Cyberthreats are plenty, thus securing technology and infrastructure is now integral in any business or agency. But too often, the higher-ups of these organizations are not as adept with the nitty-gritty involved with technology and cybersecurity. How does one express the need for cybersecurity measures to your organization’s leadership and actually get their buy-in? Stacey A. Wright joins Justice Clearinghouse to provides tips and other useful information to do exactly that.

Stacey is one of Justice Clearinghouse’s regular instructors and is the Director of Partnerships at the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) and Elections Infrastructure ISAC (EI-ISAC) – two initiatives under the non-profit CIS funded by the Department of Homeland Security to extend cybersecurity information, resources, and infrastructure to government agencies in the state, local, tribal and territorial level.

Specifics Stacey unpacked on this course include:

• An overview of MS-ISAC and its purpose and mission.
• The reality in the difficulty that comes with communicating cybermetrics for agency executives.
• The importance of knowing your audience to better get your message across.
  • Questions to ask and figure out to get to know your audience.
  • Utilizing technology, specifically LinkedIn to acquire insights on the interests of your potential audience.
  • Knowing the objective of your audience.
  • Using the Bottom Line Up Front technique to pique their interest and address their objective.
  • Making time work to your advantage by making your point within the allotted time
• Tips and tricks to integrate into your presentation.
  • Avoiding going too much into details and technical data.
  • Using an executive summary that would be useful for policy and planning.
  • Utilizing visually attractive data representations to explain detailed and complicated information.
  • Avoid the use of vague concepts and wording.
  • Employing analogies to provide a better picture of technical concepts to executives.
  • Practicing caution in use of numbers and statistics by sticking to facts that are easily understandable and evidence that is well proven, realistic and defendable.
  • Understanding how people’s interpretations may vary based on their background and experience.
  • View things from their perspective and use concepts that they can fully grasp.
  • Getting executives to ask questions, provide input and suggestions that will give them a sense of ownership and better ensure buy-in.
• During the Q&A, inquiries were about:
  • More samples of analogies to use to help executives understand technical concepts or processes.
  • Getting a boss to see from your perspective by dropping cues that will allow you to lead them into a specific conclusion.
  • The reason why executives seem to not understand and is not interested to understand technology.
  • The type of information agency leaders must familiarize themselves with.
  • The growing understanding and acceptance of executives of the importance of technology and cybersecurity.
  • The most common mistakes leaders commit when dealing with IT.

Audience Comments:

• “Great slides to present the topic and the speaker was very knowledgeable.” — Carolos
• “Its all part of the Big Puzzle. Good job.” –Robert
• “The preparation and presentation concepts will also be useful for other types of meetings.” –Kenny