Why do practitioners have such a hard time convincing their management team about the value of investing in security training, tools, and other initiatives? Is it because they're too stubborn or busy to take the time to assess the concerns or is it more likely that you haven't found the best way to communicate the threat to the business in a language that they understand? Business leaders have implemented their own language, much of which was learned in business school, to better communicate with shareholders, board members, partners, and peers. Unfortunately, this language is often as foreign to most security practitioners as yours is to them. So what can practitioners do to better communicate with management? This session will discuss several tactics to help convince your management team that your concerns are valid and not to be ignored - by using a language that they understand, the language of business. Examples on how to justify requests for headcount, procedures, policies, and human, tool, and training investment will be discussed with easy to use business tools to help navigate your discussions.
Andrew Hay is an information security industry veteran with close to 20 years of experience as a security practitioner, industry analyst, and executive. As the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at DataGravity, Inc., he advocates for the company's total information security needs and is responsible for the development and delivery of the company's comprehensive information security strategy. Andrew has served in various roles and responsibilities at a number of companies including OpenDNS (now a Cisco company), CloudPassage, Inc., 451 Research, the University of Lethbridge, Capital G Bank Ltd. (now Clarien Bank Bermuda), Q1 Labs (now IBM), Nokia (now Check Point), Nortel Networks, Magma Communications (now Primus Canada), and Taima Corp (now Convergys). Andrew is frequently approached to provide expert commentary on security-industry developments, and has been featured in such publications as Forbes, Bloomberg, Wired, USA Today, International Business Times, Sacramento Bee, Delhi Daily News, Austin Business Journal, Ars Technica, RT, VentureBeat, LeMondeInformatique, eWeek, TechRepublic, Infosecurity Magazine, The Data Center Journal, TechTarget, Network World, Computerworld, PCWorld, and CSO Magazine.