Chief Information Security Officers and Finance

Financial service providers priorities are constantly changing. On top of their actual day to day financial obligations, they must maneuver and sort their way through a laundry list of compliance regulations. And due to the massive shift to a digital workforce, compliances are also shifting and becoming more regulated. Unfortunately, some of these regulations require specific computational skill sets to obtain specific information for audits and reporting. Financial services average a 147% higher cost for data breaches due to compliance and are 28% more likely to have a reoccurring breach, per CISCO. Taking the compliance burden out of the equation, financial services are still left with critical pain points that are constantly weighing them down. Innovative digital technologies leading towards all online banking, login & identity threats, and data control are issues all financial institutions face. We haven’t even mentioned the finance aspect of it… Large corporations don’t bat an eye at regulations or policies because they hire specific personnel for the direct purpose of making sure their network infrastructure is in line with all compliances and that operations run effectively, according to the company vision.   

These personnel are typically going to be a Chief Information Security Officer or CISO. CISO’s have many responsibilities including: Designing security systems, creating disaster recovery protocols & other security policies, having an efficient cyber incident response plan, full control of identity & access management, and constantly staying up to date on the latest threat IT landscape. These responsibilities require a tremendous skill set of not only understanding cybersecurity but how the organization itself operates. Each security protocol must be tailored to the organization specifically ensuring a priority for customer values and smooth workflows for employees.  

If your company handles sensitive information on a day to day, chances are no one within the company understands how much data is being processed in a single day. And with this “new era” of work, it makes it even harder to see what information is going where. CISO employees offer a wide range of expertise and knowledge however, they typically don’t do it alone. Top tier CISO’s will surround themselves with a team of IT & Security experts to help govern and maintain the security systems and protocols in place…Now let’s talk about the financial aspect: CISO’s are a C-level position which means they require C-level salary which is anywhere from $100,000 to $300,000. Then you must consider the 4-5 employees the CISO is going to want under them. If each salary at those positions average $50,000 (really low balling it) that teams combined salary comes out to ~250,000 plus the CISO salary. Now keep in mind that’s just the salaries alone with nothing to account for bonuses, vacation, annual increases, payroll taxes, etc. Security systems and protocols each have different prices depending on the services implemented by the CISO. To financial institutions who thrive off monetary expenditures, spending ~ $500,000 annually on security doesn’t sound very appealing. That’s why most SMB’s take the risk and look the other way. However, it has been reported that finance services lose about 6% of their customer base after a breach. 6% of client loss can cost a company a lot more than $500,000. So, financial institutions are left with two options, spend more than half a million annually for a security team or take a gamble with client data and potentially lose client relations and future business which could leave them bankrupt. 

Here, at Steel Patriot Partners we offer a third option, called Virtual CISO (VCISO) leveraged within the Security Operations Center (SOC). We understand SMB’s in the financial industry want to protect their data but don’t always have the budget to do so. Our VCISO offers knowledge & expertise from a team of highly skilled & trained security engineers who utilize machine learning artificial intelligence to provide any company with a personalized security framework that allows an organization the full power and control of a CISO and a fraction of the cost. Our VCISO services can help you create high level reports for all audits & compliance reporting and helps any company rethink their security posture in a holistic approach. Whether you have an IT team or not, we’ve got you covered. Our team is designed to work with any personnel and infrastructure you have in place. With our VCISO we create privacy and patch policies custom to any network that mitigate identity and access management, create disaster recovery plans, immediate incident response, and are constantly up to date on the latest threat IT landscape.  

For more information on how our VCISO services can help your company gain CISO level security for entry level employee price, please give us a call at 703-297-4405 or email us [email protected]! We would love to talk!