“My role is to reduce risk in a way that enables the business to operate confidently while serving our clients effectively. If we lock everything down, we hurt the business, frustrate users, and lose agility. But if we under-secure, we expose the company to breaches, regulatory risk, and reputational harm,” he says. “To strike the right balance, we focus on understanding how the business operates, its priorities, its challenges, and its people. That means working cross-functionally to assess not just technical exposure, but operational impact.”
To do so, Hamidi’s team collaborates closely with business leaders and colleagues to align security with the business while ensuring client and organizational data is adequately protected. “It’s not just about technical safeguards; it’s about building trust, communicating risk in business terms, and making security a strategic enabler rather than a blocker,” he says.
John Denning, CISO at the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), says CISOs could also ask themselves, “Is security supporting the business and protecting customers and clients at the same time?”
