In security, soft skills are king CSO Executive Sessions

For Chad Teat, CISO of Atlanta-based specialty retailer Floor & Decor, the secret to balancing risk and business opportunity comes down to reducing friction with the business. To do that, Teat says, the CISO, engineers, and analysts all need to make it their day-to-day job to build relationships and influence with the business. “I think every security professional has been a part of highly complex projects that succeeded because everybody was rowing in the same direction. And we’ve also been a part of short puts that fail miserably because of internal squabbles.” As for where security could be doing a better job, Teat points to risk quantification and communication. “We’ve got to be speaking the same language as the rest of the business and right now in the industry a lot of times we’re not even speaking the same language as IT.”