The CSO is responsible for developing, implementing, and maintaining security policies and processes, identifying and reducing security risks, and limiting liability. The CSO is responsible for leading risk management activities and overseeing strategies to assess and mitigate risk, thereby safeguarding the organization and its assets. According to the article on, the CSO is responsible for developing and overseeing policies and programs used in the mitigation and/or reduction of compliance, operational, strategic, and financial security risk strategies relating to the personnel/staff, any assets, and other property. The CSO is a member of an organization’s upper management team and works with both security, and the IT team. The CSO is the executive in charge of the security of personnel, physical assets, and information and data in both and physical and digital form. The median annual salary for CISO is $164,000 with the lowest 10% and $229,000 with highest 10%. The CISO should have skills like management, communication, leadership and many more. In addition to the bachelor’s degree, a CISO is typically required to maintain certification like CISSP, CISM, or CISA. The CISO should have technical skills and should be familiar with various industry standards and frameworks like SOX, HIPAA, PCI, NIST etc. The CISO is responsible for ensuring that the organization is adjusting to changing/growing compliance regulations.ĬISOs are required to have at least a bachelor’s degree in security, IT, computer science or a related field with seven to twelve years of related experience and at least five years of experience in a management role. The CISO is responsible for developing and maintaining various security policy domains that are associated with information security, compliance, governance, risk management, incident management, HR management and many more. He or she develops the plan for avoiding a repeat of incident/crisis. He or she determines what went wrong if there is a breach, and deals with those who are responsible (if they are internal). Duties include developing cyber resiliency programs so the organization can rapidly recovery from natural disasters such as flooding, earthquake, hurricane, hacking, or security incidents.
The CISO is also responsible for disaster recovery. He or she performs real-time analysis of immediate threats and triages threats when something goes wrong. The CISO is responsible for overseeing the security operations and duties includes evaluating the IT threat landscape, developing cyber security policy and controls to reduce the risk, auditing and compliance initiatives. In order to make effective business decisions, the CISO will need to have an in-depth knowledge of the organization’s operations, functions, and business disciplines like human resources (HR), compliance, and finance. The CISO’s primary responsibility is to have an understanding of security operations and challenges in current and future states of the organization’s business operations. The CISO works along with other c-level positions, business managers, the security team and information technology (IT) managers to effectively monitor and maintain the security of the company’s computers, networks, applications, and databases. The role was created to help organizations protect their digital assets including computer systems and networks from hackers and other cyber threats. Recently, the role of CISO is gaining popularity as a corporate position whose role is to protect against information security risks.
The CISO is the executive personnel responsible for an organization’s data and information security. This essay outlines the typical roles and responsibilities of each. As companies mature their security practices they often hire both a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and a Chief Security Officer.