FIELD OF FLOWERS
PricewaterhouseCoopers Sets the Global Standard in Information Security Data Analysis and Thought Leadership
Challenge
For 20 years, leaders have turned to PwC's Global State of Information Security® Survey (GSISS), the world’s largest information security survey, as a trusted resource to navigate the cyber risk landscape. Over time, that landscape has evolved to be less about information security and more about managing digital risk. For eight of these years, I served as the principal data analyst and thought leadership author for the annual set of 25+ deliverables that translated thousands of points of data into actionable guidance for leaders across industries.
Action
More than 7,000 CEOs, CFOs, COOs and directors of IT, security and privacy from 130 countries complete a lengthy online survey on issues such as information security spending priorities, security incidence frequency, business and financial impacts, and countermeasure maturity across strategy, structure, people, process and technology. The survey generates an enormous database of information. In raw form, it includes several hundred thousand data points that filter responses by scores of factors such as country, industry, revenue, headcount and type or scope of event. In the early years, the walls of my office for six months were covered in paper with colored marking hand-written notes. When the months-long data collection effort finally ends, the project’s spotlight shifts immediately to “making sense” of the data – and helping the firm’s global clients across 12 key industries (as well as its thousands of client-facing consulting professionals) quickly and efficiently extract business value from the survey without having to wade directly into the “data field.”
Impact
For PwC, this is a high-visibility global campaign that attracts intensive media coverage. PwC conducts a multi-city U.S. road tour spread out over the next 10 months. And across the firm’s cross-industry global consulting practice, the survey’s findings are shared with clients on a daily basis. I’m not a content expert in this area. But data, in any form – particularly when it is statistically sound – can “tell a hundred stories.” After interviewing PwC’s leading information security experts and top 20+ industry specialists, I helped translate this survey into layers of content first by analyzing the data to corroborate or challenge themes and trends identified by the experts – or, in most cases, identify the “pre-market signals” of a new trend or an evolution of one that front-line leaders needed to know about in order to position their organization ahead of competitors and compliance regulators. Each year, the deliverables included a primary analysis report with key messaging recommendations; 12 industry-specific, multi-year data worksheets; 12 client-facing presentations customized for each industry; and a final, comprehensive thought leadership white paper.