What Questions will get the CIO’s attention?

The better you know what it means to be a CIO, the better chance you have of making it through a meeting with one. 

If you know something about information security – you’re in luck.  It’s time to strike. With Target in mind and Home Depot in question, Rachael King writer for the WSJ tells us, board members are asking lots of questions. I suspect the CIOs don’t have the answers. How could they?

In a recent interview, John Stewart, chief security officer at Cisco Systems was asked, “What questions are being asked?” So maybe its less about asking the CIO questions and more about knowing the questions CIOs are being asked – questions they don’t have answers to. This is the heart of what I call Predictable Messaging.

If you know what CIOs are being hit with – if you know the questions they’ll be asked, and that they probably don’t have answers to,…and you know how to get answers, you might become one of their most valuable assets.

Here are three questions reported this week by the WSJ (from Stewart’s Interview):

1. “Do you have a set of security controls that are provably in place, are measurable and are actually effective for the state of business and all the business types you’re currently operating? Even if the answer is no, Mr. Stewart said that he hopes this question starts a conversation in the business about how cybersecurity needs to be approached.”
2. “Have you ever had any material breaches that have or have not been reported to the board and should have been?”
3. “With regard to cybersecurity is there anything else I should know right now?”

Chances are the CIO won’t give you answers to these questions…however, knowing what they’re being asked for is the key. Can you help them answer these questions? Going back to an earlier post – do you know the top 3-5 threats, how likely they are to hit this company, and how the company is trending with security – up or down…how do we know. These are all things the board wants to know.

Do you want to be the chosen technology and risk advisor for the companies you call on?  Check out my most recent report on staying relevant in the technology sales industry…

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© 2014, David Stelzl

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