In the past two years of the pandemic, security leaders have had almost no break from securing a remote workforce or from managing the increase in cybersecurity threats. Their role has increased in importance as these threats are viewed as serious risks to the business – not simply a problem for security or IT.
As a result, CISOs are taking a broad, enterprise approach to facilitating risk management. Their role is increasingly critical and becoming more business-oriented. Not surprisingly, their number one enterprise goal is reducing risk.
More than 800 CISOs from leading companies around the world indicated their most important 2022 priorities across the business, as well as within their own functional areas.
Goals for the Business
Reducing risk is the number one priority for CISOs at the enterprise level. Increasing operational efficiencies and productivity is a close second, followed by driving growth.
Focusing on the Cloud
CISOs reported that their top functional priority for 2022 is cloud security, strategy and architecture, followed by measuring and communicating risk. These two areas of focus have shifted in the top five since our last annual survey of security leaders in 2021. In fact, three of the top five areas of focus for CISOs are similar to last year – with the exceptions of Security Awareness and Security Automation moving down out of the top five and User Access/IAM and Security Operations moving up.
Goals & Challenges
In CISO responses thus far this year, cloud security, strategy and architecture took the top spot, and CISOs shared their specific goals for cloud initiatives and the challenges to achieving them.
Investing in Cloud Security
The top priority — cloud security — is reflected in how CISOs plan to invest their resources this year with 45% selecting it among their areas of investment.
At Evanta, we survey our C-level communities annually to learn their top priorities, along with the challenges they face and the goals they set for the enterprise. This data is invaluable, enabling us to highlight trends, develop discussion topics and match like-minded peers based on the real-time needs of CISOs. To join the conversation, find your CISO community.
Based on 800+ CISO responses from Evanta’s proprietary Leadership Perspective Survey, February 2022.
by CISOs, for CISOs
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