Good Company

Your security department is itself a small company.

By Derek Slater

February 28, 2008 — CSO — Your security department is itself a small company.

It needs to make great products and services, whether that means great investigations, great network perimeter defenses, great loss prevention processes and systems, or all that and more. But great security stuff is not enough. Not even close.

Your department—like any company—also needs to handle administrative functions, finance and operations in the most efficient way possible. Documentation. Scheduling. Project management. Metrics. Budgeting.

It needs to innovate, so it must have a research and development branch. You can’t just rely on the same processes and systems year after year, not when bad guys’ tactics evolve rapidly and advances in technology offer to change the value equation of your services at various unpredictable points in time.

It has a human resources element. Hiring, developing, evaluating, promoting, firing.

Your department needs a great sales and marketing arm. Not everyone in the wider organization will immediately recognize the excellence of what you do. You have to sell it to them. Persuade them of the benefit you’re providing—in their terms. I know some exceptional “idea men” who struggle to get others to buy into their ideas. So like it or not, good ideas alone are not enough. Sales and marketing are key skills in just about any profession.

For some of you, this is a particularly interesting challenge because you are the entire department. You have to serve as the CEO, CFO, salesperson, HR manager and much more for your security function. Others have a copilot or three, but that still means every person in the group wears a lot of hats, holds down multiple responsibilities. And each person needs a lot of different types of skills that aren’t specifically “security” skills.

Most especially, you need a lot of different skills.

That’s part of the thinking that brought us to the theme of our annual conference this year: CSO Perspectives, held March 16–18 at Atlanta’s InterContinental Buckhead. (See www.csoonline.com/conferences for details.) And that’s why the agenda includes, among other things, a dynamic half-day interactive workshop on presenting to the Board of Directors.

What is the “company function” in which you most need personal improvement? Is it marketing? HR? R&D? What personal skills-development goals have you set for this year—and how can our conference, magazine and website serve those goals? Drop me a line.

Derek Slater,

dslater@cxo.com