Editors Are Standing By

But our greatest effort goes into keeping our collective finger on the pulse of the security profession

By Derek Slater

April 01, 2006 — CSO —

My all-time favorite reader comment about CSO came from a Secret Service agent who several years ago said something like this: "I don't want to say it's dry, but I'd rather be reading Mad Magazine."

I suppose he should start reading each issue with the back page, our humorous Debriefing column. Actually, we put a good deal of work into trying to make CSO both informative and, if not exactly a knee-slapper, at least lively and interesting. But our greatest effort goes into keeping our collective finger on the pulse of the security profession.

We do this in a variety of ways. First and foremost, our feature articles are written based on interviews—dozens of them, in some cases—with CSOs, CISOs and the like. (The matter of security executives' titles is a subject for another column.) We're always on the lookout for experts with a great idea, a new perspective, an area of expertise that will help their peers solve their most pressing problems. Some sources approach us; others we find through friend-of-a-friend conversations, and occasionally we turn someone up through newspapers or other media outlets. Our most valuable sources are most frequently our readers. In one sense, CSO is less like a publication and more like a giant networking exercise, putting security people in touch with one another to share best practices and mutual concerns. Some readers connect through the magazine's articles, and of course we also hold a conference each spring where a few hundred top leaders gather to do their networking in person. I have just come back from this year's conference in Huntington Beach, which gave us three days to pick the brains of many of the industry's leading lights. And we gather feedback through our website, both in terms of reader reactions to specific articles and also in terms of metrics. The vagaries of Web traffic are sometimes a bit baffling, but more often the numbers are crystal clear in painting a portrait of what's valuable to our audience. Last, we conduct a lengthy annual survey of our subscribers. The survey is a great chance to dig deep into what's working in CSO and where we need to kick it up a notch. This year we gathered detailed reactions from around 650 respondents. As always, I read every comment verbatim and refer back to the results throughout the year.

All of this is to illustrate a critical point: We really listen to CSOs.