Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020.  Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

By Rinki Sethi, CSO at Rubrik

This will be a banner year for the CSO

The role of the Chief Security Officer (CSO) is quickly becoming one of the most critical and influential positions in enterprise organizations. One of the challenges in the role is staying ahead of the constantly evolving cyber threat landscape as cyberattacks become more sophisticated and targeted. 

While enterprises have made a lot of progress in 2019, 2020 will continue to be a banner year for the Chief Security Officer as cyberattacks continue to dominate headlines and remain an enterprise threat.

Security, Compliance, and Privacy Join Forces

Most businesses compartmentalize security and privacy responsibilities into specific, separate organizations in the hopes of streamlining operations. For example, when a company develops a GDPR-related security initiative, the work will run through the privacy or compliance organization that generally report into a legal team. This organizational structure may have worked well in the past, but now with all the overlap between security, privacy, and compliance, it is important that these functions are brought closer together both in organizational structure and in how they collaborate - instead of reinforcing traditional silos that businesses are hard to break down. 

In 2020, we'll see businesses start to rethink how they are organized around security, privacy and customer trust, enabling teams to work through industry challenges with a more holistic approach, giving rise to one larger organization such as a Data Trust Office. 

Automation for Security Talent

Automation gets tossed around as something that will transform business processes, but beyond that, it will become a core investment to retain top security talent in 2020. Much has been made of automation taking jobs, but in reality the opposite will happen - automation will be the key to retaining top talent. 

One of the major reasons people leave their jobs is because of a lack of meaningful work, and businesses are increasingly turning to automation and other tactics to eliminate monotonous work that high potential employees would not find challenging. Rather than hiring talent in an already extremely competitive space to handle tedious tasks - a strategy in which employees are encouraged to automate repetitive tasks - businesses will not just retain existing talent but will also attract new talent. Also, as automation replaces mundane work, employees will have the time to learn new skills and find opportunities to focus time on what gives them a sense of purpose. 

As businesses seek to drive employee satisfaction, they'll also find that hiring talent from non-traditional security backgrounds will bring much needed thought diversity in the security industry to solve the toughest challenges ahead of us. Automation will have a big impact on security talent in 2020.

Creating a Security Culture 

Driving security trainings with a two-hour, check-the-box training is ineffective and a complete waste of resources. Additionally, it can also create a false sense of security for trainees if it doesn't provide tools that employees can use  to strengthen security practices. 

In 2020, companies will be more strategic in how they use their employees' time when building security culture and awareness. More specifically, we will see a refocus on programs that build up better security behavior with interactive training that teaches employees how to identify bugs, hack their own work, avoid phishing scams, and more. The stakes for security will always be sky high, and these types of trainings are key to solving a problem that has yet to be truly solved: ensuring every employee is armed with security best practices that they can and do leverage in day-to-day work.  

As cyberattacks continue to be a threat to enterprise organizations in 2020, there will be changes to how companies think about their security efforts. In 2020, data and security professionals will work more closely giving rise to a Data Trust Office. Automation will play a critical role in recruiting top cybersecurity talent. Lastly, CSOs will need to create a culture of security, so employees are more aware of the types of threats facing them at work.

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About the Author

 

Rinki Sethi is CSO at Rubrik, the Multi-Cloud Data Control Company, where she is responsible for leading efforts to protect Rubrik's information and technology assets. Throughout her career she has built and matured technical security teams across security operations, product security, application security, security architecture, and security strategy within the Fortune 500 and other large enterprises such as IBM, Intuit, Palo Alto Networks, Walmart.com, eBay, in addition to having led an initiative to develop the first set of national cybersecurity badges and curriculum for the Girl Scouts of USA. 

Additionally, Rinki has served on the development team for the ISACA book, "Creating a Culture of Security" by Stephen Ross and was the recipient of the "One to Watch" Award with CSO Magazine & Executive Women's Forum in 2014 and more recently the Senior Information Security Practitioner Award with ISC2 in 2018.