Balance Innovation & Security

41%

of executives say cyber risk initiatives at their organizations have not kept pace with digital transformation.

With finite resources, no company can realistically expect optimized security in every scenario, de Bont says.

“Security takes extra time. It requires expertise. It’s often hard. Add to this the agility and freedom you need to quickly innovate and fail fast and then transform—it’s a delicate balance,” he says.

That doesn’t mean organizations should accept weak security as a cost of innovation—but it does mean they’ll need to make strategic, case-by-case decisions about resource allocation. De Bont suggests prioritizing security for modernization initiatives, since they are critical for the future of the business.

“If you’re embarking on a new initiative or a digital transformation effort, then baking security into that may be more important than going back or continuing the cleanup that you’re doing for legacy systems,” he says.