The Cybersecurity Manager's Guide

Chapter 8. Step 5: Give Your Job Away...It’s Your Only Hope

Chapter 7 discussed the importance of communications and education to the security leader. Hopefully, you’ll give some thought to the role communications plays in your organization, and the multiplicative effect it can have in your efforts to secure information assets. As you educate others in the company, and especially those in technical positions, you’ll often be able to either partner with another team or completely transfer to that team a piece of the InfoSec pie.

Don’t resist transferring security responsibilities to others outside your team. Although our natural tendency is to keep those responsibilities under our control, releasing them to another team is putting in place the neighborhood watch throughout the company. Remember, I said your company doesn’t stand a chance unless everyone is involved in protecting its digital assets. Giving portions of your job away to other colleagues is a blessing you shouldn’t pass up.

Giving Your Job Away, a History Lesson

Let’s take a brief look at the history of computing since the 1990s to understand how security responsibilities have naturally transferred to other teams as our industry has matured. This transition of InfoSec responsibilities to others in the company wasn’t my idea; it’s been happening for a while. I just happened to spot the trend in the late ’90s and have watched it accelerate since then.

The question for every security leader is, what role do you play ...