Chief Security Officer

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What Does Chief Security Officer Mean?

A Chief Security Officer (CSO) manages an organization’s security and is the ultimate manager and custodian of an enterprise’s data, infrastructure and entire physical and digital assets. A CSO plans and implements an organization’s security policy, architecture and framework.

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Techopedia Explains Chief Security Officer

A CSO is a top management executive or employee charged with overseeing an organization’s security in its entire operating domain. A CSO’s primary job responsibilities are planning, developing, deploying and maintaining a security architecture that is in line with the business objectives of an organization.

A CSO manages physical and information security (IS). The physical security responsibility includes the implementation of secure access control and authentication mechanisms at all physical or office facilities owned by the organization. IS tasks incorporate network, data and the organization’s other logical or digital assets.

A CSO is different from a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), as the former covers all-encompassing security parameters, whereas the latter only focuses on IT security.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.