By Niyati Daftary
Effective cybersecurity governance hinges on the presence of a well-functioning steering committee. For cybersecurity leaders, the ability to garner and sustain senior executive support amidst numerous competing priorities is crucial. This support ensures that the steering committee can effectively oversee and guide the organization’s cybersecurity strategies, fostering a robust and resilient security posture.
A cybersecurity steering committee plays a pivotal role in overseeing and guiding effective decision-making on security risks inherent in the digital landscape. This committee fosters and advances the mandate for the security program, defines and enforces accountability for security risk management, and ensures timely and appropriate investment and resource allocation decisions to address the evolving threat landscape. However, forming such a committee presents significant challenges. Gartner’s interactions with numerous clients reveal that many security officers struggle to engage the right executive-level business leaders. This difficulty hampers effective decision-making and undermines the committee’s ability to align cybersecurity efforts with organizational goals.
CISOs responsible for cybersecurity governance must address the following key recommendations for establishing and operating an effective cybersecurity steering committee.
Defining the Committee’s Mandate, Objective, and Scope
An effective steering committee, comprising representative business roles, is crucial for robust security governance. To achieve its objectives, the committee needs a clear mandate from executive leadership, captured in an enterprise security charter or a dedicated “terms of reference” document. This mandate must be approved by senior leadership, such as the chief executive officer (CEO) and senior management, and provide strategic guidance on the committee’s scope, including areas like physical security and business continuity management.
If establishing a dedicated committee is not feasible due to resource constraints or lack of senior management support, consider leveraging existing committees, such as enterprise risk or IT steering committees, to fulfil security governance functions.
Ensuring Comprehensive Representation Across Business and IT
To ensure appropriate representation on the cybersecurity steering committee, it should include key members such as the chief information security officer (CISO), chief information officer (CIO), corporate functions like the chief revenue officer (CRO), privacy officer, legal counsel, and HR representative, as well as senior representatives from key business units.
Business Information Security Officers (BISOs) provide insights on the unique security needs of their units, while the chief compliance officer and internal audit manager offer regulatory guidance. A secretariat representative assists with administrative tasks, and external security experts may be invited as needed. All members should have sufficient seniority to make decisions without deferring to their principals.
Techniques to encourage appropriate membership include arranging regular meetings between the committee chairperson and the CEO or board, rotating the chairperson role, limiting eligibility for the chairperson to business unit members, employing a co-chair system, and rotating business unit membership. Additionally, ensure nontechnical members remain engaged by using business-level terminology during meetings.
Establish Clear Tasks and Agenda for the Committee
To ensure the steering committee operates effectively, it must clearly define its tasks and agenda items. The committee should establish, enforce, and maintain lines of accountability, responsibility, and authority to protect information and digital assets by reviewing and approving security organizational changes, processes, and policies. It should make or approve final resource allocation decisions for the annual security strategy plan and provide cybersecurity risk management guidance for projects requiring significant business unit involvement.
The committee must also track remediation progress on risk items, review security status metrics, and guide localized security efforts within business units. It should mediate conflicting security requirements between units, assess policy exception requests, and commission work to investigate and report back on topics of interest like cloud computing security governance.
Establishing subcommittees to govern specific areas, such as geographic regions or initiatives like identity and access management, adds scalability. The committee should review audit findings, formulate decisions to resolve issues, and ensure continuous improvement of the cybersecurity posture. Additionally, it must empower the cybersecurity program and CISO to plan, develop, and review remedial actions for cyber incidents. It’s crucial to align these tasks with the committee members’ capacity and expertise.
An effective cybersecurity steering committee aligns with executive leadership, including the board of directors and auditors, and prioritizes retaining skilled security professionals. Ideally, it interfaces directly with top leaders such as the executive team or board, enabling prompt decisions and resource allocation for evolving security challenges.
The committee typically reports to senior leaders like the CIO, CRO, chief financial officer (CFO), or chief strategy officer (CSO), or functions as a subcommittee within governance structures such as enterprise risk or IT risk committees. This reporting setup is critical for fostering agile communication with executive leadership and integrating cybersecurity into comprehensive risk management frameworks. Factors influencing this choice include organizational priorities, size, risk management maturity, regulatory requirements, and alignment with business goals. Well-aligned reporting structures are essential for driving proactive security measures and mitigating politically motivated risks that could divert attention from critical organizational vulnerabilities.
Gartner analysts will discuss these key recommendations for establishing an effective cybersecurity steering committee at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo conference, taking place November 11-13, in Kochi, India. Media registration can be booked via [email protected].
(The author is Niyati Daftary, Associate Principal Analyst at Gartner, and the views expressed in this article are his own)
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