The Board of Directors guides and overseas anorganization, and the CEO answers to the Board. As such, there are many responsibilities of a CEO; it’s not all glitz and glamour. In the corporate world, it’s the highest risk but also highest reward. Increasingly, an area the C-suite executives should pay particular attention to is Cybersecurity of their organization, and this can make or break a leadership career.
Increasingly, an area the C-suite executives should pay particular attention to is Cybersecurity of their organization.
If you’d like to be relieved of your CEO role by your Board in 10 days, here is a recipe to have that happen by neglecting your cybersecurity responsibilities:
Day 1 – Stop taking ultimate responsibility for cybersecurity for your organization. Either be blissfully unaware, or choose to be ignorant of it.
Day 2 – Assume that your organization is “too small” or “not important enough” to be hacked.
Day 3 – Under the assumption of Day’s 2 item, don’t invest any significant funding into cybersecurity. Pay lip service to it only.
Day 4 – Don’t worry about multifactor authentication for your organization; sure it’s the low hanging fruit and one of the most important ways you can protect your company, but it’s too annoying and bothersome. Plus: See Day 2.
Day 5 – Don’t start any security awareness training for your staff. If you do have it in your organization, cancel it immediately.
Day 6 – Don’t invest in any sort of email protection / anti-phishing software.
Day 7 – Don’t even ask if you’ve got client/customer personally identifiable information. For sure don’t try lock it down via encryption if you do accidentally find out that you’ve got that sort of information. Let’s roll the dice that customer info can get leaked to the dark web.
Day 8 – Do not formulate an actual information security policy. That sounds confusing and is way too much work.
Day 9 – Don’t worry about users having the least amount of permissions that they need for their role. Corollary to this is: give anyone local admin rights on their computers, because this makes life easier.
Day 10 – Don’t heed advice about keeping software patched and updated. Security updates? Pfffffft. Sounds like a cash grab by IT companies.
In under two weeks – if you follow these 10 steps in your role as CEO – the odds are stacked in your favor of having a cyber breach and your Board of Directors will make you accountable. They will do their duty and release you to pursue another career.
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