Understanding the Cyber Dialogue

Cybersecurity is more than a technological issue—it’s a business issue. In a BoardVision video moderated by Judy Warner—editor-in-chief of NACD Directorship magazine—Mary Ann Cloyd, former leader of PwC’s Center for Board Governance, and Zan M. Vautrinot, former commander of the Air Forces Cyber Command and current director of Symantec, Ecolab, and Parsons Corp., discuss effective cyber-risk oversight, addressing the following questions:

• How can boards communicate with management about cyber risk?
• How does cyber risk fit into discussions about risk appetite?

Here are some highlights from that conversation.

Judy Warner: For directors, I think one of the greatest challenges around the issue of cyber is how to engage in an informed conversation with management. And how do they become informed about their oversight roles as they relate to cyber?

Zan Vautrinot: One of the things that was absolutely clear about the private sector and corporate leadership is that they understood how to have a discussion about risks and strategy. The only thing different with cyber is that some of the technology and some of the solution sets are slightly different, but the conversation is the same. It is a discussion about a particular kind of risk and how it relates to the kind of business you are [in].

Warner: Mary Ann, from your perspective, how does that conversation take place, or start to take place, at the board level? And is it a conversation for the full board or a specific committee?

Mary Ann Cloyd: I guess I always say it depends. I never want to be so prescriptive as to tell somebody what they need to do because every board and every committee is different. However, I do think that, given the magnitude of how this affects so many businesses, it’s not a technology issue. It’s a business issue. So, with that, where would you oversee any other business issue at your board? And I’m guessing that a lot of it would belong at the full board, with parts of it delegated down to a committee.

Warner: The NACD recently published a handbook on cyber-risk oversight, and one of the discussions is around risk appetite and where does cyber fit into that equation today. And I know, Mary Ann, you have said we need to think of cyber as any other risk.

Cloyd: I think you bring up two interesting things. [I]n fact, we did a small publication [at PwC’s Board Leadership Center] earlier this year, and we called it “Defining Risk Appetite in Plain English.” What prompted it was I had a director come to me and he said, “Mary, we’re doing our off-site strategy session and we always talk about risk appetite. Do you have a good pre-read that I could give to the board so that they can understand what risk appetite means?” So we did this to really put in plain English, in four pages or less, what the dialog is between management and the board, and how you develop and define your risk appetite. And, to me now—as you have so beautifully put this, Suzanne—cyber is just another part of that risk discussion and how it fits into your overall strategy.

Vautrinot: Right. And if you have already had a discussion about your strategy and those things that are most important to you as a corporate entity, is it the data that is unique that you’ve collected—the information and the access to that information—that makes your corporation unique? Is it the technology or your research and development? Is it your insight into financial transaction or merger and acquisition? Is it [about] manufacturing processes or distribution processes?

Every board and every management team knows what is most important to them being successful as a corporation. It is likely that those things are the areas that [the board] would want to focus on with assessing cyber risk. If you look at that area and say this is what is most important to us as a corporation, and this is the technology that we depend on to do that activity, now I can say that is sufficient or it is insufficient relative to the amount of risk I am willing to accept in that area. There may be other areas that aren’t core to the business, and so you are willing to accept a different amount of risk or put different systems in place that kind of sandbox it—[systems] that put a fence around, or that separate or provide different controls to allow [the lower-risk] activity to run more openly, whereas [higher-risk areas are] much more controlled and much more precious.

Additional NACD resources

NACD’s Director’s Handbook Series: Cyber-Risk Oversight

NACD—Building a Relationship With the CISO

NACD—Assessing the Board’s Cybersecurity Culture

NACD—Cybersecurity Risk Oversight and Breach Response