As a security officer, I would like to highlight 4 essential capabilities for a successful career in information security. Before discussing these capabilities, let’s take a moment to reflect on the importance of an information security office/department within today’s companies.

The main objective of each company is to obtain its business goals, which are predetermined by the board and executed by different departments based on their expertise.

Similarly, the information security department analyses how it can support the realization of the business goals and becomes a fully-fledged contributor to the organization’s objectives. Information security officers need to translate their mission of keeping the company safe into ambitions and expectations that the board may have for this department.

The ongoing digital transformation has embedded information security in multiple business processes, supported by multiple technologies, people, colleagues, and customers. With the changing technologies and processes, along with the information threats and risks, the technology landscape is changing fast (work@home, cloud, …). We live in a “VUCA” world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) and we need to create a “VACINE” (velocity, agility, creativity, innovation, experiment) to face today’s challenges. The most important ingredient of this “VACINE”, in the space of information security, are security officers with adequate hard and soft skills.