Dottie Schindlinger on Diligent's Report on Board Oversight of Cybersecurity Risks and Performance

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Dottie Schindlinger is Executive Director of Diligent Institute, the global corporate governance research arm of Diligent - the largest SaaS software company in the Governance, Risk, Compliance (GRC), and ESG space. She co-authored the book Governance in the Digital Age: A Guide for the Modern Corporate Board Director, co-hosts “The Corporate Director Podcast,” and co-created Diligent Institute’s Certification programs for directors and executives, including AI Ethics & Board Oversight. Dottie was a founding team member of the tech start-up BoardEffect, acquired by Diligent in 2016. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar Corporate Governance Forum. Diligent and Bitsight recently issued an important report on corporate board oversight of cybersecurity risks.

Dottie Schindlinger, Executive Director of Diligent Institute, joins Michael Volkov to discuss the important findings of Diligent's report.

You'll hear Dottie and Michael discuss:

• Companies with advanced security ratings create nearly four times the amount of value for shareholders as companies with basic security ratings. On average, the Total Shareholders’ Return (TSR) over three and five years for companies in the advanced security performance range is approximately 372% and 91% higher, respectively, than their peers in the basic security performance range.
• Companies with a specialized risk or audit committee had higher security performance ratings on average. Companies falling within these two categories have an average security rating of 710, whereas companies lacking both committees have an average security rating of 650.
• The findings also suggest that the distribution of security ratings among companies with specialized risk and audit committees tends to skew towards the advanced security performance range, whereas companies lacking either of these committees tend to skew toward the basic security performance range.
• Having a cybersecurity expert on the board is not enough. Integrating a cybersecurity expert into the board committee tasked with cybersecurity risk oversight makes a significant difference in an organization’s performance.
• Merely having a cybersecurity expert on the board does not correlate to having a higher security performance rating. Highly regulated industries tend to outperform other industries in terms of cybersecurity performance.
• Of the companies with advanced-level security performance ratings, a full third (33%) came from the financial services sector – with an average rating of 720. The sector with the highest average rating overall was healthcare at 730.
• Nearly a quarter (24%) of companies with basic security performance ratings came from the industrial sector.

Resources

Dottie Schindlinger on LinkedIn

Diligent Institute | Diligent | Board Effect

The Report can be downloaded at: Cybersecurity, Audit and the Board Report

Michael Volkov on LinkedIn | Twitter

The Volkov Law Group