CFOs have a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide lead­er­ship on cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. Why? They are nat­ur­al man­agers of busi­ness risk, which is what cyber­se­cu­ri­ty is now acknowl­edged to be. So it was help­ful to run across this arti­cle by Deloitte which recent­ly appeared on the Wall Street Jour­nal:

Rethinking the CFO’s Role as Strategist

CEOs and boards increas­ing­ly want CFOs to not only deliv­er a finance orga­ni­za­tion that gets the num­bers right, but also part­ner with them in shap­ing the company’s strat­e­gy. Giv­en the lack of con­sen­sus as to how this might look, how should CFOs ori­ent them­selves to sup­port­ing strat­e­gy? There are four dis­tinct ways CFOs can ori­ent them­selves to engage in the strat­e­gy process—as respon­der, chal­lenger, archi­tect or trans­former.

The arti­cle goes on to give a thumb­nail sketch of each ori­en­ta­tion, with each offer­ing a more pow­er­ful posi­tion from which to con­tribute to the for­ma­tion of orga­ni­za­tion­al strat­e­gy.

Here’s the good news: Each of the four ori­en­ta­tions can pro­vide a plat­form for lead­er­ship on cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. So even if cir­cum­stance has you oper­at­ing as a Respon­der, you can start to make a dif­fer­ence now.