It’s not news that cybersecurity is now a board-level imperative. But with all the talk about that, here’s something we don’t talk about enough: board directors and other senior executives might know they need to have these conversations, but in many cases are still struggling with how to have them in a productive way, especially if they aren’t technical or haven’t spent any real time in a technology role.
I distinctly remember discussing this topic at a conference in 2022 with Shamla Naidoo, Head of Cloud Strategy here at Netskope, and Homaira Akabari, CEO and Founder of AKnowledge Partners. Both Shamla and Homaira are public board directors, and both are deeply respected as cybersecurity experts. They didn’t know each other well at the time, but they both identified the exact same need almost right away in the conversation: a resource—a true, all-in-one-place resource—that would help lay out and explain the essentials that boards and corporate executives need to understand to keep their organization’s data and users safe in a succinct, valuable manner. They didn’t want to “dumb it down”; they wanted to help board members and C-suite executives who admittedly struggle to have meaningful conversations about cybersecurity, where basic terms and concepts were not well understood or had variable interpretations, leading to meetings with senior technical staff that didn’t produce the right planning or outcomes.
It was clear from hundreds of conversations with peers and fellow board members