Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives

Re: Recommendations On Cabinet Level InfoSec position


From: Jim Wilcox <jim () WILCOXS NET>
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 16:59:47 -0700

The CSO should definitely *not* report to the CIO, but to the
CEO/President.

For one thing, as Howard Schmidt emphasized while he was at Microsoft
(not touting MS as a paragon of security, but Howard left that gig to
work for the President of the US via Richard Clarke and is the former
President of the ISSA Int'l.), there is no such thing as a CISO.
Therefore, subjugating a CSO to a CIO not only diminishes the position,
but also ignores the 80% of the job that does not relate to information
technology.

James R. Wilcox, CISSP
10433 SW 53rd Ave
Portland, OR 97219-5837
503 245-6934
jim () wilcoxs net

-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Discussion Group Listserv
[mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of art
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 5:43 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Recommendations On Cabinet Level InfoSec
position


Here at the U of New Mexico we are close to advertising for an
information security officer, functionally the mosr senior one on
campus, ans this individual will report initially to the highest ranking
IT official on campus (currently an Associate VP), but eventually to the
CIO when that position is created.

Art St. George

--On Wednesday, July 09, 2003 5:25 PM -0500 Dan Updegrove
<updegrove () MAIL UTEXAS EDU> wrote:

Jim,

It's hard for me to imagine that a President's group would have
advocated another direct report, especially in a domain that most of
them would consider to be (as William F. Buckley said of ocean
sailing) "90% boredom and 10% terror."

IMHO, the appropriate reporting line for ISO is the to CIO -- and the
CIO should be at the cabinet level. I simply cannot imagine that an
ISO would receive from a president the supervision and support needed
to be effective. In practice, such a "cabinet level" ISO would report
to a "deputy to the president," who is also too busy and non-technical

to provide support.

Regards,
Dan Updegrove


At 05:15 PM 7/9/2003, Jim Moore wrote:
At the Educause security professionals workshop, I believe that
someone mentioned that a college/university presidents group had a
task force which made the recommendation that a cabinet level
position for Information Security be created at
colleges/universities.

Does anyone have a reference?

Does anyone have the text of the report/recommendation letter?

Jim
--
--
Jim Moore, CISSP, IAM
Information Security Officer
Rochester Institute of Technology
13 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623-5603
Telephone: (585)475-5406
Fax:       (585)475-7950

PGP (jimmoore () mail rit edu): 9C33 0328 CD59 B602 82B8 8521 0DC9 963C
D0C0

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VP  for Information Technology          Phone (512) 232-9610
The University of Texas at Austin       Fax (512) 232-9607
FAC 248 (Mail code: G9800)              d.updegrove () its utexas edu
P.O. Box 7407
http://wnt.utexas.edu/~danu/ Austin, TX 78713-7407

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