Cyber security has evolved into a core business risk
For too long, cyber security was treated as just another technical function, an IT checklist item with firewalls, antivirus software, and a few internal protocols. That thinking is outdated. Today, cyber security directly affects your company’s finances, operations, reputation, and long-term viability. It’s not about protecting infrastructure anymore. It’s about protecting the whole business.
When cyber threats penetrate systems, they don’t just expose data, they derail operations, erode customer trust, and disrupt the bottom line. So, if you’re treating cyber security as a peripheral issue, you’re already behind. Cyber risk is business risk. It’s that simple.
Executives, especially CISOs, need to shift how they communicate. Speak the language of business risk, not just technology. Frame cyber threats in terms of dollars lost, strategic plans compromised, or regulatory penalties incurred. That’s what boards understand. That’s how you drive real action.
Jayant Dave, Chief Information Security Officer for Check Point in Asia-Pacific, said this shift is the new challenge for security leaders. He’s right. Understanding the business and communicating cyber threats in business terms isn’t optional anymore, it’s essential.
The expectation that security leadership connects the dots across operational, reputational, strategic, and financial exposures is now fundamental. If you can’t do that, nobody at the top will listen. And if they don’t listen, your company’s risk posture stays weak.
Bridging communication between technical and business leadership is key
When cyber threats escalate, boards don’t ask for patch logs, they ask how the business is impacted. And they want answers fast. That means your technology and business leaders must be on the same page. No silos. No translation delay.
In Australia, regulatory pressure is rising. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) introduced CPS 234, a standard that demands board-level understanding and governance of cyber risk. This isn’t just compliance. It’s smart business. Governments are pushing a model where technical leaders need to speak business, and executives need to understand security decisions. That connective tissue is what drives intelligent investment in protection measures, when it’s actually needed.
Jayant Dave points this out clearly. For investments like zero-trust architecture or secure access service edge (SASE) to be approved, boards need to see that these investments respond to a risk that exceeds the company’s appetite for disruption or loss. In regulated industries, this conversation is already happening.
But in less-regulated spaces, retail, some manufacturing sectors, this awareness often lags. CISOs struggle to get budget not because threats don’t exist, but because the board doesn’t understand the relevance. That’s a leadership gap. If you’re at the executive level in one of these sectors, pushing for tighter alignment isn’t just smart, it’s your responsibility.
Get your tech leaders into business meetings. Get your business leaders asking the right security questions. The companies that will survive the next wave of cybersecurity threats are already embedding this collaboration in their decision-making architecture. Don’t get left behind.
Standard frameworks are critical for aligning cyber risks with business and regulatory requirements
If you’re serious about managing cyber risk at scale, you need alignment, internally, and with regulators. That’s what frameworks are for. They bring structure, common language, and consistent expectations. The point isn’t just compliance. The point is organization-wide clarity and operational efficiency.
Frameworks such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0 and the Cyber Risk Institute’s CRI Profile 2.1 are tools that turn risk into something measurable, reportable, and actionable. Boards and regulators respect these models because they offer shared standards that reduce ambiguity. When you use them, you’re already speaking in a language the board and regulators can respond to.
Jayant Dave made this clear: using CRI helps not just with internal risk management but also puts you on solid ground with regulators. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), for example, has already started recognizing CRI as one of their reference frameworks. That’s a strong signal. If you align with CRI, you’re aligning with your regulators, and that removes friction.
The structure that these frameworks provide also helps prioritize what really matters. Instead of chasing every threat equally, you focus efforts where the biggest business risk exists. That’s how real leaders operate, based on prioritization, not panic.
If you’re not adopting a structured framework to guide cybersecurity decisions, you’re making assessments based on guesswork. And that’s not leadership. That’s risk.
Prioritizing user experience is essential when implementing security measures
User experience matters, even in cybersecurity. If your security protocols make work harder for employees, they will find ways around the system. That’s not speculation. It’s human behavior. And when workarounds start, your security posture weakens from the inside, even if your external controls are tight.
Security leaders need to design systems that are secure without putting unnecessary friction into everyday workflows. That requires thinking beyond technical specifications. It means understanding how real people work, what tools they use, and what processes they naturally follow.
Jayant Dave raised a valid point: innovation in cyber security isn’t just about stronger encryption or newer tech. Sometimes it’s about delivering safety without disrupting business flow. When employees feel slowed down or restricted, productivity drops, and risk climbs. So you need to be deliberate. Build controls that don’t get in the way, or they’ll be ignored.
Executives should engage early in these conversations. Security isn’t just an IT decision, it’s a user experience decision. And any system people won’t use properly is a vulnerability. Approve solutions that strike the right balance. Reject ones that ignore how teams actually work.
If employees are avoiding controls because the experience is broken, the system isn’t secure. It’s failing quietly. And that’s when breaches happen.
Embedding dedicated risk officers in individual business units enhances integrated risk management
In large, complex organizations, cyber risk doesn’t flow through a single channel. Each business unit carries its own risk profile, shaped by its specific operations, systems, and customer exposure. Treating risk from the top down alone isn’t enough. The right approach is embedded, not centralized.
Jayant Dave points out the benefit clearly: have a Chief Risk Officer, or a comparable senior adviser, within each business unit. When these leaders are part of the operational workflow, they can influence decisions before risk appears at the surface. They understand the business context first-hand and speak the language that leadership within the unit responds to.
This isn’t just about enforcing compliance. It’s about tighter coordination. When security and business teams interact daily, issues get identified earlier. Risk isn’t siloed. It’s managed at the source. Executives gain more precise visibility, faster response times, and more informed decision-making.
For C-level leaders, the message is simple: if your security leadership is too far from where your business decisions are made, risk will go unmanaged. By embedding risk expertise at the unit level, you create tighter alignment between the cybersecurity strategy and real-world business execution. That’s where performance improves.
Fusion centres promote cohesive risk management through interdisciplinary collaboration
Handling cyber threats in isolation isn’t effective anymore. Cyber problems affect legal, financial, operational, and customer-facing areas all at once. That’s why fusion centres are important. They bring together perspectives that typically operate in silos.
Jayant Dave makes it clear: good cyber defenders understand the technical side. But you also need people in the room who know fraud, compliance, legal exposure, and business operations. They see how risks unfold on multiple levels. And when those perspectives meet regularly, daily, weekly, or monthly, the organization reacts faster and more coherently.
Fusion centres use shared risk taxonomies. That’s where real alignment happens. Everyone describes risk the same way, measures likelihood and impact using shared metrics, and prioritizes response based on business impact, not just technical severity.
Cyber exercises inside these centres go beyond technical drills. They ask bigger questions. Did the customer get affected? Was critical infrastructure impacted? What’s the business loss? That information shapes where future investment goes and how teams respond in high-pressure situations.
If you’re running a large or high-risk organization and you don’t have a structure like this in place, you’re not getting the full picture. You’re missing the piece where cybersecurity becomes strategy. And without a connected view, your ability to lead during a crisis is limited.
Cyber resilience requires ongoing preparedness beyond mere prevention
Prevention is important. But focusing only on stopping attacks is too narrow. What matters just as much, maybe more, is how fast you respond and how well you recover when something goes wrong. That’s what resilience really is.
Prevention is the first step, but the ability to respond and recover during a crisis defines whether your business remains operational or not. You need to run exercises repeatedly. Review crisis response plans often. Make adjustments quickly based on what you learn, not just once a year, but as conditions change.
Intelligence matters here. Platforms like Check Point’s ThreatCloud help predict the kinds of attacks that may hit your systems. That’s not theoretical, it’s proactive. Knowing what could come next improves your ability to configure systems, patch vulnerabilities, and prep your team.
Social engineering attacks are getting more sophisticated, and Dave gave a real-world reminder: even the most advanced protections can be bypassed when a human makes a bad call. When that happens, it’s the response process that will make or break the outcome. Execution speed, coordination, and constant learning reduce future risk. That’s what you build your reputation on, how you respond in real time.
If you’re not pressure-testing your systems and people regularly, you’re setting them up to fail when the stakes are high. This level of preparedness isn’t optional, it’s minimum standard.
Artificial intelligence is a valuable tool but does not replace human accountability
AI is fast. It’s scalable. It can detect and flag threats faster than most human teams. But that doesn’t make it a replacement for expert decision-making. It’s a tool, not a substitute for leadership.
Even with AI in play, the final accountability still sits with CISOs and business stakeholders. Regulators and shareholders don’t want to hear what the algorithm said. They want to know what leadership did.
This is critical, especially in a fast-moving incident. AI might tell you something is happening, or suggest possible fixes. But deciding what’s at risk, what should be prioritized, and how to communicate internally or to customers, those are judgment calls. People make those, not machines.
To use AI effectively, companies need talent that understands what the algorithms produce and how to act on them. There’s no shortcut here. If you lean too heavily on the tech without building the human capability alongside it, your response system is incomplete.
Invest in AI. But also invest in people with the judgment and experience to apply it. No regulator is going to accept AI as a justification for failure. And they shouldn’t.
Cybersecurity maturity varies across sectors, exposing specific vulnerabilities
Cybersecurity maturity isn’t evenly distributed. While governments and highly regulated industries are generally well-prepared, other sectors still lag behind. That creates structural weakness. Attackers don’t chase difficulty, they look for gaps. They find them in under-prepared industries where cyber hygiene is weak or outdated technologies are still in use.
Jayant Dave pointed out that some healthcare organizations are still running systems like Windows XP. That’s not just outdated, that’s insecure by design. These gaps persist even when leadership is aware of the risks, often due to limited budgets or lack of clear priorities. Awareness doesn’t equal preparedness.
This matters at the board level. If you’re in a less-regulated industry, or leading a mid-sized enterprise, you may assume you’re a less likely target. That’s not how attackers think. They exploit the easy entry points, and those are often found where budgets are tight or where legacy systems remain active.
As an executive, your responsibility is to ensure that even with limited resources, the baseline level of cyber security is met. That includes system updates, access control, and staff training, essentials that reduce the probability of breach. Mature security isn’t always about how much you spend. It’s about getting the basics right and making fast improvements where the risk is highest.
Strengthening foundational cybersecurity practices is imperative before deploying advanced technologies
When your systems are outdated or unpatched, layering advanced security tools on top won’t solve the problem, they’ll amplify it. Before deploying AI or complex cloud controls, organizations need to establish a secure core. That means tight configurations, securely coded systems, and properly maintained operating environments.
Jayant Dave emphasized that these foundational practices don’t require large investments. They’re achievable regardless of company size. Secure build processes, configuration management, and vulnerability patching, these are all within reach if leadership treats them as base-level requirements.
For executives, the message is direct: don’t approve high-end cybersecurity spend if core IT hygiene hasn’t been addressed. That kind of investment will underperform and waste resources. Start with measurable, enforceable security baselines. Then scale.
Advanced tools extend capability, but they don’t correct fundamental weaknesses. Strong foundations make innovation in security meaningful. Anything less introduces unnecessary risk, even from systems meant to improve protection.
If your organization plans to scale its use of cloud, AI, or digitize more infrastructure, foundational readiness is the first step. Skip that, and you’re building vulnerabilities, not resilience.
Strategic outsourcing can be an effective solution for organizations lacking in-house security capabilities
Not every company can build and manage a full-scale security operations center (SOC). Budgets, staffing, and technical capacity differ across industries and business sizes. But the need for real-time threat monitoring and responsive protection doesn’t go away just because internal resources are limited. You still need coverage.
Jayant Dave called this out clearly: when internal operations can’t match today’s cyber risk demands, it makes sense to bring in a strategic partner. Outsourcing to a credible, aligned provider gives your business access to expertise, around-the-clock monitoring, and scalable resources, without the cost and time commitments of building it all in-house.
For executive leadership, this means evaluating options not based only on cost, but based on fit, outcome, and long-term alignment with your risk management strategy. You don’t outsource cyber responsibility. That stays with the business. But you can outsource capability if the partner understands your threat profile and business objectives.
Choose partners that demonstrate transparency, metrics, and integration capability with your internal systems. Don’t select based on brand recognition alone. What you need is consistent performance, quick response, and shared accountability.
The risk of doing nothing, or trying to get by with stretched internal coverage, is much higher. Threats are evolving too quickly for reactive models. Strategic outsourcing enables mid-sized and resource-constrained companies to stay in the game with proactive defense.
If building a SOC in-house isn’t realistic for your current operation, then outsourcing is the practical next step. But only if the partnership is strategic, not transactional.
In conclusion
Cybersecurity isn’t separate from business anymore. It shapes revenue, brand trust, operational continuity, and stakeholder confidence. If you’re in the C-suite, you don’t need to master the technical details, you need to understand how cyber risk impacts your business, and empower the right people to act decisively.
This isn’t about buying more tools. It’s about making smarter decisions. Aligning security strategy with business priorities. Giving your CISO a seat at the table. Asking the right questions. Strengthening your foundation before scaling up. Balancing control with usability. And knowing when to build versus when to partner.
The companies that get this right won’t just survive, they’ll outpace competitors who still treat security like an IT checkbox. Risk clarity leads to better judgment. And better judgment leads to stronger returns. That’s where leadership shows up. Always has.
