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Driving Cyber Resilience: Strategic CISO Advisory by Help AG

Jan-2025 4 min to read

By Talal Wazani and Dana Haubold

The Evolving Role of the CISO

In today’s digital landscape, where cyber threats are increasingly sophisticated, and digital attack surfaces and cyber risk exposure are growing, the role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) has evolved into a critical leadership position. Tasked with leading, guiding and overseeing cybersecurity and managing the business risks associated with digital threats, the CISO is essential to an organization’s long-term success.

The CISO is not just a technical expert but a strategic leader who drives value, leads high-performing teams, and ensures robust risk governance and compliance as an integral component of Enterprise Risk Management. At the core of the CISO’s role is the implementation and maintenance of effective security controls to protect the organization from material impacts caused by cybersecurity events, thereby contributing to sustained business continuity.

A successful CISO must possess strong business acumen and interpersonal skills. Often the CISO must identify pragmatic solutions that balance operational needs with cybersecurity imperatives. The CISO’s strategic, operational and technical expertise is essential for navigating the evolving landscape of cyber threats while maintaining stakeholder trust. Understanding shareholder priorities, organizational challenges, and strategic objectives is critical for delivering measurable value. For example, understanding suppliers and their business drivers is crucial for incorporating security into third-party contracts effectively.

Security fundamentally revolves around people. A deep understanding of organizational behaviour is critical to ensuring employees adhere to policies and procedures while minimizing errors and detecting intentional adverse actions effectively. Employees are a crucial security control that must be leveraged and optimized for maximum effectiveness.

Help AG’s CISO Advisory

The traditional model of a full-time CISO might not always be feasible for all organizations at every stage of their operational journey. In such situations, Help AG’s CISO Advisory service offers a comprehensive, flexible solution – either complementing in-house security leadership or acting as a fully outsourced resource to ensure effective cybersecurity management.

Benefits include:

Scalable Engagement – Cybersecurity requirements change with evolving business strategies, projects, or security incidents over time. The CISO Advisor can be engaged flexibly on a project-based, scope-based, or time and material basis.

Access To Help AG’s Collective Powerhouse – The CISO Advisor leverages the collective knowledge and expertise of Help AG’s team of specialized cybersecurity professionals in all areas of their managed security services, and leading innovative technology partners. This ensures a robust security capability across all key domains.

Deployment Model and Use Cases

The Help AG CISO Advisor integrates seamlessly with the client’s Information Security team either part-time or full-time, based on specific project needs, over a defined period. The engagement is structured around predefined man-days, with the flexibility to add retainer hours as required. The CISO Advisor is a flexible resource and can be engaged at different levels or a specific scope as required.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of use cases for which the CISO Advisor can be engaged on.

Example 1 – Full Management of The Cybersecurity Function for A Defined Period

For organizations, facing capacity gaps, complex projects, or significant events, the CISO Advisor can be deployed to guide on cybersecurity strategy and risk exposure, oversee key security initiatives, manage service teams in the implementation of security controls, and advise and liaise with relevant business stakeholders to build confidence and trust into the organization’s security capability.

Example 2 – Advisor To In-House Executive for Security Maturity

For organizations aiming to mature their existing security programs, a Strategic Cybersecurity Advisor can serve as an ongoing consultant to the CISO, CIO, or other cybersecurity stakeholders. The advisor can support maturity assessments, enhance incident response processes, and recommend resilience-boosting measures. For example, by enhancing the risk-based approach in prioritized security controls such as employee awareness, asset management, identity and access management, data and network protection, vulnerability management, third party risk management, incident management, business continuity & disaster recovery.

Example 3 – Strategic initiatives: Improved ROSI Planning through Cyber Risk Quantification

The CISO Advisor supports strategic improvement initiatives such Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ), transforming traditional qualitative risk models into data-driven methodologies. By assessing risk in financial terms, security leaders can make more objective, defensible cybersecurity decisions and better demonstrate Return on Security Investment (ROSI) to the C-Suite and Board.

Example 4 – Strategic Initiatives: Cybersecurity GRC Convergence

The CISO Advisor can advise on increased efficiency and improving resilience by integrating risk, governance and compliance (GRC) management across digital and physical security threats. This includes, IT, IoT, OT and physical assets, resulting in a holistic view of security threats and improved prevention of business-disrupting security events.

Why Choose Help AG’s CISO Advisory?

The strategic role of the CISO is indispensable in today’s complex cybersecurity landscape. By offering strategic foresight, critical thinking and effective communication, CISOs play a crucial role in safeguarding organizations.

Help AG’s CISO Advisory service delivers a best-in-class solution for enhancing organizational cybersecurity maturity. By leveraging flexible advisory resources and Help AG’s powerhouse of experts, we position organizations for long-term success and resilience in an ever-evolving digital world.