This one is hot off the presses.
And the lessons from it easily extend across industry verticals.
The bottom line is this: Organizations with a CISO or a specific senior information security leader are much more likely to adopt a whole host of holistic cybersecurity best practices.
This is based on the brand new HIMSS Cybersecurity Survey, which assesses cyber readiness and practices in healthcare. But take a look at few examples from the study and you'll start to get a pretty clear picture that senior leadership in cybersecurity is a significant factor in cyber readiness.
Senior Cybersecurity Leaders Make a Difference in IoT and Procurement
Let's start at the beginning, in the trenches of IoT. Does your organization conduct a cybersecurity assessment prior to acquiring technology, products or services? In this survey, 88% of organizations with a CISO/senior cybersecurity leader said they do so. However, only 57% of those without senior cybersecurity leadership do so.
Senior Cybersecurity Leaders Make a Difference in Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Another area the survey asked about was business continuity and business recovery planning. 59% of healthcare organizations with a CISO/senior cybersecurity leader say they conduct mock exercises. Without that senior leadership, that number drops to 40%.
That is significant and the HIMSS study makes note of this: "The consequences of not testing for technology failure, include having to deal with technology failure on an ad hoc basis (which can be chaotic) or putting an organization’s business continuity and disaster recovery plan to the test for the first time in the face of an actual incident (i.e., a trial by fire situation)."
These are just two examples. The results of the HIMSS 2017 Cybersecurity Study discuss topics like human factor/awareness, security framework adoption and also top fears or concerns relating to cyber threats.
The data shows having a CISO or senior cybersecurity leader makes a tremendous difference in how prepared organizations are becoming.
