Skills Development – Leron Zinatullin's Blog

How to be a trusted advisor

Being a security leader is first and foremost acting as a trusted advisor to the business. This includes understanding its objectives and aligning your efforts to support and enable delivery on the wider strategy.

It is also about articulating cyber risks and opportunities and working with the executive team on managing them. This doesn’t mean, however, that your role is to highlight security weaknesses and leave it to the board to figure it all out. Instead, being someone they can turn to for advice is the best way to influence the direction and make the organisation more resilient in combating cyber threats.

For your advice to be effective, you first need to earn the right to offer it. One of the best books I’ve read on the subject is The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister. It’s not a new book and it’s written from the perspective of a professional services firm but that doesn’t mean the lessons from it can’t be applied in the security context. It covers the mindset, attributes and principles of a trusted advisor.

Unsurprisingly, the major focus of this work is on developing trust. The author summarises his views on this subject in the trust equation:

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation

It’s a simple yet powerful representation of what contributes to and hinders the trust building process.

It’s hard to trust someone’s recommendations when they don’t put our interests first and instead are preoccupied with being right or jump to solutions without fully understanding the problem.

Equally, as important credibility is, the long list of your professional qualifications and previous experience on its own is not sufficient to be trustworthy. Having courage and integrity, following through on your promises and active listening, among other things are key. In the words of Maister, “it is not enough to be right, you must also be helpful”.

How to apply FBI’s behavioural change stairway to security

Unlike the FBI’s Hostage Negotiation Team, cyber security professionals are rarely involved in high-stakes negotiations involving human life. But that doesn’t mean they can’t use some of the techniques developed by them to apply it to improve security culture, overcome resistance and guide organisational change.

Behind the apparent simplicity, this model is a tried and tested way to influence human behaviour over time. The crux of it is that you can’t skip any steps as consecutive efforts build on the previous ones. The common mistake many cyber security professionals make is they jump straight to Influence or Behavioral change with phishing simulations or security awareness campaigns but this can be counterproductive.

As explained in the original paper, it is recommended to invest time in active listening, empathy and establishing rapport first. In the security context, this might mean working with the business stakeholders to understand their objectives and concerns, rather than sowing fear of security breaches and regulatory fines.

All of this doesn’t mean you have to treat every interaction like a hostile negotiation or treat your business executives as violent felons. The aim is to build trust to be able to best support the business not manipulate your way into getting your increased budget signed off.I cover some techniques in The Psychology of Information Security – feel free to check it out if you would like to learn more.

Business alignment framework for security

In my previous blogs on the role of the CISO, CISO’s first 100 days and developing security strategy and architecture, I described some of the points a security leader should consider initially while formulating an approach to supporting an organisation. I wanted to build on this and summarise some of the business parameters in a high-level framework that can be used as a guide to learn about the company in order to tailor a security strategy accordingly.

This framework can also be used as a due diligence cheat sheet while deciding on or prioritising potential opportunities – feel free to adapt it to your needs.

I am excited to be recognised as one of the top security executives who have demonstrated outstanding thought leadership and business value.

The winners of the CSO30 Award “demonstrated risk and security excellence in helping guide their organisations through the challenges of COVID19, worked to secure digital transformation initiatives, strengthen security awareness and education efforts, utilize new security technologies, engage with the wider security community to share learnings, and much more.”

It’s a team effort and I’m proud to be working with great professionals helping businesses innovate while managing risks.

The role of a CISO

I’m often asked what the responsibilities of a CISO or Head of Information Security are. Regardless of the title, the remit of a security leadership role varies from organisation to organisation. At its core, however, they have one thing in common – they enable the businesses to operate securely. Protecting the company brand, managing risk and building customer trust through safeguarding the data they entrusted you with are key.

There are various frameworks out there that can help structure a security programme but it is a job of a security leader to understand the business context and prioritise activities accordingly. I put the below diagram together (inspired by Rafeeq Rehman) to give an idea of some of the key initiatives and responsibilities you could consider. Feel free to adapt and tailor to the needs of your organisation.

You might also find my previous blogs on the first 100 days as a CISO and developing an information security strategy useful.

I’ve been invited to speak at the CSO30 Conference today on applying behavioural science to cyber security.

I talked about the role behavioural science plays in improving cybersecurity in organisations, the challenges of applying academic theory in practice and how to overcome them.

I shared some tips on how to build the culture of security and measure the success of your security programme.

We also spoke about the differences in approaches and scalability of your security programme depending on the size and context you organisation, including staffing and resourcing constraints.

Overall, I think we covered a lot of ground in just 30 minutes and registration is still open if you’d like to watch a recording.

Royal Holloway University of London adopts my book for their MSc Information Security programme

One of the UK’s leading research-intensive universities has selected The Psychology of Information Security to be included in their flagship Information Security programme as part of their ongoing collaboration with industry professionals.

Royal Holloway University of London’s MSc in Information Security was the first of its kind in the world. It is certified by GCHQ, the UK Government Communications Headquarters, and taught by academics and industrial partners in one of the largest and most established Information Security Groups in the world. It is a UK Academic Centre of Excellence for cyber security research, and an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Centre for Doctoral Training in cyber security.

Researching and teaching behaviours, risk perception and decision-making in security is one of the key components of the programme and my book is one of the resources made available to students.

“We adopted The Psychology of Information Security book for our MSc in Information Security and have been using it for two years now. Our students appreciate the insights from the book and it is on the recommended reading list for the Human Aspects of Security and Privacy module. The feedback from students has been very positive as it brings the world of academia and industry closer together.”

Dr Konstantinos Mersinas,
Director of Distance Learning Programme and MSc Information Security Lecturer.

Threat modelling 101

Using abstractions to think about risks is a useful technique to identify the ways an attacker could compromise a system.

There are various approaches to perform threat modelling but at the core, it’s about understanding what we are building, what can go wrong with it and what we should do about it.

Here is a good video by SAFECode introducing the concept:

Webinar: A CISO panel on weaving security into the business strategy

I had a lot of fun participating in a panel discussion with fellow CISOs exploring the link between cyber security and business strategy. It’s a subject that is very close to my heart and I don’t think it gets enough attention.

In the course of the debate we covered a number of topics, ranging from leveraging KPIs and metrics to aligning with the Board’s risk appetite. We didn’t always agree on everything but I believe that made the conversation more interesting.

As an added bonus, my book The Psychology of Information Security was highlighted as an example of things to consider while tackling this challenge and to improve communication.

You can watch the recording on BrightTalk.

Category Archives: Skills Development