Show Time for Security

Image isn't just about security theater. Projecting the right image helps get the job done.

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December 01, 2004 — CSO — The magazine you hold in your hands started as what we thought would be a lighthearted way to ease out of 2004: the image issue. Our idea was to explore the role of appearances in security and determine how the profession needs to make itself over in order to get its message heard. To demonstrate our point, we decided to give ourselves a temporary makeover in the spirit of Cosmo and Men's Healththe kinds of magazines that do image best.

Think security is too serious a matter for such fluffery? Think again. It's precisely because security is so important that we need to pay attention to how it's perceived.

The more we talked with security leaders, the more we realized that image is critical to everything the CSO does. Gavin de Becker, author of the book The Gift of Fear, is especially eloquent on the subject. "There is an element of appearances to security, and I don't mean this in an unfavorable way," says the famously unflappable de Becker, who has guarded his image as closely as the Hollywood stars he is hired to protect. "Precautions that are expected to deter often draw some of their effectiveness from appearing to be this or that. Effective security professionals know that demeanor and appearances are a language that can communicate confidence far more keenly than mere words."

Right now, however, security has an image problem. "We are increasingly seeing a security apartheid," says Thornton May, longtime IT consultant and observer. "Security professionals are increasingly isolated from the organizational mainstream."

May is pessimistic about the CSO's propensity for change. But we truly believe that the most successful among you are trying to make over yourselves and your profession, the better to inspire confidence and authority. Once an assortment of stereotyped "geeks" and "guards" who'd been promoted up a few tax brackets, CSOs are now struggling to becomeand be recognized asbusinessmen and women who take a strategic view of risks across the enterprise.

This effort is an image battle as much as anything else, and the change is happening on three levels. On the first level are CSOs themselvesyouwho are learning that to be taken seriously as executives, you have to act like your peers from other parts of the business. It might seem obvious, but you do have to talk like a businessperson. You do have to dress like a businessperson. Heck, you might even decide you need a new haircut. Just look at what eBay's Howard Schmidt, one of the country's most prominent CISOs, has done to his look over the years. (Schmidt explains why in "Mr. Schmidt Goes to Barney's" on Page 44.)

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