of the Cyber-threat with this one powerful habit

Get Ahead Of The Cyber-Threat

with this one powerful habit

cyber security

You face a dizzying array of threats: lone-wolf hackers, organized crime, government-sponsored proxies, and insider threats. These groups are highly aggressive and adaptive and often operate with impunity. They threaten our businesses, infrastructure, livelihoods, and way of life. Cyber is the new frontier of freedom and you are on the front lines.

The enemy always finds a new tool or tactic.

If you are a cyber-security leader, it’s natural to look for an advantage in technology because those are the tools of the battle. Any technical superiority you gain, however, seems fleeting. It’s like a hamster wheel. The enemy always finds a new tool or tactic. The adversary also has advantages in timing, being able to stage attacks when they want. They can attract talent for higher pay than you can afford. They take advantage of people in your company who are cyber-complacent or simply not paying attention. You have to be vigilant constantly.

Your advantage comes from your leadership.

Your competitive advantage, though, is not in the technology or tools. Your real competitive advantage comes from your leadership: your ability to build relationships with the C-Suite and board to get cyber-security ingrained in the culture and governance, create a culture on your team that attracts, engages, and retains the right talent, and act strategically by making sound decisions, managing risk and uncertainty, bridging silos, and learning and adapting. As you know, personal experience is the best teacher of leadership. It’s the school of hard knocks. Learning from your own mistakes and triumphs helps you improve on what you have done before.

Personal experience, however, has a very poor track record in preparing leaders to face new and different challenges and opportunities. Many find themselves to be prisoners of their own past, searching in vain for answers as their competitors race forward. The Blockbusters in a Netflix world.

Leaders who rely on personal experience are guaranteed to be incompetent.

As a Cyber Security Leader, you cannot afford to simply learn from experience. The adversary is too adaptive and the consequences of being outmaneuvered by them are too high. You are fighting a chameleon-like cyber-insurgency with ever-evolving tactics, techniques and procedures. You need every strategic edge you can get.

Learning from others in a variety of disciplines is the best way to multiply your experiences in a very short amount of time. There are three great ways to do this. Reading great books and articles, using advisers and mentors to challenge our thinking and provide different perspectives, and experiential learning – training, workshops, and off-sites that help us gain different ways of thinking about the challenges and opportunities we face.

This is exactly why we have put together this reading list for cyber security leaders. It is organized thematically by what we call the 3 BIG things: Leadership, Culture, and Strategy. This combination of great books and articles allows you to be highly targeted in your approach to multiplying your experiences by learning from others.

Check out the reading list here: Cyber Security Leaders Reading List

 

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