Four key challenges for cybersecurity leaders.

In business and society today, we are too often focused on bolting on cybersecurity in a hyphenated manner. We want "security-enabled" this, "security-enhanced" that. But cybersecurity cannot be an add-on. Rather it must be built into every product and system from the moment it is conceived. To achieve such integration, we need to address four fundamental leadership challenges:

1) Real-time information sharing

The pace of the digital world continues to increase exponentially. To keep up, security professionals have to address threats and security weaknesses rapidly, before cybercriminals strike. Speed is fundamental to an effective cybersecurity strategy; cybersecurity systems must keep up with the increasing speed and volume of internet traffic. Speed of reaction is vital as well. Too often, there are long lag times in addressing cybersecurity problems. Criminals can - and do - take advantage of this.

But speed requires visibility. To act fast, we must share threat information in near real-time. Cybercrime has no borders. In a world that is so deeply interconnected by digital technology, cybersecurity and global security are the same thing. No single organization, public or private, can have a complete view of the entire cyber landscape. Senior leadership must insist organizations share information to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Otherwise, we will be flying blind.

2) Widespread collaboration in cybersecurity

Effective cybersecurity must be deeply and widely collaborative. Collaboration enables the good guys to create a hive mind, to learn rapidly, constantly expanding our competency and capacity. If organizations or states do not learn from one another, the same attacks will needlessly take down countless entities.

Wide collaboration means including everyone in a broader conversation about cybersecurity. Deep collaboration means making everyone smarter and creating knowledge repositories that are part of our operational systems. It means collaborating on threat intelligence sharing and it means collaborating on education.

The more we talk about the importance of cybersecurity and its fundamental role, and the more education is shared, the more we will educate and nurture the future generations of cybersecurity professionals we very much need. The estimated cost of damage caused by hackers, malware and data breaches is projected to reach $6 trillion by 2021. To empower leadership to meet these challenges, technological experts...