The CISO: Guardian of Data while Navigating Risk

CISOs have one of the most vital roles in organizations today. It is also one of the most challenging. That’s because, regardless of industry or location, organizational data has become a precious asset. Protecting that asset is a strategic imperative that carries significant and long-lasting consequences.

As a CISO, you must elevate your organization’s data security posture. In turn, that safeguards data, achieves compliance, and bolsters operational efficiencies. Beyond those “operational” benefits, a strong data security posture also deepens customer trust, builds resilience, and improves business outcomes like revenue and loyalty. In other words, data security—and thus your role as CISO—is the lifeline to your organization’s future. As a result, data security is a serious matter for your board of directors, mandating you get their buy-in and oversight.

At the same time, data estates are sprawling, cyber vulnerabilities are skyrocketing, and no one is immune to increasing cyber risks. Deloitte reports that 91% of organizations report at least one cyber incident or breach. Leading CISOs are adopting a data-first, layered defense model to achieve maximum levels of security, compliance, and resilience as organizations pivot to embrace proactive versus reactive approaches to mitigate risks. CISOs must navigate this increasingly complex and high-stakes environment and prepare for boardroom discussions. Our newly published CISO guide outlines the five key tenets to help CISOs do just that. Here’s a quick primer.

1. Enforce Compliance and Audit-Readiness

Step one in your security journey is to demonstrate regulatory compliance via automated policies and controls—such as encryption, access controls, rights management, and anonymization. A 2024 Thales report found a high correlation between achieving regulatory compliance and minimizing data breaches.

• Organizations that failed a compliance audit: 84% have a breach history, 31% within the last 12 months
• Organizations that passed a compliance audit: 21% have a breach history, 3% within the last 12 months

2. Make Risk Management and Security Resonate with the Business on its Terms

CISOs must be adept at helping the board of directors understand the magnitude of data security risks and the investment needed to mitigate those risks. It is helpful to quantify the magnitude, frequency, and severity of the risk in both industry and organization-specific terms. Examples of both are on page 6 of the CISO Guide.

For instance,

• Breached data stored in public clouds incurred the highest average breach cost at USD 5.17 million.
• Data breaches often impact millions of people per breach—and that number is increasing. Some large breaches involved billions of data records, such as 10.9 billion records, 8.3 billion, and 5 billion.

3. Know Where All Your Sensitive Data is and How Secure it is

Here’s a concerning statistic: Only 24% of organizations know where all their data is stored. To achieve comprehensive data protection and mitigate this significant vulnerability, you must know where all your sensitive data is and all paths to it. This requires comprehensive data discovery and classification for structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data across all stages of the data lifecycle:

4. Observability: Dovetail Visibility with Security Insights

Often, security solutions are pieced together ad hoc, increasing costs and vulnerabilities. Instead, data visibility paves the path for real-time activity monitoring and AI-powered data security insights covering all data, including cloud environments. That’s important because 94% of all global companies use cloud computing, and 80% of data breaches involve cloud-stored data. Leading CISOs are establishing strong security built upon end-to-end visibility and supported by real-time analytics and contextual, AI-powered insights.

5. Trust your Data---its Integrity, Security, and Privacy

Customer trust is firmly rooted in data security. Without it, customers will abandon brands. Generative AI is complicating matters as 57% of global consumers are concerned that brands’ use of generative AI will put their personal data at risk. Your CISO role is multifaceted and requires you to reduce risk, accelerate compliance, streamline operations, and accelerate growth and digital innovation. Keeping pace with these high-speed applications and data-intensive operations demands robust end-to-end threat detection with automated response workflows and remediation recommendations.

The Right Approach to Strengthen Your Security Posture

As CISO, you are the guardian of data. Tackling data security challenges means showing that controls and policies are effective, using risk prioritization methods to evaluate potential threats, and communicating your organization’s security risk to the board of directors in business terms. These actions help you align with your organization’s risk tolerance, achieve compliance, and establish a more robust security posture.

Thales can help you position your role not just as a defender against cyber threats, but also as a champion of compliance and operational resilience.

For more information about this important topic, we invite you to download the CISO Strategic Guide: 5 Steps to Elevate Data Security Posture and view our recorded session The Power of a Future-Proof Data Security Strategy.