Who’s best placed in the corporate hierarchy – the chief security officer (CSO), or the chief information security officer (CISO)? That was the starting point for yesterday’s OSPAs thought leadership webinar.
Although it was remarkably the 114th such session, begun by Prof Martin Gill of Perpetuity Research at the beginning of lockdown in March 2020, the discussion went at a fair clip, felt fresh, and Martin promised more on the subject. For as he began by saying, there are arguments for both being well placed; and not. But as the three panellists set out, whether you are mainly working on physical security, or cyber-tech, or a bit of both, you also need business nous.
IT and OT
The three speakers were of varied backgrounds and men who have put in time to industry bodies; Mike Hughes in the UK with ISACA; Inderjeet Singh with the Cyber Security Association of India; and Dave Tyson based in Wisconsin (but with a beach and waves as his virtual background) was ASIS International president in 2015. Mike Hughes opened, about the ever-increasing convergence of IT and OT (operational technology, levers and other hardware that control factories, railtrack and so forth). That has meant cyber and physical security are on equal terms; ‘we need really to combine multi-disciplinary security teams, to address all these security issues’, as once closed OT systems get linked to networks.
You can listen back to past webinars and sign up for free to the future ones at the OSPAs website: https://theospas.com/thought-leadership-webinars/.
Next Tuesday’s webinar will hear from a husband and wife victim of fraud, and what it is like to be a victim of financial crime, and how the security industry might better respond. Also speaking will be Neil Postins, Service Delivery Manager at the UK’s National Economic Crime Victim Care Unit. And next Thursday’s webinar is on counterfeiting, with a UK speaker, Kieron Sharp, Chief Executive at the anti-counterfeit trade body FACT. A recent survey carried out for FACT found that a majority in the UK is unaware of the hidden dangers of piracy – fraud, identity theft and malware – or its links to criminal groups.
More in the July print edition of Professional Security magazine.
