What is a CISO and why is it so important for municipalities?
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With the growing tasks, capabilities and threats in organizations’ cyber infrastructures, it is also increasingly necessary to have things in order as an organization. But who is responsible for an organization’s cyber infrastructure?
What is a CISO?
To answer the question directly, CISO stands for Chief Information Security Officer. In a company or other organization, this Chief Information Security Officer is the person responsible for the security of the information cyber infrastructure. The responsibility of a CISO borders from, for example, securing IT infrastructure through firewalls and software to establishing procedures and courses of action for staff when they work with sensitive business information The CISO ensures protection against data breaches, fraud and other cyber threats. To add to that, the Chief Information Security Officer not only ensures the prevention of such threats, but also mitigates the damage in case of security breaches. The CISO does not do this all on his own, but must be able to explain and communicate threats, potential damage and measures to the board or other form of leadership.
CISO at municipalities
But why are these CISOs suddenly so on the rise? And why are they so important for municipalities?
To answer the first question, that’s something that has come up many times in our blogs: the rapid development of the online world and all the cyber threats and opportunities that come with it. For municipalities this is at least as important as for other organizations. A CISO is desperately needed these days in order to meet basic information security standards in the public sector, A municipality deals with a lot of sensitive (personal) information on a daily basis and is therefore expected to handle it carefully and securely. The Government Information Security Baseline is the basic standards framework for information security across all layers of government (national, municipal, provincial and water boards). Implementation of this framework started in 2019. CISOs are also used for the implementation, enforcement and maintenance. These tasks are very extensive today and require a lot of effort and knowledge, which is why municipalities (almost) cannot do without CISOs.
OpenSight
If, as a municipality or company, you need support, questions or a complete CISO, please contact us. OpenSight has experienced experts with broad knowledge ready to help your organization with the eCISO role.
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