Rebuilding Cybersecurity

How to Restore Trust, Leadership, and Real Protection in a Broken System
1. Auflage 2027
ISBN: 978-1-041-37990-4
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Your audit passed. Your dashboard is green. Your customers got the assurance they asked for.

Congratulations. Now tell me: are you actually secure?

Cybersecurity has become remarkably good at proving that work was done. We have frameworks. Certifications. Dashboards. Questionnaires. Tools. Audits. More tools. More audits. And an endless parade of green check marks telling executives everything is under control.

Meanwhile, organizations keep getting breached.

We've been told that compliance and security are two different things. They're not. They were always intended to work together. But somewhere along the way, we stopped using compliance to help build protection and started using it to prove that we passed. That's compliance theater. And the green check mark may be its most convincing prop.

In Rebuilding Cybersecurity, Cheri Hotman challenges executives, board members, CISOs, and cybersecurity practitioners to confront the uncomfortable gap between the security programs we've built and the protection we actually provide. Drawing on decades of experience owning these problems from the inside, Cheri exposes how fear, fragmented ownership, misaligned incentives, checkbox culture, and relentless pressure have quietly pulled cybersecurity away from its purpose. Then she shows us how to rebuild it.

Through the Cybersecurity Rebuild Model, readers learn how to uncover where their security programs have drifted from their purpose, restore accountability, prioritize what actually matters, and create security programs built on something more meaningful than another green check mark. Because your customers aren't really asking whether you passed an audit. Your board shouldn't be asking whether the dashboard is green. And the people who have entrusted you with their information don't care how many certifications hang on your wall. They are trusting you to protect what matters. It's time we started acting like it.

Zielgruppe

Professional Practice & Development, Professional Reference, and Professional Training

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hotman, Cheri

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Technische Informatik Computersicherheit Schadprogramme (Viren, Trojaner etc.)
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Technische Informatik Computersicherheit Kryptographie, Datenverschlüsselung
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Computerkommunikation & -vernetzung Netzwerksicherheit

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1: Compliance Was Never the Goal. Chapter 2: We All Built the Wrong Machine. Chapter 3: Breaches Proved the System Does Not Work. Chapter 4: We Are Spending More and Getting Less. Chapter 5: Doing More With Less: Building Real Security Under Constraints. Chapter 6: Technology Was Never Going to Save Us. Chapter 7: Integrity Is the Missing Control. Chapter 8: Security Should Create Value, Not Just Prevent Loss. Chapter 9: Executives Have Not Been Told the Truth. Chapter 10: The System Will Not Fix Itself. Chapter 11: Doing Security Well Is a Responsibility, Not an Option. Chapter 12: Security Fails Without People. Conclusion: Rebuild on Purpose. Call to Action: You Now Know. Afterword: You Are Not Stuck With What You Inherited. Appendix: The Cybersecurity Rebuild Model and Executive Assessment.

Über Autor(innen)

Cheri Hotman is a CPA, CISSP, and CCISO with more than twenty years of experience helping organizations close the gap between compliance and real protection. As the Managing Partner of Hotman Group, she works as a fractional CISO, executive advisor, and governance strategist for companies across industries, including financial services, technology, energy, and healthcare.

She has sat in every seat the cybersecurity system touches: auditor, assessor, executive, advisor, and cleanup consultant. She has helped boards navigate breach response, built governance programs from the ground up, and rebuilt programs that were never designed to protect anyone in the first place. Those experiences give her a 360-degree view of how good people end up trapped in broken systems, and how to lead them out.

Her work today focuses on helping organizations rebuild integrity, accountability, and ownership as the real controls behind security. She works hands-on with CISOs, executives, and leadership teams to bridge the gap between business and technical priorities, design solutions that work under real constraints, and restore trust where it has been lost.

Cheri is the host of The Art of Cybersecurity: Real-World Risk and Compliance Strategies podcast, where she regularly interviews industry leaders and practitioners on the real-world challenges of governance, risk, and security leadership. She is a regular speaker at industry conferences including WiCyS and GRC Connect, where she delivers leadership-oriented content to both practitioner and executive audiences. She is an active voice on LinkedIn on topics including cybersecurity leadership, compliance failure, and executive accountability, reaching a professional audience of CISOs, risk leaders, auditors, and executives across industries. She speaks directly to boards and leadership teams about leading with transparency, aligning risk to purpose, and building security programs that actually protect.

She lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas.