Can I read 'Cyber security is a dark art': The CISO as soothsayer on EtoBox?

'Cyber security is a dark art': The CISO as soothsayer by Da Silva, Joseph; Jensen, Rikke Bjerg is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

What is 'Cyber security is a dark art': The CISO as soothsayer about?

Commercial organisations continue to face a growing and evolving threat of data breaches and system compromises, making their cyber-security function critically important. Many organisations employ a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) to lead such a function. We conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 15 CISOs and six senior organisational leaders, between October 2019 and July 2020, as part of a wider exploration into the purpose of CISOs and cyber-security functions. In this paper, we employ broader security scholarship related to ontological security and sociological notions of identity work to provide an interpretative analysis of the CISO role in organisations. Research findings reveal that cyber security is an expert system that positions the CISO as an interpreter of something that is mystical, unknown and fearful to the uninitiated. They show how the fearful nature of cyber security contributes to it being considered an ontological threat by the organisation, while responding to that threat contributes to the organisation's overall identity. We further show how cyber security is analogous to a belief system and how one of the roles of the CISO is akin to

Author

Da Silva, Joseph; Jensen, Rikke Bjerg

Published

2022

Language

EN