Bob Kolasky, Director of the National Risk Management Center in the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, will keynote a unique international program highlighting how corporate boards are addressing cyber security to be held Friday, November 8, at the Organization of American States located at the General Secretariat Building of the Organization of American States. The event is open to the press and public, but individuals must register in advance here.
In addition to Mr. Koalsky, the event will feature Belisario Contreras, OAS Cybersecurity Program Manager, Hans-Wilhelm Dünn, President of the Cyber-Security Council Germany, and Larry Clinton, President of the Internet Security Alliance. Over the past two years these organizations have led efforts to bring the heads of government and industry boards of directors together to define a program to address cyber threats at the board level, as opposed to the traditional operational focus.
In each case the result of these efforts has been to create an consensus handbook for boards to use in implementing their role in overseeing organization’s cyber risk management efforts. The resulting products, which are all available at no cost, have been endorsed by both industry orgaizations and governemtn agencies. In Latin America, the OAS has published the handbook, in Germany the handbooks is published by the German Federal Office of Information Security (BSI), and in the US, both DHS and the Department of Justice have contributed to and endorsed the handbooks.
All the handbooks follow the core model originally published by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) in the U.S. PricewaterhouseCooperrs has independently assessed the handbooks and found they are successful in generating increased cybersecurity budgets, better risk management, closer alignment between overall business goals and cybersecurity, and helping to generate a culture of security.
Although each handbook follows the same basic model, each has been adapted to the unique needs of its region based on an extensive outreach campaigns involving corporate board members, technical experts, academics and government officials. The event Friday will highlight the similarities and differnces in the various approaches.