We are living big times. Companies are changing, evolving, re-inveting themselves and usually all of this happens with the help of technology, think that, luckily, allow us to be involved. But, all these changes have helped the appearance of new or re-invented roles at directive levels in the different companies.

We are hired to get our job done and, sometimes, this job involves to discuss and present our ideas to managers or directives. Here, it is where we fall in this dance of letters and acronyms like CEO, CTO, CISO… A long list of them, and, to do our job properly, we need to know who we should be addressing. We do not want to be losing our time and, I am quite sure, they do not want to lose their time.

For this reason, I have made a small list of these roles and what they mean, just a little help for the most common ones:

For this reason, I have made a small list of these roles and what they mean, just a little help for the most common ones:

CEO (Chief Executive Officer)

He is the executive director, the manager, the highest position in the organizational chart of the organization. It is the final responsible for the actions carried out within the company, its performance and its efficiency.

Its main function is to supervise and ensure that the strategy defined in the company complies with the achievement of the objectives of the organization, in addition to sowing the principles and basic pillars to be followed within the company.

The CEO has an important relationship with the CIO, because the strategies of companies are closely linked to the field of information technology.

CIO (Chief Information Officer)

He is the systems manager or director of information technology. It reports directly to the CEO, and basically ensures that the organization’s strategies are aligned with information technology to achieve the planned objectives.

In addition, it is responsible for improving the information technology processes of the organization, managing risk and business continuity, controlling the cost of information technology infrastructure, aligning information technology governance with technological requirements, and establish improvements and innovations of solutions and products.

CSO (Chief Security Officer)

It is responsible for the security of the organization. The CSO is sometimes called the corporate security officer. We can think that the CISO and the CSO are the same role and that they perform the same functions. In small organizations it is common for both responsibilities to coincide in the same person. But it really is not like that. The role of the CISO is usually more focused on aspects of information security, while the CSO is required to:

• Have a business vision that understands the risks the organization faces and how to deal with them.
• Understand the mission and objectives of the company and ensure that all activities are planned and executed to meet those objectives.
• Understand the regulatory needs, the management of the reputation of the organization and the expectations of the users.
• Establish business continuity and disaster recovery plans in the field of information technology.
• Be aware of regulatory changes, should be informed of the consequences for the activities of the organization and proposing appropriate measures to adapt to the new regulatory framework.

When there is CSO and CISO, the CISO reports to the CSO and the CSO to the address.

CTO (Chief Technology Officer)

The role of the CTO in a role similar to the CIO but more “technical”. In this sense, they have identified no less than six different roles that CTOs can play. They intermingle with the functions of the CIO. However, we can say that he is a technical director, being responsible for the day-to-day management of information technologies.

CISO (Chief Information Security Officer)

The CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) is the director of information security. Basically it is a role played at the executive level and its main function is to align the security of information with business objectives. In this way it is guaranteed at all times that the company’s information is adequately protected.

As we said, every day new roles are emerging. Therefore, many of the responsibilities of a position have been modified over the years. However, for the role of CISO we can say that in general, its responsibilities include:

• Generate and implement information security policies.
• Guarantee the security and privacy of the data.
• Supervise the administration of control of access to information.
• Supervise the regulatory compliance of information security.
• Responsible for the response team to information security incidents of the organization.
• Supervise the security architecture of the company’s information.

In general, these are the roles you can hear around more often but a lot more of them exist, i.e. CFO (Chief Financial Officer), CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), CDO (Chief Data Officer or Chief Digital Officer). This last one, probably it is going to show more often every day. As we can see the rule basically is: Chief + + Officer.

Let’s just keep them in mind, next time we need to talk or email someone to do our job.

Post based on: INCIBE