Wharton/ ASIS Program for Security Executives: Making the Business Case for Security

Security risks of all types continue to dominate corporate headlines, with breaches harming brand reputation and the bottom line. Yet in spite of these challenges, corporate information security may not be a high priority in your organization budget.

Chief security officers need new kinds of management and leadership skills to convey to their organization’s top decision-makers the relevance of security. The Wharton/ASIS Program for Security Executives: Making the Business Case for Security provides the leadership and management skills to communicate the impact of security decisions on your organization to the C-suite, so you can move forward your security priorities.

Program Experience

Highlights and Key Outcomes

In the Wharton/ASIS Program for Security Executives, you will:

• Cover the core concepts of business to broaden your managerial and strategic perspectives, enhance your business instincts, and sharpen your ability to tackle management challenges
• Communicate a clear business case for investments in organizational information security policy
• Learn how to better present your strategy to build buy-in from the C-suite
  

Experience & Impact

According to the Security Industry Survey of Risks and Professional Competencies, cybersecurity, crime, mobile technology, natural disasters, and globalization are ranked as the top five risks most likely to affect an enterprise over the next five years. With so many new threats confronting organizations, corporations are challenged by how to invest their security dollars, and how to best protect their employees and their organizations networks and data from harm. But with companies facing competing budget priorities, how do you communicate the security story for your firm so leaders fully understand the costs and benefits — as well as the risks — of not having a comprehensive strategy?

In this six-day leadership program, security officers join their peers at Wharton’s Philadelphia campus for a unique learning engagement. The program will enhance their business acumen and effectiveness as leaders in key areas of strategy, negotiation, critical thinking, and managing change. Wharton Executive Education and ASIS International, the leading organization for security professionals worldwide, co-developed the custom curriculum to ensure it meets the learning needs of today’s senior security leaders.

Wharton faculty — apply their field-based research and the latest strategic insights to help you broaden your perspective on how to communicate the importance of a robust security program.

The program offers a strategic toolbox so you can put these business skills into immediate practice, while exploring your own leadership and communication strengths.

Session topics include:

• Building a Learning Community
• Strategic Persuasion: Managing across Organizational Boundaries
• Trends in the Changing Global Environment
• Financial Measures of Performance
• Critical Thinking and Decision Making
• Leadership and Decision Making in the Gettysburg Battle
• Leadership and History
• Leading and Managing Change

Through highly interactive lectures, exercises, and case studies, both in the classroom and in smaller work groups, this program will enable chief security officers to create effective security strategies in a rapidly changing global environment.

Overall, you will learn to:

• Enhance your strategic-thinking skills outside traditional areas such as accounting and finance
• Bolster your leadership skills to better communicate with non-financial colleagues
• Be a better decision-maker who can assess disparate data from many areas of your company and help the CEO, board, and other leaders create a long-term path forward