By CISO cyber security services are in great demand. However, vendors often find it overwhelmingly challenging to contact relevant CISOs. A strong CISO-vendor relationship is critical to overall security success. A well-established relationship of mutual understanding, trust, and communication can reap incredible benefits for a business cybersecurity posture.
What is a CISO-Vendor Partnership?
CISO – Chief Information Security Officer is responsible for maintaining and protecting a business’ data networks and workflows against external malicious factors. Vendors, on the other hand, provide CISO cyber security services to help them achieve and 100% secure business posture. Despite the fact that both sides need each other to fight against the common enemy ‘hackers,’ they often find it challenging to build strong business relationships.
Here we have shared some useful tips to build a long-term, CISO-Vendor relationship.
1. Understand Each Other
A clear understanding of CISO cyber security needs and what they want from a cybersecurity vendor is the first step towards establishing a working CISO-vendor relationship. While the business models can vary from industry to industry, all the CISOs have some universal prerequisites.
On the other hand, a CISO must have clarity of what they need from a cybersecurity vendor. Most CISOs and vendors fail to build a relationship due to a lack of clarity and understanding which creates a gap or silo between them.
2. Maintain Transparency
No business relationship can last longer without transparency. Most CISOs fail to trust vendors because of bad experiences. Vendors often claim more than their cybersecurity solutions can offer. Thus when their solutions are implemented and they fail to keep up CISOs expectations, creating a trust gap between them.
The reality is that the cybersecurity landscape changes every day and no vendor should guarantee 100% protection or anything that their solution can’t offer. Instead, vendors should understand the requirements of a business and then tell CISOs what their cybersecurity solutions are capable of.
3. Communicate More
With wants and needs to be understood, communication becomes the most important factor in a CISO-vendor relationship. Poor communication and failure to be clear about the solution implementation and outcomes are common problems in a CISO-vendor relationship.
Mutual understanding of business-relate risks is vital and more risk exposure requires thorough communication between vendors and CISOs. What CISOs do is communicate with vendors only at the time of sale or renewal. Such insufficient communications leave to misunderstandings and create a gap between both parties. Thus, maintaining the right balance of communication and ensuring all the priorities are constantly met should be the ultimate goal.
Bottom Line
CISO-vendor relationship is a two-way street. Vendors need to understand CISO cyber security needs while CISOs must ensure they communicate with vendors for a clear understanding. Moreover, the vendors can also join cybersecurity marketing platforms to get access to CISO executive networks and have thorough discussions in virtual as well as in peron roundtable meetings. These platforms offer a great opportunity for CISOs and vendors to build long-lasting relationships.