Youngstown State University CISO Cuts Board Reporting Time From Days to Minutes

Justin (00:00) After a few weeks, we noticed that we had a better handle on where we needed to focus. We really had no clue where resources were best spent. but never really had a good idea of where to focus our efforts overall. And the product really did give us just a list, a huge list of priorities and it ranks them and it told us level of effort we needed for each one so we can really weigh whether it was worth tackling at the time, whether we had the resources and whether we had the budget. Hi, I'm Justin Bettura, Chief Information Security Officer at Youngstown State University. before using Cyber heat map, the hardest part of tracking cybersecurity was that we always had a clue on what we should be doing, but we never had a definitive list of priorities. We never really knew how to best utilize a very small operating budget. Cyber heat map really guided us towards that. So after we got started using Cyber heat map one of the huge benefits was it made reporting to our executive leadership and board of trustees extremely easy. I was able to get reports within minutes. Whereas I used to have to spend, I don't know, half the week gathering data and compiling it. I can literally do this, I can do it within a few minutes, have a full board report and our board of trustees is very used to the report. It's very simple and they love seeing it. They know exactly what to expect. I know how to better focus my team now. I know what's most important. The product really tells us based on the cyber landscape, based on threats, where we should be prioritizing, and we're prioritizing a very small staff on those objectives, and allocating those budget resources as the product's telling me to and it's working very well. Cyber bridge and the live coaching helped me stay on by helping us communicate with the rest of the Cyber Heat map members. We're able to ask questions, get feedback from people who have done stuff that we're looking to do in the future. And the live coaching sessions are invaluable. We're able to chat about the direction cybersecurity is going in. We're able to take some of the data from Cyber Heat Map and discuss things we may have questions on. And really we're able to just chat about really what the higher ed landscapes looks like currently, where it's going and how we can best tailor all of our resources to meet the needs of our clients. since I've started using the product, the team's ability to prioritize has gotten much better. We know not only what our priorities are, but we know what the team's capabilities are as well. So if a peer asked me they should use cyber heat map, I would encourage them to at least try it. I think it's a fantastic resource, not only in prioritizing resources and budget, but I will emphasize that board reporting and executive leadership reporting is just made very simple. It's very quick. And in my experience, it's generated at a level that both executive leadership and even the board of trustees can understand easily. And then they can see improvements on those reports. They can see categories falling. They can see categories increasing. And they're able to ask questions off that report. without much additional education from me.