Alternative Führungsrollen im Sicherheitsbereich

Emily Wearmouth [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Security Visionaries podcast. I am Emily Wearmouth and this week is my turn to be your host again. So I'm battling through a cold, which you may be able to hear because I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I'm joined today by two guests and I'm going to start by introducing them to see if you can guess what we're going to be talking about. So first up, Alex Clixby has been working as a fractional CIO since 2021 following a long career, which first saw him as a commissioned officer in the British Army and then led on to a range of full time I.T. leadership positions for Footsie 100 type organizations. Then he set up his own business and is now offering his services as a contractor. Welcome, Alex.

Alex Clixby [00:00:39] Hi. Good morning.

Emily Wearmouth [00:00:41] Ian Golding is an interim CIO, is an executive director and then a board advisor and an investor. I guess that's pretty much the definition of a portfolio career. And through his career as an interim, Ian has worked with a number of private equity backed firms across a whole load of industries, including sustainability, real estate. I might forget one here housing, telecoms. And he's also worked for a number of great British institutions, including the RNLI, lifeboats. For those of you not in the UK and the Natural History Museum. In these roles, he's been accountable for overseeing cybersecurity, among other things. So can you guess what we're going to be talking about today? We are going to be talking about alternatives to a full time CIO or CISO or tech leader. I'm going to be asking what is a fractional or interim CIO? I'm going to be asking, how does it work? What's good about it? And I might even coax them to tell me some of the downsides, too. So let's start with some definitions so that we all know what we're talking about. Alex, can you kick us off with a definition of a fractional CIO?

Alex Clixby [00:01:44] Yeah, sure. Emily. So a fractional CIO or indeed a fractional anything it just means part time ,it's a partial aside part time. So in this respect, it is somebody who works part time for an organization. As a as a CIO, it's a contract role. Generally, for myself, I work anything from from two to maybe eight or ten days per month for for each client, which, which is great because it means I can have a number of clients at any one time.

Emily Wearmouth [00:02:12] Yeah. And. And Ian what about an interim CIO? What's an interim?

Ian Golding [00:02:16] Yes, I probably fit the mold more of an interim. But yeah, know the difference between an interim and a fraction, I would say is that fraction is a brilliant way of getting CIO type thinking without having to bite the bullet and actually fund a full role. So it can be incredibly valuable to help an organization with that thought, leadership, planning and oversight, etc.. I think an interim role is probably more akin to like a full time role for a certain period of time. So therefore, it's not so easy to have other clients, although there might be not exec type engagements around that, which actually can be helpful in the interim role to make sure you're well grounded and connected to what's going on. But I think, yeah, an interim role will probably focus on solving a particular problem or maybe a cluster of problems where an organization just knows something can be better or different somehow. It just needs help to to turn a corner and walk through those changes. Yeah.

Emily Wearmouth [00:03:15] And what sort of size organizations would have an interim CIO role Ian?

Ian Golding [00:03:19] I think it probably suggests a certain size or certain critical mass of a a few hundred people or a certain level of revenues, because otherwise it's a very heavyweight role. I mean, you kind of, I would think, probably an interim CIO role. It becomes more important where there is more complexity in an organization and a more business units, more branches, more products and services, etc., more teams. So probably helping to achieve scale and be more clear about, you know, how to fund initiatives and products and services, etc.. Yeah. So I think I think probably sort of, you know, a level of a few hundred people and upwards, but it can be very varied and some of the engage was done will be helping these interim CIO type thinking to help smaller start ups to grow as well because it's a rich extra, isn't it?

Emily Wearmouth [00:04:06] Alex When you're working with your clients, do they tend to be a certain size within that? Do they tend to have anybody who is already responsible for technology?

Alex Clixby [00:04:17] Yeah. So I think generally small to medium businesses, most of my clients are anywhere between 50 and 500 staff. I think the point Ian made a minute or two ago about it generally is for companies who can't afford to have a full time CIO, whether that's a permanent CIO or whether it's an interim CIO. But [00:04:36]for companies who wa