Cybersecurity experience is making its manner onto Fortune 500 boards

Corporations are trusting know-how consultants to advise on safety and regulatory pressures from the board’s perspective.

As Fortune 500 corporations reimagine technique, operations and tradition to turn into digitally pushed, companies are counting on skilled technologists to function board members.

Final yr, 17% of the 449 Fortune 500 corporations that appointed new board members chosen individuals with cybersecurity expertise, in line with the most recent Heidrick & Struggles Board Monitor report. That’s up from simply 8% in 2020.

Main the way in which is the monetary providers business, which accelerated its shift to on-line banking throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the report says.
The stakes are excessive, particularly for corporations in mature industries reminiscent of life insurance coverage, jewellery, airways and inns. Legacy companies need assistance rethinking enterprise operations.

“We’re not Amazon or Google, [which] can afford tons of of billions of {dollars}. It’s important to make nice strategic bets. This stuff take a very long time they usually’d higher work out,” Elie Maalouf, CEO of resort large IHG’s Americas division, mentioned throughout a hospitality business funding summit in New York Metropolis in June. 

He cited the business’s long-overdue want for cloud-based reservations programs, which have but to materialize.  

The pattern for big firms to choose CIOs, CISOs and different tech consultants dates again 5 to 10 years, when a small-but-growing variety of boards sought to make sure their corporations might handle each “alternative and risk,” mentioned Theresa Clever, former CIO Northwest Airways and Delta Airways and present board member for a number of corporations together with the journey administration firm CWT. It’s advanced since then.

“I see extra CEOs bringing tech-savvy enterprise leaders into their internal circles, and extra boards looking for strategic leaders with tech experience and expertise,” Clever instructed CIO Dive in an e mail interview.

“Their tech experience will not be their ‘objective,’ however slightly it provides variety of perspective to a board,” Clever mentioned. “This helps them construct extra resilience [for] their boards to deal with looming cybersecurity threats, and rising regulatory, shareholder and stakeholder pressures to undertake extra sustainable enterprise practices.”

Simply think about the variety of threats companies are up towards. Microsoft Safety blocked round 10 million malware threats and almost 36 billion phishing and different malicious emails in 2021. 

Cybercrime is predicted to create about $10.5 trillion in annual prices by 2025, in comparison with $3 trillion a decade in the past, Microsoft’s Vasu Jakkal, CVP of Safety, Compliance, Id and Privateness, instructed CIO Dive in an e mail.
“These threats affect organizations in all places, pushing cybersecurity must the forefront,” Jakkal mentioned.

Different components that Jakkal cited:

• An understaffed U.S. workforce with one in three safety roles left unfilled, probably leaving in-house protection weak.
• The pandemic-era hybrid work surroundings, which may create new alternatives for cybercriminals
• The swap to distant work, which equally presents new safety challenges.

“We all know this firsthand,” Jakkal mentioned. “Microsoft’s personal problem was to make sure our embrace of hybrid work was managed from a safety perspective and would finally drive productiveness and empowerment for workers.”

For technologists seeking to broaden their expertise on boards, the alternatives are rising throughout the board, mentioned Joe Meyer, founder and CEO of tech startup ExecThread.

“We’ve seen extra necessities contact on robust IT and engineering backgrounds,” mentioned Meyer, whose firm aggregates executive-level and board-role alternatives.

The variety of board roles requiring tech expertise have risen throughout all sorts of corporations – from tech startups to massive, historically non-tech-driven multinationals, mentioned Meyer.
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“The pandemic solely accelerated this pattern,” Meyer mentioned. “Even at tech corporations, it’s necessary to have a non-operating know-how professional in your board.”