In Depth

How you fund a CSO

Genzyme's CFO-An exec who gets it; Finding security equilibrium; Are our harbors safe?; Better budgeting; What employees who travel need from a CSO; Protecting your company's intellectual property; A true story of employee termination

By CSO Contributor

Page 6

In the coming years, the security community will be working with auditors, lawyers, economists, accountants, insurance companies and a host of other experts to find ways to put structure around the money spent on security. The ability to join in this dialogue is vital to CSOs.

The most important thing you, as a company executive, can do is to recognize security as an integral part of your organization and embrace the CSO as part of the executive team, all the while insisting that the CSO learn and practice risk, cost-benefit analysis and the like. Encourage him to take business courses or perhaps pursue an MBA. While your employees will respect your CSO's authority, your outward support of his initiatives and a commitment to his professional development will go a long way toward making security awareness part of the corporate culture.

You and your CSO have the same goal: Be smart about risk without going overboard on cost or governance. CSOs want to make other executives' jobs easier, so do the same for them. And give them the tools they need to make wise decisions.

Your business's success depends on it.

-Simone KaplanSafe HarborPORT SECURITY

In the team-building portion at your last company offsite, you probably remember an exercise where group A led group B through an obstacle course. Presumably group B exited the course unscathed. The game is similar to the real-life scenario being played out at shipping ports around the world today: In an attempt to lead businesses through transport's security maze, the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has created several programs to improve the inherent lack of trust in the cargo system so that things can move more swiftly through the supply chain.

The Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or C-TPAT, is a joint initiative between the government and the private sector aimed at safely expediting containers through ports. Companies that promise to use good security measures and provide documentation of the containers' contents to Customs officials will be rewarded with an accelerated shipping schedulekind of like a fast lane for cargo.

Companies that enroll in the program must perform self-assessments of their supply chain security and implement a security program that follows C-TPAT guidelines.

The guidelines focus on security compliance of facilities, access, procedures, personnel, documentation and training.

"Anyone at a terminal of a trucking company could infiltrate the cargo supply chain, especially overseas where background checks aren't allowed," says Ken Wheatley, vice president of corporate security for Sony. Wheatley is also a member of an advisory council for the C-TPAT initiative that is working with Customs to devise appropriate security guidelines for manufacturers. "The obvious difficulty," he says, "lies in managing a coordinated effort between various government entities. If you have the Drug Enforcement Agency, Food and Drug Administration, and Customs independently coming up with regulations without communicating with each other, the end users will get caught in a vice with inconsistent standards."