Measuring Security Assurance: Turn Technical Data into Metrics Executives Can Understand

Clear communication is critical.

As a CISO or IT security leader, your communication with senior executives and the board of directors must focus on IT security program effectiveness in order to be meaningful.

You must ensure you can clearly explain how your IT security programs align to strategic business goals, so you can secure the investments in people, processes and technology you need to successfully protect the business.

Get executive buy-in by aligning technical security activity with business goals.

Very often security metrics are too heavily focused on operational measurements and are conveyed to executives using “security geek speak,” which causes executives to tune out during IT security program discussions. What you really need are effective “executive-focused” metrics that can help you prove the value of your organization’s investment in security assurance.

This whitepaper provides ideas for recasting technical security data into metric-based language that aligns to an executive’s perspective. It also explains how Tenable Assurance Report Cards® (ARCs), available in SecurityCenter Continuous View®, automate the collection of relevant enterprise security data and accelerate its transformation into executive-focused metrics that can be used for measuring security assurance.