10 Ways CISOs Can Balance AI Innovation, Resilience And Compliance

Forbes

6 days ago

Michelle Drolet is CEO of Towerwall, a specialized cybersecurity firm focused on proactive incident preparedness and compliance services.
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The CISOs of today are becoming key strategic executives amid rapid digitization. As radical technologies like AI become entrenched, they face increasing pressure to enhance their organizations' ability to withstand new threats while managing human factors and technical vulnerabilities.
The top concerns chief information security officers must balance today include:
1. Artificial Intelligence As A Double-Edged Sword
Cybercriminals are using AI to automate attacks, avoid detection and be more deceptively persuasive in their social engineering campaigns. Fortunately, defensive AI systems are rapidly accelerating threat detection and prevention services with pattern recognition, anomaly detection and predictive analysis.
2. SaaS Security Risks And Shadow AI
Since SaaS applications reside in the cloud, they cause a lack of visibility into what is happening to data in real time across numerous SaaS applications. Adding fuel to the fire is shadow AI, where users bring in unapproved and ungoverned AI tools to increase productivity or automate tasks. Such unauthorized applications increase the risk of making poor business decisions, potentially causing workflow disruption or regulatory problems.
CISOs must advocate responsible use of AI, putting in place ethical AI governance frameworks and policies to enable the safe use of AI for business and security solutions.
3. Emphasizing Resilience Over Prevention
To foster resilience, organizations should minimize delays when business processes face interruptions and ensure a swift response and recovery from security incidents. CISOs should prioritize detection, containment and recovery strategies, regularly testing them through tabletop exercises. Implementing a zero-trust framework and network micro-segmentation can restrict lateral movement while enforcing security awareness training through phishing and social engineering simulation exercises to sharpen employee vigilance.
4. Managing Third-Party Risks
Managing third-party vendor risk is important because their networks can introduce security gaps that may compromise the compliance initiatives of the primary organization, even when its own defenses are robust. Attackers target these weaknesses as a means to enter the core organization. Neglecting to assess and manage these risks can lead to data breaches, supply chain disruptions, and financial losses.
CISOs should establish a third-party risk management (TPRM) program to evaluate vendor risks in alignment with the organization's risk identification strategies. Ongoing monitoring of the vendor network provides real-time information regarding any changes to the vendor's security posture, allowing the organization to proactively address any issues.
5. Evolution Of Ransomware Threats
Ransomware has evolved from basic encryption-based attacks to automated assaults. Double and triple extortion strategies, which threaten to not only encrypt data but also leak sensitive information, are raising the stakes. Tactics like living off the land (LOTL) and fileless ransomware allow threat actors to circumvent security controls by blending in with systems and processes already present in the victim's environment. CISOs must adopt proactive resiliency strategies, utilizing zero trust, AI-based security automation and immutable backups to mitigate ransomware attacks and ensure uninterrupted business operations.
6. Navigating Regulatory Compliance Risk
The growing number of cybersecurity regulations and evolving AI governance rules are creating compliance risk. CISOs have to deal with overlapping, ever-evolving, complex regulations, as well as intricate auditing and reporting obligations.
CISOs can implement governance, risk and compliance (GRC) platforms to centralize compliance tracking. Deploy third-party expertise to validate the compliance posture, avoid potential fines and penalties and minimize internal workloads.
7. Addressing IAM Challenges With Zero Trust
Identity and access management—who has access to what resources—becomes more complicated as businesses continue to increase their digital presence and run in multicloud environments. Identity sprawl, or an increased number of identities—including human, machine and privileged users—contributes to the complexity. Cybercriminals are proactively attacking IAM vulnerabilities by impersonating legitimate users through sophisticated tactics.
CISOs should review access control policies periodically to stay abreast of evolving threats and changes in the organizational structure. Detection systems based on AI can identify attempts to access resources in violation of set policies and detect abnormal activity. Access logs and permissions should be regularly audited and reviewed to spot and address security loopholes.
8. Bridging The Cybersecurity Skills Gap
With AI involved, cybercriminals remain ahead of the curve by continuously enhancing their tactics and leveraging generative AI to accelerate sophisticated attacks. Digital transformation also expands the realm that must be managed and secured properly, putting pressure on the SOC. The skills gap in cybersecurity widens, exposing organizations because their security teams are not properly resourced. According to an IBM report, the skills gap increases the average cost of a breach by $1.76 million.
CISOs should invest in security automation and AI-driven threat intelligence to complement outside consultants. Consider onboarding a temporary virtual CISO to upskill current employees. Collaborate with universities and cybersecurity groups to recruit new talent.
9. Maximizing Security ROI With Flat Budgets
Even with growing cyber threats, security budgets in many organizations are static, compelling CISOs to settle for low-cost tools and accomplish more with less, saving money with tech consolidation and moving away from consoles. CISOs should see cybersecurity as a strategic investment rather than a cost center and frame it as a business enabler.
10. Convincing The Board To Value Security
Even with a growing board focus on cybersecurity matters, communication gaps between security leaders and executive management persist. Technical security metrics do not resonate with board members, and the business value of security programs is hard to measure. Effective security leaders are creating better risk quantification techniques, business-focused security metrics and communication models that can effectively position security as a business enabler.
The role of CISOs has moved beyond traditional security management, with AI-facilitated threats, SaaS security concerns and rising regulatory complexities dominating their agendas. By integrating security into every aspect of the business, CISOs can shift from a reactive-only posture to a strategic approach and deliver the desired business outcomes.
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