Building the CISO-General Counsel Partnership is Critical for Modern Enterprise Security

The effectiveness of an organization’s security posture is no longer measured by the security team’s technical defenses alone. Rather, the posture is evaluated based on its ability to comprehensively drive business resilience and manage risk through effective collaboration.

This was the central topic at a recent ExtraHop event, where cybersecurity industry leaders kicked off a conversation about how Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and the General Counsel can deliver transformative, tangible, and lasting business outcomes together.

The Growing Need for a Unified Front

To date, CISOs and the General Counsel have operated in silos, a separation that is a relic of a time when cybersecurity was viewed as a purely technical issue and legal counsel focused on traditional business law.

Consequently, the crucial connection between cybersecurity threats and legal obligations is often overlooked. For example, a data breach is typically handled in isolation; the security team focuses on the technical fix while legal counsel addresses compliance, leading to unmanaged risks, like fines and reputational damage.

A data breach can also lead to teams working against each other. For example, the legal team may require evidence preservation, while the cybersecurity team pushes for containment, remediation, and a return to business as normal.

These instances should be powerful wake-up calls, highlighting the urgent need for collaboration between the CISO and General Counsel to prevent and better respond to future incidents.

The Benefits of an Effective CISO-General Counsel Partnership

A well-established partnership between the CISO and General Counsel is the foundation of a truly robust approach to business resilience. This collaboration allows an organization to align legal obligation with business resilience strategy and defense, ensuring a comprehensive strategy that spans both legal and technical dimensions.

Shawn Tuma, cybersecurity, computer fraud, and data privacy attorney, suggests establishing a trust-based relationship and effective communication protocols early on to make incidents less stressful, increase response efficiency, and help manage situations more effectively.

Unified Risk Management

When security and legal teams are in sync, the results are powerful. By aligning on a shared understanding of risk, with each bringing their unique perspectives, the CISO and General Counsel can work together to build a durable and defensible security posture. Should a security incident occur, a unified front allows the company to demonstrate it took every reasonable measure to prevent the breach and institute a robust response, making it clear that the business operates with security principles in mind.

Strong Incident Response

In the heat of a security incident, every second counts. A strong CISO-General Counsel partnership prevents day-of anxiety, infighting, and fumbles that can derail the response before it gets off the ground. In one incident, a company’s IT team, rushing to get systems back online after a breach, unknowingly destroyed critical evidence by reformatting the affected hard drives. This hasty decision, made without legal guidance, created a serious legal problem when regulators later arrived to collect the evidence.

Recovery isn’t only about technically recovering computer systems. It’s about recovering as a business entity, which means fulfilling legal duties and protecting operational integrity. A close, working CISO-General Counsel partnership is the best means of ensuring that the company emerges from a breach with its reputation and legal standing undiminished.

Shared Accountability

A CISO-General Counsel partnership also ensures that new initiatives commence in a responsible, legally defensible way in compliance with both law and regulations. For example, when a security team brings a pending project to the General Counsel for review, the General Counsel can provide legal guidance around the potential for liability. This way, both teams fully understand the technical and business risks before the project goes live. Shared accountability allows for early-stage risk management and mitigation, protecting the company while moving business forward securely and responsibly.

CISO Protection

A CISO and General Counsel partnership can directly protect a CISO’s career and personal liability. In the blink of an eye, a CISO can go from being an attack victim to becoming the subject of a lawsuit, fending off accusations of negligence, or a breach of fiduciary duty from regulators and shareholders. In these instances, working closely with the General Counsel can prove immensely beneficial. The partnership can help the CISO build a legally defensible security posture that proves due diligence, safeguarding the CISO’s reputation and career. It can also help the CISO review and claim coverage through Directors and Officers (D&O) insurance or other liability policies, mitigating personal financial ruin.

5 Ways to Build a Strong CISO and General Counsel Partnership

Don't wait for a crisis to connect with your General Counsel. Proactively forging this strategic alliance now provides benefits that go far beyond risk management, giving your organization a powerful edge in today's threat landscape.

1. Focus on the Big Picture

Engage the General Counsel at a high level to determine “what are our most valuable assets or crown jewels, the ones for which we would legally be in dire straits, in the event of a breach?” and “what is a defensible posture?” This ensures that your security program protects what matters most. 

2. Conduct Tabletop Exercises

Conduct tabletop exercises that include both the security and legal teams, building working relationships and establishing clear roles and communication protocols – before an incident occurs.

3. Negotiate Third-Party Risks

Collaborate on security requirements for vendors. Bake in legally binding security and liability clauses to protect the business from supply chain risks.

4. Establish Security-Legal Reviews

Schedule quarterly meetings between CISO and General Counsel teams to review emerging threats, regulatory changes, and business initiatives.

5. Shrink the Threat Surface

Engage the General Counsel about record retention policies, ensuring that they not only comply with regulations, but that they’ve been created in such a way as to reduce the company’s legal liability and security risks. If you’re holding onto diverse types of records across the business, you also need visibility into whether or not it has the appropriate protections in-place and when it can be discarded and/or deleted.

Learn more about how ExtraHop supports this critical partnership with enterprise-wide visibility and risk insights.